PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Artif. Intell.
Sec. AI for Human Learning and Behavior Change
Volume 8 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frai.2025.1589086
Leveraging psychedelic neuroscience to boost creativity with artificial intelligence
Provisionally accepted
- Northern Ontario School of Medicine University, Sudbury, Canada
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Psychedelics, such as LSD and psilocybin, disrupt entrenched cognitive patterns by facilitating novel insights and new associations. This paper considers how AI can potentially mimic these psychedelicinduced cognitive disruptions to augment and enhance human creativity. Psychedelics likely enhance creativity by altering brain function, notably the activity of the Default Mode Network, which leads to changes in cognition. Psychologically, they reduce latent inhibition, increase divergent thinking, and promote implicit learning. Similarly, AI systems can replicate these creative enhancements by introducing novel associations, reframing familiar information, and facilitating unconscious cognitive shifts. The risks associated with AI used are also compared to psychedelics, including dependency, ethical concerns, and homogenization of outputs due to bias. Integrating the cognitive mechanisms activated by psychedelics into AI design provides promising pathways for creativity enhancement. Carefully designed AI could act as a cognitive catalyst, fostering innovative thought processes and adaptive problem-solving while addressing identified ethical and practical concerns.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, creativity, divergent thinking, implicit learning, latent inhibition, psychedelic Style Definition: Default Paragraph Font Organization X, City X, State XX (only USA
Received: 06 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ross. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Brian M. Ross, Northern Ontario School of Medicine University, Sudbury, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.