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posted by mrpg on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-chicken-crossed-the-road-to-do-LSD dept.

Study shows how LSD interferes with brain's signalling

A group of volunteers who took a trip in the name of science have helped researchers uncover how LSD messes with activity in the brain to induce an altered state of consciousness.

Brain scans of individuals high on the drug revealed that the chemical allows parts of the cortex to become flooded with signals that are normally filtered out to prevent information overload.

The drug allowed more information to flow from the thalamus, a kind of neural gatekeeper, to a region called the posterior cingulate cortex, and it stemmed the flow of information to another part known as the temporal cortex. [...] The scientists wanted to test a hypothesis first put forward more than a decade ago. It states LSD causes the thalamus to stop filtering information it relays to other parts of the brain. It is the breakdown of this filter that gives rise to the weird effects the drug induces, or so the thinking goes.

Effective connectivity changes in LSD-induced altered states of consciousness in humans (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1815129116) (DX)

Related: Research into Psychedelics, Shut Down for Decades, is Now Yielding Exciting Results
Research Into Psychedelics Continues
Lucy in the Sky With Protein: Key to LSD's Psychoactive Potency Possibly Found
From 'problem Child' to 'prodigy'? LSD Turns 75


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday January 30 2019, @08:13PM (2 children)

    by Rich (945) on Wednesday January 30 2019, @08:13PM (#794225) Journal

    Just yesterday I happened to stumble across the simulated annealing algorithm for NP-hard optimizations. The idea is that at the beginning of the search (and then with decreasing likelihood) random steps into a seemingly wrong direction of the problem space are taken. This avoids getting stuck at local maxima. I guess there are similar schemes for training neural networks. It looks like the described mechanism causes a such an effect in the brain. Through the "overload", the brain reaches associative patterns it could otherwise not get to, because it is stuck in a "local maximum". As the effect decreases, the function gets back to normal, but by this time, the newly seen patterns can be applied to the normal function - but with an increased repertoire of "ideas" to apply to problems.

    Or so. Interesting.

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  • (Score: 1) by Marvin on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:41AM (1 child)

    by Marvin (3019) on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:41AM (#794430)

    Wow! I don‘t have any knowledge in neuroscience or psychology, but this sounds damn cool!

    • (Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday January 31 2019, @03:03PM

      by Rich (945) on Thursday January 31 2019, @03:03PM (#794544) Journal

      I don‘t have any knowledge in neuroscience or psychology, but this sounds damn cool!

      Cool, until you get stuck on the wrong local maximum on "return". That would result in what they call "psychosis".

      But then, I don‘t have any knowledge in neuroscience or psychology either. I was just making some naive guesses. Haha.