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Medicine

Psychedelic Brew Ayahuasca's Profound Impact Revealed In Brain Scans 119

Posted by BeauHD from the best-picture-yet dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The brew is so potent that practitioners report not only powerful hallucinations, but near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities. Often before throwing up, or having trouble at the other end. Now, scientists have gleaned deep insights of their own by monitoring the brain on DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, the psychedelic compound found in Psychotria viridis, the flowering shrub that is mashed up and boiled in the Amazonian drink, ayahuasca. The recordings reveal a profound impact across the brain, particularly in areas that are highly evolved in humans and instrumental in planning, language, memory, complex decision-making and imagination. The regions from which we conjure reality become hyperconnected, with communication more chaotic, fluid and flexible.

"At the dose we use, it is incredibly potent," said Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. "People describe leaving this world and breaking through into another that is incredibly immersive and richly complex, sometimes being populated by other beings that they feel might hold special power over them, like gods." He added: "What we have seen is that DMT breaks down the basic networks of the brain, causing them to become less distinct from each other. We also see the major rhythms of the brain -- that serve a largely inhibitory, constraining function -- break down, and in concert, brain activity becomes more entropic or information-rich."

For the latest study, Chris Timmermann, head of the DMT research group at Imperial College London, recruited 20 healthy volunteers who received a 20mg injection of DMT and a placebo on separate visits to the lab. All were screened to ensure they were physically and mentally suitable for the study. Using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the scientists recorded the participants' brain activity before, during and after the drug took hold. The volunteers gave updates throughout on how intense the experience felt. None vomited as the emetic is another ingredient in ayahuasca. The results, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide the most advanced picture yet of the human brain on psychedelics. The recordings show how the brain's normal hierarchical organization breaks down, electrical activity becomes anarchic, and connectivity between regions soars, particularly those handling "higher level" functions such as imagination, which evolved most recently in humans. "The stronger the intensity of the experience, the more hyperconnected were those brain areas," said Timmermann. "We suspect that while the newer, more evolved aspects of the brain dysregulate under DMT, older systems in the brain may be disinhibited," said Carhart-Harris. "A similar kind of thing happens in dreaming. This is just the beginning in cracking the question of how DMT works to alter consciousness so dramatically."
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Psychedelic Brew Ayahuasca's Profound Impact Revealed In Brain Scans More

Psychedelic Brew Ayahuasca's Profound Impact Revealed In Brain Scans

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  • > The regions from which we conjure reality become hyperconnected, with communication more chaotic, fluid and flexible.

    https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]

    https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]

    Are you telling me that Einstein was just naturally tripping balls all time?

  • Easy to be an "armchair expert" like that. I lost a couple of high school friends to it. If it goes wrong, you end up in something worse than a bad acid trip.

    DMT, sure, we can call that "profound" -- I think a lot of the nut jobs like David Icke spent too much time hitting the DMT pipe. I synthesized it in college (root method) and took many trips. The world turns brown but it is so beyond brown. It is a dimension where you are immersed in the brownness, almost as though the brown is a fluid. And whatever

    • Re: Profound Impact? (Score:4, Funny)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2023 @10:53PM (#63389605)

      given the propensity of users to shit themselves and the vicinity up that brown might not have been part of the hallucinations

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Are you sure you didn't just screw up the synthesis? It wouldn't be the first time someone did that with a bad outcome.

      • No, sorry if I was unclear. My DMT gave normal trips. I had one of my grad student friends at the time run it through a column, and it looked clean enough. She ran all sorts of drugs and knew enough to look for the suspect peaks at whatever AMU for whatever aklaloids and well known bad guy compounds. That's not my area. What I am getting at here is the big A has who knows what else in it and who knows what concentration of what in it that will kick your world sideways, and you might never bounce back throug

        • So your recommendation is that no one use DMT that hasn't been cleared by a phd chemist.

        • What I am getting at here is the big A has who knows what else in it and who knows what concentration of what in it that will kick your world sideways, and you might never bounce back through the doorway at the end.

          Ok..gotta ask..."Big A"....

          Are you alluding to Acid/LSD?

          If so, why not just call it by one of it's common names, you have a lot of people guessing WTF you are referring to.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by leptons ( 891340 )
          You know you don't have to call it "the big A", right? You can say LSD.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          The primary difference is that Ayahuasca includes one or more MAOIs that allow the DMT to be taken orally and also make it last much longer.

  • DMT is the new game in town, no headset required.

