SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for soylent_red
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the clinical application of classic psychedelics in the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders. Researchers of the University of Zurich have now shown that mindfulness meditation can enhance the positive long-term effects of a single dose of psilocybin, which is found in certain mushrooms.
[...] Researchers at the University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich have now for the first time examined the potential synergistic effects of combining mindfulness meditation and psilocybin. The scientists recruited 40 meditation experts who were taking part in a five-day mindfulness retreat. In the double-blind study, the participants were administered either a single dose of psilocybin or a placebo on the fourth day of the group retreat. Using various psychometric and neurocognitive measurements, the team of researchers were able to show that mindfulness meditation increased the positive effects of psilocybin, while counteracting possible dysphoric responses to the psychedelic experience. "Psilocybin markedly increased the incidence and intensity of self-transcendence virtually without inducing any anxiety compared to participants who received the placebo," says first author Lukasz Smigielski, who conducted the study directed by UZH professor of psychiatry Franz Vollenweider.
[...] "Our findings shed light on the interplay between pharmacological and extra-pharmacological factors in psychedelic states of mind," says Vollenweider. "They indicate that mindfulness training enhances the positive effects of a single dose of psilocybin, and can increase empathy and permanently reduce ego-centricity. This opens up new therapeutic avenues, for example for the treatment of depression, which is often accompanied by increased self-focus and social deficits."
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024075003.htm
Journal Reference: Lukasz Smigielski, Michael Kometer, Milan Scheidegger, Rainer Krähenmann, Theo Huber, Franz X. Vollenweider. Characterization and prediction of acute and sustained response to psychedelic psilocybin in a mindfulness group retreat. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-50612-3
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:38PM (4 children)
No, I explicitly said to set that aside and focus on how the control doesn't actually match the stated results at all. Come on.
The experiment, as run, we have no idea whether meditation affects psilocybin usage because all participants meditated the same way. But the press release and the lead researcher both make claims to that end.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Tuesday October 29 2019, @07:33PM (3 children)
OK I get the lets get past part of the sentence but then to end it with that we all somehow know that it's dodgy cause the n was a low value seem to indicate that we have not put that part behind us at all. But we should all keep that in mind somehow.
I'm not sure that that is what they wanted to achieve. From what I read it seems that they want to see if drugs can help induce a high state of meditation or not while meditating. Which seems to have been the case, even tho the sample size is small and it's a highly subjective judgement or measurement that is used.
Above from the introduction. So they go on a bit about achieving some kind of altered meditative state and that it's hard and takes a long time to reach. What they want to do is to see if such a state can be induced by drugs. So the point of them all being "expert Buddhist meditation practitioners" and meditating in the same way was to have a comparison between the two groups. You couldn't have one group meditating and one that doesn't in this case.
According to figure 5 a lot more people on drugs achieved a higher "individual mysticism (M-scale) total score" then those that got the placebo. Even tho a couple of the placebo people did get high scores -- either a placebo effect or they are just awesome at meditation but it doesn't really matter since there is a fairly clear difference between the placebo and drug group. That is not to say that the experiment shouldn't be repeated a few more times, they did run it twice form what I gather from the text and everyone that got picked and medically screened had tried and achieved this before -- I assume without the aid of said drug.
That said I have no idea what these M-scales or Meditation Depth Indexes etc are, but it seems to be some kind of self reporting questionnaires where each person judge themselves on a scale -- as in that they are trying to somehow quantify their own experiences and emotions and that is somehow comparable between different people. It would seem like it would be a very subjective experience and something that would be hard to measure, but it's not really my field so I can't say for certain or sure. It's not that I wouldn't have liked to have them all hooked up to some kind of machine that could tell if they achieved said state of mind or not but I doubt that was or is an option.
That is not to say there are not issues with the experiment and such. Naturally if you get selected and get to go to this cool retreat with a Zen master you might be hyped up as in it's all great and such and then on top of that you also could get some sweet drugs to go along with your meditation to make it even better. It might all have skewed their expectations to being with. After all they might not want to disappoint, perhaps it's all group pressure or whatnot.
But from presented data it's not to far fetched to say that more participants did achieve this higher altered state with a higher frequency if they got the drugs compared to the placebo group. So it's not like their claim is completely baseless.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 29 2019, @07:47PM (2 children)
Right, but the actual claim is that the meditation enhances the drugs.
We don't see that at all from this research.
We see that psilocybin and meditation produces more results than meditation alone. Which is a completely different finding.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 29 2019, @08:19PM
That sentence doesn't actually appear in the actual paper, but is something that the people over at Sciencedaily.com came up with. They do mention something similar in the abstract but not exactly the same thing.
While I'm not exactly down with the drug induced psychology lingo (it's very far away from my field) I, from reading the paper at a glance, am not certain that that is what they wanted to show primarily. But I can't be entirely sure. I can read parts of it as wanting to show both things --- both that drugs enhance meditation and that the meditation somehow prolongs the positive effects of the drugs (via the 4 month checkup) -- or that meditation might have alleviated potential negative side effects of the drugs. Perhaps more that at the post-drug-4-month-checkup a lot of the involved people seem to have rated the experience highly enjoyable and they had not suffered any ill effects from the drugs. That said perhaps they should also have a had a group of non-meditation experts they pumped with drugs to see if they felt like crap after four months or not. But it's still a highly subjective matter since in the end it all comes down to the quantification of the meditation experts feelings.
Perhaps we just shouldn't read to much into it. Except to say and note that it apparently did have some kind of "positive" effect at the time they did do drugs and meditate, figure 5 showed more attained this higher state but then at the same time figure 1 seem to indicate that they all came crashing down to the level of the placebo people after just one day. So the supposed four month effect might have been all in their minds, which I guess is the whole point of meditation. But at least they didn't suffer any horrible flashbacks during the time, or whatever the side effects of Psilocybin usage are.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 30 2019, @01:49AM
ikanreed
Partial conclusion: the ability to read doesn't imply anything about the capability to assess the informative/confidence value of the readings and filter akkordeengly. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford