The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation.
A core aspect of the human self is the attribution of personal relevance to everyday stimuli enabling us to experience our environment as meaningful 1. However, abnormalities in the attribution of personal relevance to sensory experiences are also critical features of many psychiatric disorders 2, 3. Despite their clinical relevance, the neurochemical and anatomical substrates enabling meaningful experiences are largely unknown. Therefore, we investigated the neuropharmacology of personal relevance processing in humans by combining fMRI and the administration of the mixed serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine receptor (R) agonist lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), well known to alter the subjective meaning of percepts, with and without pretreatment with the 5-HT