  • If you're living in America, I wouldn't pay too much attention to natural breakthroughs. Much like the corruption that outlawed hemp production under the racist/rapist evils of cannabis a century ago, there is every indication that natural solutions you can't patent and shove in a bottle to profit from, will be outlawed by those who fill pill bottles.

    Greed hates it when you can grow your own medicine and they can't patent it. DMT lives everywhere. There's a reason it was labled the God molecule long ago

    • Actually yes if you produce a new drug from natural chemicals you can absolutely patent it.

      As far as taking it yourself goes, someone else already posted that you need a phd chemist to clear your DMT to make sure a dose is safe or you risk fucking up your brain forever.

      He of course described it as "good DMT" and put a positive spin on a bad idea.

      • > It is a dimension where you are immersed in the brownness

        That's so unlike the common experience; have you ever questioned why?

  • "Life changing" experiences from drugs do not sound at all like something a sane person should have or want. Sure, if there are cases of _insane_ people where this is proven to help, I am all for it, but sane people should stay away from such stuff.

    As a research question this is interesting though. May bring us a (small) step closer to understanding how a human mind works.

    • DMT is very similar in structure to LSD and psilocybin, both of which are being actively researched for the life changing experiences they provide after just one or two therapeutic sessions. These sessions have significantly improved peopleâ(TM)s lives by reducing or eliminating depression, anxiety and addictions.

      Itâ(TM)s good fun on a quiet weekend too.

      • Research away. But "self medicating" is bonkers.

        • > Research away. But "self medicating" is bonkers.

          There's archaeological evidence of DMT use among humans for at least the past 8000 years.

          It's bonkers to put all your faith in a method that's a hundred years old and none in millennia of experience.

          Imagine if people didn't eat any foods invented before 1914.

          • Humans have donde things like ritual sacrifices, prayers, superstitions, wrong mecinal practices, slavism and arranged marriages between underage girls and adult mens for millennia, I donâ(TM)t see how it having been used for ages somehow makes DMT good.

            • In the very narrow sense of "It's been tested for 8000 years or so and people found it was worth continuing to consume." I'd say that the consumers found it a net positive (most of them). Did some of them have bad reactions? Sure. I could say the same of almost any pharmaceutical on the market today, including those prescribed by doctors. Google "Sackler family" and "opioid crisis" for enlightening examples.

              As with any drug, judgment and attention to dose and interactions are required. Act irresponsibly, ge

    • Re:Sounds very unsafe... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2023 @12:08AM (#63389739) Journal

      "Life changing" experiences from drugs do not sound at all like something a sane person should have or want.

      I know someone who gave up a marijuana addiction after having a conversation with a goddess during an ayahuasca trip (emphasis on addiction).

      Basically whatever his brain had that was compelling him to take marijuana was gone after that experience. His relationships (unsurprisingly) improved as a result.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2023 @01:37AM (#63389847)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Sounds very unsafe... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2023 @02:14AM (#63389877)

      "Life changing" experiences from drugs do not sound at all like something a sane person should have or want. Sure, if there are cases of _insane_ people where this is proven to help, I am all for it, but sane people should stay away from such stuff.

      Speaking of life changing, 1 in 4 are on mental health drugs. Should we wait for that _insane_ statistic to get worse, or should we perhaps be more open to the concept of experimentation with alternatives that might actually result in something other than another refill for profits sake?

      • Research all you like. Great. But self medicating is fucking stupid.

        There is a reason why the real medications are by prescription and only the cheesy stuff is over the counter.

        • self medicating is fucking stupid.

          My morning coffee begs to differ.

        • Research all you like. Great. But self medicating is fucking stupid.

          Uh huh. Tell me another lie as to how cannabis has no medical benefit whatsoever according to the US Government, controlled and scheduled as literally worse than fentanyl, cocaine, and every modern painkiller you want to remain cheap and deadly. Tens of thousands of family members suffering from the loss of a loved one killed by five-dollar prescribed addiction would love to hear another "justified" slap in the face.

          There is a reason why the real medications are by prescription and only the cheesy stuff is over the counter.

          There's also a reason you have no valid response to my comments above. There's also a re

        • Go on. Ask your doctor. He has about as much information as you do.

          Better to ask a shaman. They haven't been blessed by the medical community, but they're vastly better than a clinician.

    • (In)sanity is not a clear binary distinction, there is a large amount of arbitrariness involved in labeling someone as insane, depending on the person in question, the person performing the diagnosis, the societal context in which this happens, etc. Pretty much everyone has some amount of mental problems.

