Psilocybin Desynchronizes the Human Brain (nytimes.com) 80
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The image, as it happens, comes from dozens of brain scans produced by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who gave psilocybin, the compound in "magic mushrooms," to participants in a study before sending them into a functional M.R.I. scanner. The kaleidoscopic whirl of colors they recorded is essentially a heat map of brain changes, with the red, orange and yellow hues reflecting a significant departure from normal activity patterns. The blues and greens reflect normal brain activity that occurs in the so-called functional networks, the neural communication pathways that connect different regions of the brain.
The scans, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offer a rare glimpse into the wild neural storm associated with mind-altering drugs. Researchers say they could provide a potential road map for understanding how psychedelic compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA can lead to lasting relief from depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders. "Psilocybin, in contrast to any other drug we've tested, has this massive effect on the whole brain that was pretty unexpected," said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a professor of neurology at Washington University and a senior author of the study. "It was quite shocking when we saw the effect size." Brian Mathur, a systems neuroscientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, says these findings cannot show exactly what causes the therapeutic benefit of psilocybin, but "it's possible psilocybin is directly causing" the brain-network changes. That, or it is creating a psychedelic experience that in turn causes parts of the brain to behave differently.
The next step is to determine whether psilocybin's blood-flow changes in the brain or its direct effects on neurons, or both, are responsible for the brain-network disruptions. "The best part of this work is that it's going to provide a means forward for the field to develop further hypotheses that can and should be tested," Mathur says.
The scans, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offer a rare glimpse into the wild neural storm associated with mind-altering drugs. Researchers say they could provide a potential road map for understanding how psychedelic compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA can lead to lasting relief from depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders. "Psilocybin, in contrast to any other drug we've tested, has this massive effect on the whole brain that was pretty unexpected," said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a professor of neurology at Washington University and a senior author of the study. "It was quite shocking when we saw the effect size." Brian Mathur, a systems neuroscientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, says these findings cannot show exactly what causes the therapeutic benefit of psilocybin, but "it's possible psilocybin is directly causing" the brain-network changes. That, or it is creating a psychedelic experience that in turn causes parts of the brain to behave differently.
The next step is to determine whether psilocybin's blood-flow changes in the brain or its direct effects on neurons, or both, are responsible for the brain-network disruptions. "The best part of this work is that it's going to provide a means forward for the field to develop further hypotheses that can and should be tested," Mathur says.
From the "no shit, Sherlock" files. (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, it highlights how politics constantly forces science to be obtuse. The FDA practically has to prove that a Big Pharma drug is deadly and useless to stop it from moving forward, but these naturally-occurring compounds are illegal by default. It's fucking bonkers.
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“Everything organic and natural is goodignoring the fact that organic natural substances include arsenic and poo and crocodiles. And everything chemical is bad, ignoring the fact thateverything is chemicals." - Tim Minchin
But I get your point. :)
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Arsenic is inorganic by definition.
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But by the same definition cyanide is perfectly organic.
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organic
relating to or derived from living matter. some bacteria and fungi produce it ergo a derivative of living matter
also
Organic chemistry:
"Organic compounds are derived from or produced by living organisms and have carbon-hydrogen covalent bonds. Inorganic compounds are derived from nonliving components, and generally have ionic bonds, lack carbon-hydrogen bonds, and rarely, if ever, contain any carbon atoms."
Carbon and nitrogen = cyonide. Organic
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Neither bacteria nor fungi can produce an element unless they are capable of nuclear fusion or fission.
Re:From the "no shit, Sherlock" files. (Score:5, Insightful)
Drugs dont inherently age people (some on your list do with excess use, some absolutely do not)
Weed (which you included) does not damage the liver at any known levels of ingestion
That's not true about eating and oral drugs
Psilocybin does not create BSOD in the brain, you're just making some lame shit up that you think makes sense.
Several of the drugs you list are either non addictive or of limited addictive potential meanwhile caffeine and tobacco are perfectly legal and are quite addictive so addictiveness is clearly not the benchmark for whether a substance is illegal or not.
In summary, you're not well versed enough in what you're talking about to give advice.
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Live with a psycodelic user for a year, when you yourself do not partake. Then reassess this assertion.
Watch the withdrawal and dependence of something even as "harmless" as caffeine.
Chart the productivity of the people in your life who chose weed instead of school. You can do both, but one Naturally precludes the desire to do the other.
Ignorance is bliss, and if Psilocybin helps you decohere your reality to the point you can forget trauma, great. But it sure as shit does not make you smart. by any measure
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to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society is no measure of health.
