Imperial College Scientists Found a Way to Predict Who Actually Benefits From a Psilocybin Trip
A controlled trial out of Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research, led by Taylor Lyons with senior author Robin Carhart-Harris — whose REBUS model we've referenced before — gave 28 psychedelic-naive adults a 1mg placebo and a 25mg psilocybin dose a month apart, tracking both with EEG and MRI. The high dose produced a sharp spike in brain entropy — more irregular, less predictable electrical activity, peaking 1–2 hours after dosing, alongside a drop in alpha-wave activity — a real-time signature of the default mode network loosening its usual grip.
What makes this more than a brain-imaging curiosity: participants who showed the biggest entropy spikes also reported the largest gains the next day — psychological insight scores rose roughly 51 points on a 0–100 scale, well-being improved 4.7 points on a 14–70 scale versus placebo, and cognitive flexibility measurably improved a month out. Entropy wasn't just correlated with the trip; it tracked with what the trip left behind.
The caveats are real and the authors are upfront about them: dosing order was fixed (placebo always first), the main hypotheses weren't pre-registered, and statistical corrections were applied within outcome measures but not across all of them — exploratory work, not confirmed science. Katrin Preller, an outside researcher not involved in the study, told PsyPost it lacks "rigorous protection against false positive findings" and needs replication in a larger, properly randomized design before anyone treats entropy as a validated predictor of who benefits from psilocybin.