People have vast, spiraling experiences on psychedelic drugs, often returning from a hallucinogenic trip full of new outlooks on their life or even changes to their personality. They describe the trips with vivid, emotional language \u2014 which might be able to tell researchers what parts of their brains are reacting to the drugs.<\/p>\n

In order to figure out how and why hallucinogenics trigger certain experiences, a research team used machine learning to pull common words and phrases out of people\u2019s testimonials about their trips. Then, in a new study published Wednesday, the researchers linked those words to the parts of the brain impacted by the drugs. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a different approach to studying drugs and the brain: normally, researchers looking to understand how substances map onto brain regions would ask people to take the drug before having their brain scanned. This strategy, though, focused more on how the drugs made people feel, and then worked backward to find the areas most likely to be responsible for that feeling. <\/p>\n