      Psychedelics typically do not forcibly change your life, they merely give you the opportunity to look at yourself and the world from a different angle, one that is not easily accessible to most people other

      • You base this belief on what research or other medical facts and data?

        Or was it just really trippy n cool to see Disney cartoon characters float around your ceiling telling you the answers to your questions about the universe?

    • "Life changing" experiences from drugs do not sound at all like something a sane person should have or want. Sure, if there are cases of _insane_ people where this is proven to help, I am all for it, but sane people should stay away from such stuff.

      You say that like it's a universal truth; it is not. You also do not provide any reason why we should agree with you on that point. Would you agree with similar arbitrary statements about, e.g., life-changing religious experiences (likely induced by a certain environment)? Or philosophical epiphanies of any sort? What about reading a book that then changes your perspective on life, even a bit, is it something sane people should stay away from?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Religion? Definitely. That stuff is dangerous to people with weaker minds (the vast majority). Philosophy? Depends. There definitely is some nasty "experts only" stuff out there in that spectrum. Changing your perspective "even a bit" is usually not called "life changing" in regular use of the English language though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Why is that? Doing these drugs all the time is likely problematic but we have enough data from decades of illicit use to show that they don't cause any medical problems outside of the context of extreme regular use.

      Sure some one *might* have a scary trip and those can be traumatizing which is why I'm on the fence in regards to full legalization but there are no real risks for a mentally stable person looking to have a good time in a responsible setting.

    • I disagree with you almost completely, but I understand where you're coming from.

      There are a whole class of experiences that people deny themselves on the basis of pre-loaded warnings. Somebody will shovel half a chocolate cake into their face despite thorough evidence that health-wise it's a terrible idea, while simultaneously frowning at somebody who takes 3 grams of mushrooms that have no measurable long-term health effects.

      Your brain is a chemically balanced machine. Bumping the gyroscope is very, very

  • "near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities"

    How are those not also just plain old hallucinations?

    • "near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities"

      How are those not also just plain old hallucinations?

      Define "hallucination" then. Try and make it more than just a superficial definition. Otherwise, we might think you're tripping on something other than the reality of elaborating with description based on personal experiences.

      • hallucination /hloosnSH()n/
        noun
        noun: hallucination; plural noun: hallucinations
        an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.
        "he continued to suffer from horrific hallucinations"

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Words apparently can not describe it as that was a mishmash of stray words saying nothing but, "woooow man, that trip was like sooo trippy, I was like just totally trippin hard, ya know what I mean? Woooooooow!" And that shit went on for "only" 4 hours. Good grief.

        You make a good case for no one ever taking it.

        • > Words apparently can not describe it as that was a mishmash of stray words saying nothing but, "woooow man, that trip was like sooo trippy, I was like just totally trippin hard, ya know what I mean? Woooooooow!" And that shit went on for "only" 4 hours. Good grief.

          All you're doing is showing everybody you don't have any information about this.

          Go spend time with people who use it. You don't have to try it yourself. A good scientist is curious to gather data.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Classical hallucinations are like an overlay on top of reality. When you take lsd, for example, parts of the world around you seem to change. You perceive things that are not there.

      When you take Ayahuasca you seem to leave the world. The beginning of the experience feels like real movement, in a way blended into trippy hallucinations. For example, moving at speed down a tunnel made of magical symbols away from the world. Accelerating at higher and higher speeds with sensations rushing over you until you hit

    • Journalist. The study describes these effects as : "DMT can induce an intense and immersive altered state of consciousness". The paper obviously never pretends these things are real and never uses the word hallucination.

    • Re:Moronic clickbait (Score:4, Informative)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2023 @06:51AM (#63390209)

      A hallucination is generally defined as a sensory experience that feels real, but isn't. But there is still room for interpretation.

      In the strictest sense, psychedelics like LSD don't produce hallucinations. That's because you know they aren't real, that the walls don't move and if you see them moving, that's because of the drug. They are sometimes called pseudo-hallucinations. True hallucinations are more like what deliriants do, they can be just as nonsensical, but when you are under influence, you accept them as real without question. It is rarely a pleasant experience, and drugs that cause them are generally classified as poisons rather than drugs, because so few people actually want to take them, especially not a second time.

      So do near-death experiences and travel in alternate dimensions count as hallucinations? In a loose sense, yes, because it is not real, you are still very well alive and on Earth and you feel like you are near-dead and elsewhere. But is not like "true" hallucination where you think the entity you are talking to is physically there with you, that every passerby should see it too, and that there is nothing special about the fact it is levitating and has the skin of a lizard.

