In the 1954 foundational text of the Age of Aquarius, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley describes his encounters with mescaline, a psychoactive substance derived from the peyote cactus and traditionally used by Native Americans for religious purposes. Huxley’s experiences include profound changes in the visual world, colors that induce sound, the telescoping of time and space, the loss of the notion of self, and feelings of oneness, peacefulness and bliss more commonly associated with religious visions or an exultant state: “A moment later a clump of Red Hot Pokers, in full bloom, had exploded into my field of vision. So passionately alive that they seemed to be standing on the very brink of utterance, the flowers strained upwards into the blue.... I looked down at the leaves and discovered a cavernous intricacy of the most delicate green lights and shadows, pulsing with undecipherable mystery.” Yet remarkably these enhanced percepts are not grounded in larger but in reduced brain activity, as a recent experiment reports. More on that in a moment.

Mescaline, together with psilocybin, another natural psychoactive compound produced by “magic” mushrooms, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or, simply, acid), a potent synthetic psychedelic drug, became widely popular in the 1960s counterculture. The striking similarities between the reports of LSD users and symptoms of acute psychosis led researchers to postulate that serotonin, a chemical-signaling compound or neurotransmitter released by certain groups of neurons in the brain stem, helped to mediate both types of experiences. Indeed, it is now quite certain that the characteristic subjective and behavioral effects of psychedelics are initiated via stimulation of serotonin 2A receptors (known as 5-HT2A) on cortical neurons.

All these hallucinogens were declared controlled drugs in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a variety of medical, political and cultural reasons. Their use moved underground, and research on their psychological, physiological and neuronal effects all but ceased. With the realization of possible therapeutic benefits of psychedelics to reduce anxiety and chronic pain, however, the societal taboos against scientific research on their neurobiology have somewhat relaxed. A number of well-controlled European studies have carefully explored the action of hallucinogens on the brains of normal volunteers [see “Psychedelic Healing?” by David Jay Brown; Scientific American Mind, December 2007/January 2008].

Functional brain-imaging experiments done at the end of the past century using positron-emission tomography (PET) found marked activation in the frontal lobe of volunteers who had taken hallucinogens, in particular in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the insula cortex. This was in line with the expectation that the intensification of ordinary experiences and the consciousness-expanding aspects that are so widely associated with psychedelics would be reflected in higher than usual brain activity. Now comes a study from David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, and his colleagues that completely upends this view.

Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out
The British scientists injected either a harmless saltwater concoction (a placebo) or two milligrams of psilocybin directly into the veins of 30 volunteers while they were lying inside a magnetic scanner. As expected, the subjects experienced within a minute or two the effects of the drug. During their short “trip,” their brains were scanned with one of two different functional MRI techniques. Both gave consistent but very surprising results.

Brain activity was widely reduced! That is, these mind-altering drugs decreased hemodynamic activity, including blood flow, in selected regions, such as the thalamus, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the ACC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Activity in these regions dropped by up to 20 percent, relative to before the injection. Even more striking, the deeper the reduction in activity in the ACC and mPFC, the stronger the subject felt the effects of the hallucinogen. Nowhere did activity show an increase. Furthermore, the communication between the PFC and cortical regions in the back of the brain was also disrupted. The surprise is not that reduction of hemodynamic activity in specific sectors of the brain is unheard of. Nor was the activity completely turned off—that would lead within minutes to permanent damage and brain death.

9 Comments

1. 1. jerryd 09:44 AM 5/2/12

   
   They are just finding this out? Only goes to show when politics keep science from being done, it isn't.
   
   I experienced these in my youth and it's quite obvious that the way they worked was breaking down the barriers that limit the brain's concentration and everything comes flowing out at once.
   
   This can be wonderful or frightening depending on basic personality. Fearful, conservatives and paranoid don't do well and shouldn't take these.
   
   If you are a happy and like the new and exploring then these are likely to delight done reasonably.
   
   They have different effects/highs Mushrooms are a mild color trip. Peyote is a hard driving trip in the deepest sense and LSD is about inbetween.
   
   I can easily see these used correctly on the right patients helping get over mental problems but good research needs to be done so those who might be harmed by them don't.
   
