Brain scans show how LSD mimics mind of a baby
Brain scans show how LSD mimics mind of a baby
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have for the first time scanned the brains of people using LSD and found the psychedelic drug frees the brain to become less compartmentalized and more like the mind of a baby.
research team led by scientists at Imperial College London said that while normally the brain works on independent networks performing separate functions such as vision, movement and hearing, under LSD the separateness of these networks breaks down, leading to a more unified system.
"In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained," said Robin Cahart-Harris, who led the study. "This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind."
The findings, published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, also showed that when the volunteers took LSD, many extra brain areas - not just the visual cortex - contributed to visual processing.
This could explain the complex visual hallucinations that are often associated with the LSD state, the scientists said.
Carhart-Harris, a researcher at Imperial's department of medicine said the experience also seemed to be linked to "improvements in well-being" after the drug's effects subside, suggesting the findings may one day lead to psychedelic compounds being used to treat psychiatric disorders.
Such drugs could be particularly useful in mental disorders where negative thought patterns have become entrenched, the scientists explained, such as in depression or addiction.
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New research finds that dropping acid can quiet obsessive thinking about the past, opening up headspace for looking to the future.
By Phillip Smith / AlterNet
April 11, 2016
Acid-assisted "time travel" is a thing, but it only goes in one direction and it's only in your head, according to researchers from the University of Dundee and Imperial College London. Their study demonstrates that tripping on LSD skews our perception of time by suppressing obsessive thoughts about the past and opening space for us to ponder the future.
The researchers, who include prominent advocates of modern LSD research such as David Nutt, the former head of the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (who was sacked after suggesting that taking MDMA was less dangerous than horse riding), Robin Earhart-Harris and Amanda Fielding of the Beckley Foundation, were seeking to examine LSD's psychological and neurological effects on mental time travel.
The title of the study pretty much says it all: "Decreased Mental Time Travel to the Past Correlates with Default-Mode Network Disintegration under Lysergic Acid Diethylamide"
Yes, dropping acid quiets the "default-mode network," which is an interconnected matrix of brain regions that lights up when we daydream about the past. The default-node network specifically highlights "autobiographical memory collection" and "ruminative thought." When the default-node network is quieted, we are less likely to obsess about the past, which gives us more headspace to mentally travel to the future.
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/lsd-enables-mental-time-travel