      • Hope this helps.

        hallucination /hloosnSH()n/
        noun
        noun: hallucination; plural noun: hallucinations
        an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.
        "he continued to suffer from horrific hallucinations"

        • Techincal definition, often differs from the vernacular definition.
          E.g. Using the scientific, and legal definitions, wood is not flammable. Using the vernacular definition, wood is flammable.

          The requirement of believing to be real, is part of the technical definition.
          https://www.cancer.gov/publica... [cancer.gov]
          Hallucination.
          A sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch that a person believes to be real but is not real. Hallucinations can be caused by nervous system disease, certain drugs, or mental disorders.

          -- National C

  • Their perception of the obvious is startling.

  • I remember seeing William Hurt doing this research back around 1980.

  • Ayahuasca helped me... (Score:5, Informative)

    by NCsunset ( 10099846 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2023 @09:38AM (#63390631)
    I've posted this before. I've attended 5 ayahuasca ceremonies, three in Colorado and two in Peru.

    I'm not much of a "psychonaut", but smoked some pot when I was younger, and that's about all the drugs I've done. I tried mushrooms once. But in my late 30's I was in a pretty dark place in my life. I was undiagnosed ASD and an alcoholic in denial. Life had taken a dark turn, so I quit my job and moved to CO in 2015 to be the GM of a pot farm. I still didn't smoke the stuff, but I was ready for a big life change.

    It was there that I discovered Ayahuasca. And after the 5 ceremonies, all over a period of 6 months in 2015, I realized two important things:

    1) Alcohol was killing me.
    2) There was something different about me, not wrong, just different.

    I quite alcohol cold turkey after the ceremonies, and while I did eventually relapse or "go back out" as we say, I eventually got clean. I've been sober for five years now. And simultaneously I got diagnosed as ASD, which explained a lot, and let me see myself in a more positive light.

    Without the Aya ceremonies, it is very possible that I would be dead now. They were the initial impetus to changing my life from a dark path back to the light.

    But for the record, there does tend to be puking and pooping involved for many of us. Inside the experience, we think of this as negative energy made physical, so that our body can release it.

    All purely anecdotal to my own experience. Clearly it isn't a silver bullet, but I do believe that Aya and other "plant medicines" do have a place in the discussion.
    • Congratulations on getting a grip and getting clean. When you wrote you didn't do drugs, then that you were an alcoholic, I found that contradictory... Anyway, good on you, yet another anecdote that other things than medical drugs can solve some problems.
      • You are correct, alcohol is a drug obviously. Other than the pot when I was young, and the ayahuasca we are speaking of, I haven't done drugs other than alcohol and caffeine. I've been effectively straight edge for the last five years.

      • The distinction between drugs and alcohol is perfectly clear in the conversational context. Nobody is gong to get confused and come out with the wrong impression. It's pedantic to insist that the two be combined when in fact the common understanding facilitates the discussion.

        • Please re-read my message. How that comes across as pedantic is unclear to me, since I wrote his it came across to me whilst I read it, confusing me. Your message, however....
    • It's fascinating that such profound changes can be made with psychedelics, particularly since SSRIs seem to be somewhat limited in treating the same things. I wonder whether Western medicine will need to learn new terminology in order to act as sitters for such powerful experiences, akin to the shaman?

  • It has been over 20 years since my period of assisted excess. I have no desire to revisit it, although I enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm not the guy you want speaking to a gym of teenagers regarding drugs. But... psychedelic trips were top shelf. Not LSD... it's fine I suppose, but it's too clinical, and 12 hours to deal with the after-effects is too much. As a retiree I could totally see psilocybin on the shelf next to my other meds, though. Something like this I would absolutely want to try.

    I saw people have b

  • Aaron Rodgers seeing the ghost of Brady telling him he will never be number 1.
  • BeauHD, thank you for the interesting post. It is nice to read about something other than tech layoffs, algorithms, AI, and chat bots coming for our jobs. :-) >" He added: "What we have seen is that DMT breaks down the basic networks of the brain, causing them to become less distinct from each other. We also see the major rhythms of the brain -- that serve a largely inhibitory, constraining function -- break down, and in concert, brain activity becomes more entropic or information-rich." In other word
  • He had done LSD (Acid) and even encouraged others to try it. This quote is the likely source of the current micro dosing craze. https://www.goodreads.com/quot... [goodreads.com]

    Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of his

  • MRI confounding? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So how does being inside an MRI machine while tripping affect the results? I have to imagine that all the noises coming from the machine would alter the experience...

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