The Trip Lab
The Trip Lab is a podcast on integrative medicine and psychedelics hosted by board-certified physician Dr. Mary Ella Wood. Through conversations on psychedelics, neuroscience, and whole-person care, the show examines emerging evidence alongside deeper questions of meaning, healing, and human experience. Life is a trip. Let’s explore it.
The Trip Lab
#25 – We Oversimplified Psychedelics. The Brain Is Doing Something More Interesting (DMN Modulation, Network Dynamics, and the Brain–Body Connection)
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Our understanding of how psychedelics work has evolved in meaningful ways over the past several years. While earlier neuroscience frameworks helped move the field forward, newer research has added important nuance and depth to how we interpret brain imaging, network behavior, and subjective experience.
In this episode of The Trip Lab, I offer a refresh on psychedelic neuroscience, focusing on key updates from the past four years and how they change the story we tell about what’s happening in the brain and the body during psychedelic states.
We explore:
- How the Default Mode Network is better understood as dynamically modulated rather than simply reduced
- Why psychedelic brain states are best described as time-varying and network-based rather than static
- How neural entropy is now understood as increased flexibility through relaxed constraints
- Why brain, body, and context are inseparable in shaping psychedelic experiences and outcomes
This episode is designed to update earlier explanations, clarify what has changed, and highlight why the newer neuroscience offers a more accurate and more interesting framework for understanding psychedelic effects.
