Enduring changes in personality/attitudes , depression , spirituality , anxiety , wellbeing , substance misuse , meditative practice s , and mindfulness were documented .
Mystical experiences , connectedness , emotional breakthrough , and increased neural entropy were related to these long-term changes in psychological functioning .
Finally , with proper screening , preparation , supervision , and integration , limited aversive side effects were noted by study participants .
Research into the basic effects and therapeutic applications of  psychedelic drugs  has grown considerably in recent years .
Yet , pressing questions remain regarding the substances ' lasting effects .
Although individual studies have begun monitoring sustained changes , no study to- date has synthesized this information .
LSD‐induced entropic brain activity predicts subsequent personality change
Personality is known to be relatively stable throughout adulthood . Nevertheless , it has been shown that major life events with high personal significance , including experiences engendered by psychedelic drugs , can have an enduring impact on some core facets of personality . In the present , balanced‐order , placebo‐controlled study , we investigated biological predictors of post‐lysergic acid diethylamide ( LSD ) changes in personality . Nineteen healthy adults underwent resting state functional MRI scans under LSD ( 75 µg , I.V. ) and placebo ( saline I.V. ) . The Revised NEO Personality Inventory ( NEO‐PI‐R ) was completed at screening and 2 weeks after LSD/placebo . Scanning sessions consisted of three 7.5‐min eyes‐closed resting‐state scans , one of which involved music listening . A st and ardized preprocessing pipeline was used to extract measures of sample entropy , which characterizes the predictability of an fMRI time‐series . Mixed‐effects models were used to evaluate drug‐induced shifts in brain entropy and their relationship with the observed increases in the personality trait openness at the 2‐week follow‐up . Overall , LSD had a pronounced global effect on brain entropy , increasing it in both sensory and hierarchically higher networks across multiple time scales . These shifts predicted enduring increases in trait openness . Moreover , the predictive power of the entropy increases was greatest for the music‐listening scans and when “ ego‐dissolution ” was reported during the acute experience . These results shed new light on how LSD‐induced shifts in brain dynamics and concomitant subjective experience can be predictive of lasting changes in personality . Hum Brain Mapp 37:3203–3213 , 2016 . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals ,
Enduring changes in personality/attitudes , depression , spirituality , anxiety , wellbeing , substance misuse , meditative practice s , and mindfulness were documented .
Mystical experiences , connectedness , emotional breakthrough , and increased neural entropy were related to these long-term changes in psychological functioning .
Finally , with proper screening , preparation , supervision , and integration , limited aversive side effects were noted by study participants .
Research into the basic effects and therapeutic applications of  psychedelic drugs  has grown considerably in recent years .
Yet , pressing questions remain regarding the substances ' lasting effects .
Although individual studies have begun monitoring sustained changes , no study to- date has synthesized this information .