Has anyone read this report on psychedelics latley?...
[Its in science news magazine]
Psychedelics chill brain out: magic mushrooms subdue areas tied to self-awareness.
Link to this page
<a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Psychedelics+chill+brain+out%3A+magic+mushrooms+subdue+areas+tied+to...-a0281900475">Psychedelics chill brain out: magic mushrooms subdue areas tied to self-awareness.</a>
When Timothy Leary advised his generation to "turn on" by taking psychedelic drugs, he got it all wrong. Turning off parts of the brain may be the real secret to expanding your mind, research reported online January 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.
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"The findings are astounding and are going to completely change how we understand the action of hallucinogens," says psychiatrist and pharmacologist Bryan Roth of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public, coeducational, research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Also known as The University of North Carolina, Carolina, North Carolina, or simply UNC .
A team led by psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt of Imperial College London recruited 15 people with previous experience taking hallucinogens. Each was injected with a small amount of psilocybin psilocybin (sĭl'əsī`bən), perception-altering substance found in some species of mushroom. See hallucinogenic drug. , the ingredient responsible for magic mushrooms' mind-bending properties.
Before and after the volunteers tripped out, their brains were scanned. These measurements revealed decreases in blood flow through parts of the volunteers' brains. Surprised by the result, the researchers repeated the experiment with another group using a different scanning technique. The same pattern emerged, most pronounced in the hubs that connect different parts of the brain--including the thalamus thalamus (thăl`əməs), mass of nerve cells centrally located in the brain just below the cerebrum and resembling a large egg in size and shape. and parts of the cingulate cortex.
Studies in mice suggest that hallucinogens stimulate certain neurons in the visual regions of the brain, which would explain the kaleidoscopic hallucinations users often experience.
But suppressing regions that coordinate and control the brain could have deeper consequences.
"Decreasing the activity in certain hubs in the network may allow for a more unconstrained conscious experience," says Matthew Johnson, an experimental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, is a highly regarded medical school and biomedical research institute in the United States. who studies psilocybin and other hallucinogens. "These drugs may lift the filters that are at play in terms of limiting our perception of reality."
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