   These can help learn how the mind works if nothing else and should be widely studied.

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2. 2. herenow23 07:35 AM 5/3/12

   jerryd's 5/2/12 post made some excellent points! Anyone considering a "trip" should do some research, it's worth it! It's been decades, if I recall there are actual directions in "The Psychedelic Experience" written by Timothy Leary Ph.D., Richard Alpert Ph.D. & maybe Ralph Metzner Ph.D. a Jungian psychologist. These are Harvard and Berkley... guys (no dummies). Don't believe everything you read about them. They & other 1960's "revolutionaries" & especially Leary were covertly persecuted by our government. Leary was moved around to prisons to 29 different countries which goes to show you how afraid the U.S. is of us not following orders & the people gaining peaceful democratic power. Thinking for yourselves & getting deprogrammed scares the powers that be as it's about control. This is just my personal opinion, yet shared by countless non-drone experienced others. It's a 3-day experience. 1st know the quality of what your taking have it tested. 2, have safe & proper environment with people who understand the experience who you trust & love - I prefer private nature/outdoors. Talk about what you want from the journey the 1st day, 2nd day take a single dose or even 1/2, day-3 after the trip is over discuss what you experienced from the trip. Have some fresh fruit around for after you start to come down you will likely be in a enlighted state & see that eating dead meat is not appealing if U understand food, are humane & are aware of the environment. Trust me aduro23.blogspo have whole & real fresh fruit & stay hydrated. This experience can be life changing & open new ways of seeing life in quantum reality if 1 takes it not for fun, but for a different view of their lives & the Universe. Yes this is a scientific forum & in my opinion the word "spiritual" is not antithetical to the word science. In my opinion science is proving "some" of the true ancient wisdom that has been lost & forgotten over the centuries which had been born out by ancient text. Remember we don't even know that time is lineal for sure. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates & many other great thinkers, scientists, authors, psychologists... have had this trip by one means or another. Through this experience one can see clearly the relationship between our thoughts, what we say,& how our actions impact our world & others. We have the capacity to change our lives with thought alone & a mindful approach to life. This trip demonstrates in detail how the Universe ticks & our direct relationship. Every action has an equal & opposite reaction. Evolve or be in limbo. aduro23

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3. 3. sparcboy in reply to herenow23 09:17 AM 5/15/12

   "aduro23.blogspo have whole & real fresh fruit..."
   
   Are you selling something?

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4. 4. vapur 09:44 AM 5/15/12

   So, can this be used as a treatment for seizures? Especially, something safer that women with epilepsy can use while pregnant. Also, what is the rate of disassociation and recovery?

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5. 5. duemer 12:43 PM 5/15/12

   "Hemodynamic activity as registered by fMRI scanners is tightly linked to neuronal activity."
   
   This is more a statement of faith that established scientific fact & even if true does not amount to causation.

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6. 6. teamdave 02:56 PM 5/15/12

   "these mind-altering drugs decreased hemodynamic activity"
   these? were they just given psilocybin or was there some other drugs added?

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7. 7. teamdave in reply to herenow23 02:59 PM 5/15/12

   ok great comment but are you telling us to get fresh fruit off aduro23.blogspot? like off the internet? lol how fresh is that going to be by the time its delivered :)

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8. 8. TTLG 05:44 PM 5/15/12

   I am not so sure that there were a "variety" of reason why these were banned. The experiments then, as now, showed that people became more connected to others and the world at large with use. Which I think was a big contributor to the peace movement of the 1960's. I think the move to make them illegal was simply that the people making money from the wars were terrified of peace breaking out. So instead, connectedness was replaced with being bombarded with stories about evil outsiders planning to destroy the country, from the USSR to Bush's "axis of evil" to the nicely vague threat of terrorists who supposedly are hell-bent on destroying the world just for fun. Just to justify wasting trillions of dollars to keep these guys safely in the 0.01%

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9. 9. jerryd 06:08 PM 5/15/12

   
   remember LSD and many others were not illegal until the mid to late 60's and even 70's in some states.
   
   Many very important people used them from the 50's until they became illegal is well known in the early writing on them.
   
   

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