Re:From the "no shit, Sherlock" files. (Score:5, Interesting)
Live with a psycodelic user for a year, when you yourself do not partake. Then reassess this assertion.
All experiencing your one anecdotal experience will do for me is to learn how this one person deals with things. In other words, not very helpful. I'd rather go off proper data on the long term effects of "drugs" as I do now.
Chart the productivity of the people in your life who chose weed instead of school. You can do both, but one Naturally precludes the desire to do the other.
I know a number of reasonably successful people who smoke weed regularly. There is no "one naturally precludes the desire to do the other", you're just making that up. A person can go home after a hard days work and smoke some weed and wake up for work the next day and do it all over again just fine. A lazy person will likely use it as a crutch to be lazy though.
But it sure as shit does not make you smart. by any measure.
Yes, only an idiot would think any current recreational drugs make ones self smarter. Not sure why this is important as idiots will think all sorts of absurd things meanwhile this is hardly a mainstream opinion held by many.
and while you can say "but no brain damage" you ARE your brain. A chemical structure alters your brain from natural state, that IS brain damage.
That's just plain not true at all.
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and while you can say "but no brain damage" you ARE your brain. A chemical structure alters your brain from natural state, that IS brain damage.
By that definition, learning is brain damage since learning alters the structure of your brain in permanent ways. Neuroplasticity is a feature not a bug.
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Solid contribution. Thank you.
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I think it's kind of far-fetched to think psychedelics, taken regularly like a vitamin, would improve crystalized intelligence or working memory. However I do think there may be cognitive benefits to interrupting from time to time habitual thought patterns, the way electroconvulsive therapy seems to help with major depression. Psychedelics could conceivably help by getting your thought processes out of a rut.
It seems really unlikely that the recreational user who trips balls multiple times a week is doing
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Chart the productivity of the people in your life who chose weed instead of school. You can do both, but one Naturally precludes the desire to do the other.
Uh, nope. Some of the most productive people I've ever known are daily users of weed or THC products. Now, they aren't the "smoke all day and let it hang, bro" people, for certain. More the, "Smoke a small one before bed," or "puff a couple times before starting that big project that has me so nervous I can barely think straight," types.
And school seems to be where
I get it. Seeing somebody you know go deep into substance abuse and then failing out on life is hard to witness. I've watched friends pretty muc
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1. Can we patent this? If yes, proceed directly to the FDA express approval lane / political donor fundraiser. If no, proceed to next step.
2. Is it stereotyped as being associated with a racial or ethnic minority? If yes, ban immediately and enforce with a giant, heavily-armed, quasi-military bureaucracy.
That's it. That's all they do. Just
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That is an impressive collection of absolute nonsense that you wrote. Everything from the aging effects of self-medication, the impact of psilcybin and other hallucinogens, the likelihood of someone being injected with an air bubble by non-medical personnel - as if learning to inject is some kind of difficult to acquire skill, and whether addictiveness is any kind of benchmark for FDA approval - either for over the counter or prescription meds, huge numbers of which have very addictive qualities. There ar
Re:From the "no shit, Sherlock" files. (Score:4, Interesting)
> It's fucking bonkers.
It's not, though.
The Psychedelics Act targted Hippies who were promoting world peace and the Black Panthers who were working towards full citizenship rights for all Americans.
The Military Industrial Congressional Complex stood to lose huge sums of money on both fronts. Check out the prepublished speech from Ike, not the aired TV version.
"War is the health of the State" or "War is a Racket" - both apply.
These days add in psych med sales and therapists who can't imagine what they would do if chronic mental anguish were solvable (there is plenty, e.g. depth work).
We're locked in a battle between people who profit from death and suffering and those who want to end it. Left/right is a deception to distract us all. Support people who want to stop the evil.
But don't think that things are illegal because they are bad - very often just the opposite is true.
PS these researchers should know that psylocin acts at ht2a sites inside the neurons and modulates the resonance of the tryptophan-complex crystaline microtubules in the neurons (vs anesthetics which dampen them). That information is background (aside from the recently demonstrated quantum effects in the amino-acid crystals, which is recently confirmed). Very 2006 vibes on this paper in general.
Re: From the "no shit, Sherlock" files. (Score:2)
We keep putting capitalism in the driver's seat, and then wonder why we have cartoons in cigarette ads and tacti-cool rifles in the hands of disgruntled 20-somethings. The moment I imply that we should make capital work for regulat people, I'm accused of communism. The programming is DEEP in our soviety and it's killing us.
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Isn't taking quotes out of context great? Makes a bunch of scientists sound stupid!
