http://www.newscientist....ss&nsref=online-news

"But when the team then gave the volunteers a dose of ayahuasca and repeated the experiment, they found that the level of activity in the primary visual cortex was virtually indistinguishable when the volunteers were really viewing an image and when they were imagining it. This means visions seen have a real, neurological basis, says de Araujo – they are not made up or imagined."

I think this was posted yesterday, the article only has a time stamp, so I'm not too sure. Sorry if this was posted already.

Anyway, I think this is really interesting since I have thought about this for a long time (ever since I started smoking DMT). I always wondered why I had visions of things I would not ever imagine or be interested in. I was never into the whole alien conspiracy deal yet I have come into contact with several types of "humanoid" entities, I was never AT ALL into sci-fi (still not) yet I have now been onto these technologically advanced ships...

Though I always told myself that it was the DMT pulling strange, untouched thoughts out of my subconscious and that is why I experienced these crazy visions of things I thought I could never imagine myself. I wanted to believe that the DMT was special enough to actually "create" these images in my mind instead of pulling them out of my subconscious, but I couldn't find myself really getting too into that topic since it was kind of out there. This article kind of touches on this topic finally, seems like they are getting into really cool scientific research with ayahuasca over in Brazil.

Just thought I'd share the article and post my thoughts. Curious as to what some of you think about when it comes to DMT creating the visions, whether you think you're imagining what you see or whether you think DMT is spawning these visions (not just letting you see them). No real way to know obviously, just neat to think about.

Interesting article. Let me preface this post by saying that I am already inclined to believe that the experience is at least partially external. Now, having said that, I'd like to play some devil's advocate. I think most of us realize that it is at least not our conscious selves generating the images as with imagination. As such, if the content were provided by the subconscious by seemingly projecting images from the subconscious into the external world (including "behind your eyelids" ), then to me it would kind of make sense that especially with the perceived novelty that's there, that the brain responds as what it's seeing is real. I'm also slightly confused by the wording in that first quote.



If there's already indistinguishable activity between viewing real images and imagining images, then the whole study doesn't seem to make sense. I'm assuming that they merely misworded this, so I digress.

Also, what is the situation with the activity in the primary visual cortex when dreaming? They contrast the imagination with the DMT experience, but in this scenario, I think they should have additionally done the same with dreaming which is not as intentional as the imagination.

Kind of answered some of my own questions by re-reading the article in its entirety. It does say that there was a drop off in activity in the visual cortex when imagining, so what I quoted must have just been poor wording. Also regarding the dreaming, on the sidebar of the article, I saw this

Dreams Read by Brain Scanner for First Time

In this article, they conclude that dreaming is closer to imagining than experiencing the real thing. Nonetheless I would like to see a study that can cross-reference reality, the imagination and the ayahuasca experience. This dream study also strikes me as kind of weak. They say they saw activity of the hand-clenching that the lucid dreamers were instructed to do, but especially as is the case that you can't actually tell when the dreamer is dreaming of clenching his hand, this whole study seems a little muddy to me.

In any manner, I'd like to see more studies like this.

i belive the entities are real, and exist someware physical at all times, they are not just brought into existance for the duration of the experience.

i have far too much so say about this topic to wright now in a quick reply, but i highly recomend anyone wondering the same things to read the book alien mind, it explains much for any belivers in extra terrestrials, and evan for those sceptics, there is a heavy focous on science

in simplest terms, i belive dmt opens up our seseptability to telepathy, allowing contact to be made

Saw this on MAPS earlier. Great article, although I always supposed this was a real possibility. "Hallucinations" do not hold much merit because of what people view them as, false or imagined. The brain works in mysterious ways and since we see less than 1% of the external world via stimuli, perhaps these other dimensions coexist simultaneously just as hyperspace does. Who knows, still very intriguing.

another take on "reality" vs "hallucinations":

"... the nondual nature of all phenomena is not something external to the individual, but is really the true condition of every individual. All that we perceive as external through the net of dualism is in fact just the result of the separation between subject and object that we ourselves, with our minds, have created. It is our own minds that give rise to all our judgements, attachments, and karma, and we simply need to be aware that what we perceive as our vision is in fact the manifest potentiality of our own primordial state ... it is impossible, from the point of view of the ultimate reality whose nature is indescribable voidness, to affirm anything at all as being absolutely true." - from Dzogchen, the Self-Perfected State, by Namkhai Norbu

great find Ekoostik.

between the quote pau posted and that article; As I took it, the mind is far more than we give it credit for and all that we perceive externally is manifestation from the mind. So the quote and the experiment can be related in that the things hallucinogenics/psychedelics show us aren't necessarily fake or don't exist but again manifestations of the mind, so who's to say one is more true than the other- or are both true in their own way