Effects of varied doses of psilocybin on time interval reproduction in human subjects

Action of a hallucinogenic substance, psilocybin, on internal time representation was investigated in two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies: Experiment 1 with 12 subjects and graded doses, and Experiment 2 with 9 subjects and a very low dose. The task consisted in repeated reproductions of time intervals in the range from 1.5 to 5 s. The effects were assessed by parameter K of the 'dual klepsydra' model of internal time representation, fitted to individual response data and intra-individually normalized with respect to initial values. The estimates k were in the same order of magnitude as in earlier studies. In both experiments, K was significantly increased by psilocybin at 90 min from the drug intake, indicating a higher loss rate of the internal duration representation. These findings are tentatively linked to qualitative alterations of subjective time in altered states of consciousness. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.