In the 1950s, Aldous Huxley sat cross-legged, staring at the folds of his trousers while on mescaline. “What a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity!” he wrote in The Doors of Perception.
A new study, published this summer in Scientific Reports, suggests that his fixation was not entirely metaphorical. Psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, seems to quite literally narrow our gaze, according to researchers who gave participants “magic mushrooms” who looked at different paintings — and then watched what happened.
A Window Into the Psychedelic Eye
A team of researchers from Argentina, France, and Chile brought their experiment into people’s homes. Volunteers—already familiar with psychedelics—took either a low dose (0.5 grams) or a higher dose (3 grams) of dried Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms. Neither the participants nor the scientists knew which dose was given on a given day, thanks to a self-blinding method.
About an hour later, the tripping began. Each person sat before a monitor showing 30 paintings, ranging from 15th-century portraits to early 20th-century abstractions. Meanwhile, a portable eye-tracker mapped every flicker and pause of their gaze.
The scientists expected to see chaotic eye movements under psilocybin, in line with the idea that psychedelics loosen the brain’s predictive grip and open us to novel perceptions. But the results ran the other way.
On high doses, participants’ eyes became more anchored, lingering on faces or central features of a painting. Their fixations were closer together, with less variability, and the spread of their gaze shrank. Statistically, the “entropy” of their eye movements—essentially the randomness—dropped.
What the Mind Reports
Participants also reported heightened emotions and a stronger sense of flow, or absorption, while looking at the art. Yet their actual ratings of beauty or emotional valence for individual paintings hardly changed.
This hints that psychedelics can intensify the feeling of being immersed in art without altering whether people like the art itself.
It’s a nuance that we’ve seen in other psychedelic research. Volunteers often describe colors that shimmer or patterns that dance, but when asked to evaluate an object, their judgments of its appeal may remain stable. The inner experience shifts more than the external verdict.
For decades, most psychedelic science has leaned on subjective self-reports, with participants describing warped edges, synesthesia, or altered time. More recently, imaging studies have revealed changes in brain networks under psilocybin or LSD. But objective behavioral measures, like where people look, have been scarce.
The finding complicates one influential theory, the REBUS model (“Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics”), which predicts that the drug loosens entrenched expectations. If that were true here, one might expect the eyes to rove more freely across a canvas. Instead, psilocybin narrowed the focus.
The researchers suggest this could reflect how psychedelics amplify low-level visual features—textures, colors, fine details—pulling attention inward. “Edges seem warped,” one participant wrote on a questionnaire. Another noted, “I see movement in things that aren’t really moving.”
What It Means
The study has its limits. Only 15 participants provided usable eye-tracking data, most of them men in their early 30s. The home setting made the experiment comfortable but less controlled. And psilocybin’s effects are notoriously variable.
Still, the results resonate with anecdotes stretching from Huxley to modern psychonauts: the way psychedelics can make the ordinary shimmer with new importance. A fold of fabric, a brushstroke of paint, a patch of texture—all can pull the gaze and hold it fast.
The science of psychedelics is still in its early stages. Researchers are probing their therapeutic potential for depression, PTSD, and addiction. But as this experiment shows, sometimes the most revealing data is not deep inside the brain. Sometimes, it’s right in the eyes.