He's clearly talking about long term changes after the pyschedelic has been cleared.
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The FDA practically has to prove that a Big Pharma drug is deadly and useless to stop it from moving forward, but these naturally-occurring compounds are illegal by default. It's fucking bonkers.
sure, but one of those comes with big jobs, profits, taxes, and a bit of global soft power, while the other is something that's mostly a recreational drug, to date.
it really shouldnt be surprising which one has received preferential treatment.
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The karmic math doesn't work out if you couple those benefits with the human costs of the drug wars they've fueled for generations. The two also aren't occurring in the same communities or countries, so there's an element of political repression and ethnic violence to the dissonance.
Let's not forget that prohibition made billionaires out o
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Well done! You win exactly one Internet.
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You don't get to choose your mom.
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Dad thought they were pretty funny.
Re: your mom (Score:1)
He did visit your mom.
Re: your mom (Score:1)
Cool video (Score:2)
My non-Doctor Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I absolutely loved mushrooms. A couple of decades ago I "experimented". Well... to be honest, if we're going to use a euphemism I probably went professional in a few things. I experimented with a lot of things. But it all had it's time and place, and I'm a well-adjusted guy in my 50s. I don't even use pot.
I have no intention of revisiting any of it. The only exception is mushrooms. In fact, I've got some in my home safe, awaiting the right time. They were that good. Reasonably well-behaved, appropriate duration, easier descent... and sleep is possible in relatively short order. Unlike, say, acid... ugh.
Now, I cannot speak to the therapeutic benefits of mushrooms. I do not recall ever taking something that one could reasonably call a micro-dose. When I did psychedelics, I always wanted to get pretty deep into the rabbit hole. But I can say that they overloaded my empathy circuit. If I watched a movie while on them, I was completely in tune with the emotional context. I "got" what the director intended. Or at least so it seemed. Your evaluation of your state is hopelessly compromised.
But I can say they came with a mental unlocking that probably does persist. I never noticed at the time... but I do know that after my period of excess I was a distinctly different person. I could relate to others in ways that were completely foreign to the introverted guy I had been. I had emotional context I didn't have before. And those changes remained. Don't put me in front of a gym full of high school students to tell them about the dangers of drugs. The most honest thing I can say is that, "It's complicated."
But despite taking unreasonable doses of mushrooms, LSD, ketamine, and (only twice) mescaline, I never once had a bad trip. On anything. I'm fully aware that this is not true for everybody.
YMMV. IANAL IANAD etc..
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Mushrooms are probably the safest way to get a trip. You can't overdose on them. You can't get addicted to them. As long as you take the correct mushrooms and *be supervised*, ideally by someone not high, then you should be fine. Why supervised? Well the most likely thing to hurt you on a mushroom trip is yourself accidentally. Having someone there to stop you doing something silly is a good idea.
How is this news (Score:1)
I'll sacrifice myself for science! (Score:5, Funny)
After much careful thought, I have decided to selflessly risk my mental health and sanity by doing as much psilocybin as they would like me to do, as often as they would like me to do it.
I know this selfless, heroic offer will be understood and appreciated by all who learn of it. I hope it is accepted in the spirit it is offered.
Simulated annealing (Score:3)
This makes me wonder if the therapeutic effect of psilocybin operates with a mechanism similar to simulated annealing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If a healthy brain is in a stable state, and if disorders like depression occur when the brain enters a locally-stable state that is less 'good', then adding 'energy' into the system to disrupt it in the hope that the brain re-enters the globally optimum state makes sense.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) (Score:2)
I do wonder if this mechanism is also why for some patients ECT is an effective therapeutic intervention, though sadly it is now largely rejected without good reason.[Full disclosure - my late half brother returned to something approaching normal functioning after ECT when nothing else got him out of his deep depression. And, to be clear, he died for reasons that weren't related to his mental state]
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I do wonder if this mechanism is also why for some patients ECT is an effective therapeutic intervention, though sadly it is now largely rejected without good reason.[Full disclosure - my late half brother returned to something approaching normal functioning after ECT when nothing else got him out of his deep depression. And, to be clear, he died for reasons that weren't related to his mental state]
I was thinking about this. I had a friend that suffered from depression. He went from a happy go lucky guy to depression overnight. He liked to shock himself. Not ECT, but with batteries in the basement.. Seemed to work, mostly at least for a while.
And while not personally depressed, my electronics background had me getting shocked on occasion and I think you are right. My biggest shock was from an oscilloscope power supply. Threw me off the workbench. But the after effects were like my brain being reset
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The euphemism "melt your brain" comes to mind. So: not just annealing (a solid-phase "jiggling"), but a complete phase change.
