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How psychedelic drug psilocybin works on brain:
What is known is that this region contains a large number of receptors targeted by psychedelic drugs such as LSD or psilocybin ¾ the hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms. To see what happens in the claustrum when people are on psychedelics, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers compared the brain scans of people after they took psilocybin with their scans after taking a placebo.
Their findings were published online on May 23, 2020, in the journal NeuroImage.
The scans after psilocybin use showed that the claustrum was less active, meaning the area of the brain believed responsible for setting attention and switching tasks is turned down when on the drug. The researchers say that this ties in with what people report as typical effects of psychedelic drugs, including feelings of being connected to everything and reduced senses of self or ego.
"Our findings move us one step closer to understanding mechanisms underlying how psilocybin works in the brain," says Frederick Barrett, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the school's Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. "This will hopefully enable us to better understand why it's an effective therapy for certain psychiatric disorders, which might help us tailor therapies to help people more."
Frederick S. Barrett, Samuel R. Krimmel, Roland Griffiths, David A. Seminowicz, Brian N. Mathur. Psilocybin acutely alters the functional connectivity of the claustrum with brain networks that support perception, memory, and attention. NeuroImage, 2020; 116980 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116980
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @12:19PM (13 children)
Tim Leary debates Jerry Lettvin at MIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq3Fp-xp0l0 [youtube.com]
The Final Days of Timothy Leary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icM4t9A7Q-A [youtube.com]
(amazing scenes - Leary toking on a balloon of nitrous ...)
(Score: 2, Informative) by leon_the_cat on Monday June 08 2020, @03:39PM (6 children)
R U Sirius?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @03:54PM (5 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday June 08 2020, @04:04PM (4 children)
The following seems more appropriate for the question “Are you …?”
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Sirius_Black [fandom.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @05:40PM (3 children)
Isn't the Sirius thing a reference to the fact that Leary & co thought they'd gotten in touch with an extra-solar intelligence based out there via good ole LDS (one for the trekkies...,/i>)? (cf. The Dogon, The Ancient Egyptians, The Hopi etc. etc. )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @05:46PM (2 children)
Ah, buggerit, the cat wanted fed, and in her less than subtle way of indicting that she craved a sachet of gooshey, she plonked her arse on the laptop keyboard..
(Score: 1) by leon_the_cat on Monday June 08 2020, @06:14PM (1 child)
Good kitty, maybe she is in contact with Sirius consciousness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @10:28PM
heh, she (and her sisters) have already destroyed one laptop...don't ask me what they've done to the poor bloody thing, it should work, but doesn't..
Nah, the local representative of the Sirius consciousness, a.k.a. Agent Dogget, our dog, was sprawled out on the sofa catching the breeze off the ceiling fan at the time, however, the pair of them are a cat-dog double act, so no doubt the orders from the doggies from Sirius as to how to screw up this laptop have been passed on, she's currently sitting on my lap, watching me type this, with a smirk on her face that can only mean she's a cat with a plan...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday June 08 2020, @05:11PM (5 children)
One of my neighbors is an aging hippie-type who was pals with Tim Leary back in the day. And yes, he's a firm believer in the benefits of LSD and hallucinogens in general. He basically believes that in order to experience similar effects of connection and a reduced sense of ego without drugs takes something like 20 years of regular meditation, so you're talking about doing in a matter of a couple of hours of tripping what Zen Buddhists spend a lifetime doing.
I've never used the stuff myself, but I know lots of people who thoroughly agree with him. Me, I took the regular meditation approach and found it beneficial.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
They can give you perspective and wisdom that would have taken much longer too. I prefer the natural over the synthetic, though.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @08:52PM
You really need both imho, if somebody fell into the hole of serious alcohol addiction for example. A psilocybin trip can unjam the mental machinery, but without serious meditation practice, it is impossible to know one's mental machinery and how to operate it better. I doubt much wisdom can come from psilocybin itself. Insight yes, certainly a moment of clarity and perspective without ego, but wisdom comes later with serious meditation practice and spiritual or professional guidance.
It's throwing somebody who can't swim and is drowning a flotation device. Once they're back to safety, perhaps they would consider taking swimming lessons.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @07:16PM (2 children)
> pals with Tim Leary
I met Tim Leary once in the mid-80s, he was living in LA and a mutual friend invited me along to an afternoon of wide ranging discussion. Leary was sharp as a tack at that time--lots of good questions and insight. This was around the time that he was creating an early PC game (which I believe was broadly based on some psychological testing?)
I wonder what your neighbor remembers about Leary? From that afternoon meeting, I think all the "brain fried by LSD" crap was invented by Leary's critics.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday June 08 2020, @08:46PM (1 child)
They were regularly hanging out at festivals, and yes, Leary was quite smart and lucid the entire time, definitely not brain-fried. That's not to say that it's impossible to mess up your brain with drug use - I've known quite a few that have - just that acid doesn't seem to be one of the ones that does it provided you have people around you can trust to keep your body safe when you're tripping.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @10:12PM
Well, acid is less likely but it can happen.
I've known deadheads who - well I guess pot was mixed in, but I don't know stoners with the degree of change that the deadheads exhibit. They're great, I love 'em, but they're super fried from years of heavy heavy acid use.
LSD can precipitate existing vulnerabilities conditions.
Maybe extreme doses of LSD can possibly throw a mind askew on their own. I'd like to see case studies of accidental extreme dosages.