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Acid....
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agreed, mdma is just a dopamine rush which exhausts your reserves and consequently has a tough hangover. editor clearly has no clue what he/she's talking about. mdma is a completely different thing, the study doesn't even mention it. i would only consider it as a fast exit from a bad trip, and even then i don't think it's a good deal.
otoh i'm curious why you omit psylocibin, it has actually a much stronger emotional effect and thus even more therapeutic value than lsd. both take you high, but psylocibin is
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mdma and lsd both do something with serotonin, which is why i think you get the visual tracers from both drugs. both have a "feel-good" element, MDMA much moreso than LSD, but its still there with LSD.
psylocibin and lsd are different but both bind to serotonin receptors. meaning they supplant your serotonin and light up your brain like a christmas tree but take nothing away, and to be on topic (as this study shows) promote neuroplasticity in cortex and hippocampus which could explain their long lasting therapeutic effects, although in my experience those are linked with the conscious experience itself. even at that, i reckon that the experience with psylocibin is much richer and productive than that of l
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CTRL-ALT-DELETE my brain (Score:1)
double X-ray rainbow (Score:3)
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What would be the point (Score:2)
"... before sending them into a functional M.R.I. scanner."
No shit, Einstein, because there would be no point to putting them in a non-functional M.R.I. scanner.
Who writes this diarrhea-laden drivel?
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fMRI is a type of MRI that can show which areas of your brain are most active. A standard MRI just takes a lof of X-RAYs of you.
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MRI, whether functional or not, does not use X-Rays, or any other type of ionizing radiation.
You are probably thinking CT scans (Computerized Tomography), or PET scans (Positron Emission) which both use X-rays.
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Exactly, i got confused with ct scan. my bad.
Re:What would be the point (Score:5, Informative)
No type of MRI uses x rays. MRI uses a magnetic field and radio waves to perturb subatomic particles with a magnetic moment (mostly hydrogen nuceli in water molecules). These then emit their own radio waves as they relax back to equilibrium. Impurities in the water, like tissue or blood cells, cause the relaxation to happen faster.
fMRI exploits that fact that oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin have slightly different effects on the water in blood.
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Exactly, i got confused with ct scan. Apologies.
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No, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans do not use X-rays. MRIs use radio waves and a massive magnet to create the images of the body's structures.
That you would blandly state this bullshit as fact tells me you don't shit about shit, and even less about MRI machines.
But thanks for outing yourself as an ignorant blowhard!
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You're right! i got confused with ct scan (MRI = Magnetic resonance). I replied while doing other things.
Anyway, my answer stands for the "functional" part.
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Fair enough, and thank you for the clarification.
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woosh
Way behind! (Score:3, Interesting)
Alright, so this has been a heavily studied concept. This is one of my favorite white papers. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/... [pnas.org]
Summing up research: Ketamine, Psilocybin, DMT, etc - all essentially do the same thing: They dysregulate independent neural functions, which essentially control the brain's "bucketization" category, or how we process stimuli into different stereotypes; causing a "blended consciousness" experience, where IQ, memory, positive and negative subjective emotional inputs are simultaneously experiencing synaptic tagging - or more interestingly - cortical expansion with TOP plasticity enhancements.
These are the same things experienced by those in deep, meditative states, or those with adrenaline-infused NDE/ADE experiences; essentially giving spiritual, metaphysical changes in belief structure as imagination, IQ, memory, and feelings merge into a powerful blending of multi-functional neural activity.
Literally: Don't believe in God? Or "A" God? Take Psilocybin and meet the heavenly host. You won't disbelieve again.
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Literally: Don't believe in God? Or "A" God? Take Psilocybin and meet the heavenly host. You won't disbelieve again.
I've done psilocybin on multiple occasions. It is amazing, but it did not increase my faith in any gods. It did make me feel more connected to nature, and to the universe. Staring up at the star-filled sky was incredible. I spent one trip sitting on the cliffs overlooking the ocean beach, just talking with a friend. Incredible. But it didn't increase my faith in God with a G or any with a g.
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Psilocybin / Ketamine / DMT are not "automatic" conversions to faith. Rather, there is an interesting correlation between users who are introduced to them in a clinical setting, and who also have a metaphysical change in belief structure.
Check out the white paper I linked; I think they dig into it about 2/3 of the way down.
Desync is bad for brain (Score:1)
Thanks but no thanks (Score:2)
First post (Score:1)
first post
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lol... that might be the lowest uid I've seen, props
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