I'm sure most folks around here are familiar with the idea that consensus reality could be interpreted as a permanent serotonin-induced hallucination, hence the shift in perception when other molecules displace it from certain receptors.

So, I wondered what a person might experience if it was somehow possible to reach a zero-serotonin state (without dying in agony first)? Obviously, serotonin has many other important functions throughout the entire body.

Would such a state be a notional baseline for modelling consciousness? Would everything "disappear" into the mostly-empty space all substances are composed of?

WikiP has a grim section relating to deficiency, and not total elimination.

In my completely non professional opinion, i would think death would occur, plain and simple, and any altered reality would be unobserved due to that. However, your question is interesting.

Something i gleaned from the wiki page you linked to is this: apparently, one may be able to absolve that pesky, irritating infatuation stage of early love through increasing serotonin, i wonder if good doses of 5htp would help me avoid some bad decisions in my next relationship. And i always thought that strange ability to overlook severe personality disorders in a new lover was due to massive oxitocin release post-sex.

5-HT acts as a neurotransmitter that helps information move around the brain, so without it, your brain isn't going to function in anything like a normal way, and you'd probably die.
In addition to doing things like perception and well-being, 5-HT is involved in things like error detection, circadian rhythm regulation, digestion, vasodilation, hunger and more. Without it, all those systems are going to fail, and you'd at the very least lose consciousness before dying.

The more interesting question is what happens when you have very low levels of 5-HT. Since the neurotransmitter releases inhibition of information flow, I imagine that you'd probably be left without much in the way of creativity or feelings of connection to the world.

I wonder if you'd start seeing in black and white.

Blessings
~ND

Serotonin also plays an important role in maintaining blood pressure, which is where it gets its name from. Absence of serotonin would also likely equal zero blood pressure, besides everything else.

Well, that's not as set in stone as everyone seems to think. The 5-HT hypothesis of depression is a lot less solid then the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe.

Apparently its not that clear cut and the serotonin imbalance idea was propogated by pharmaceutical companies to sell their meds.


www.psychcentral.com/blo...s-dont-cause-depression/

www.journals.plos.org/pl...371/journal.pmed.0020392

The Serotonin Hypothesis of depression has not had much evidence to back it up.

I highly suggest anyone interested in mental health and psychopharmacology read "The Emperor's New Drugs,' by Irving Kirsch, in which the author absolutely demolishes the entire industry of antidepressant drugs, as well as the 'Serotoin Theory of Depression' it's based on, by running rigorous statistical analysis of pretty much every available study (thank you FOIA) submitted by the companies to the FDA.

Kirsch works at the Harvard Medical School, and while his work hasn't made the waves I would have hoped, it's good science, and something everyone should be aware of.

Blessings
~ND

^I'll be spreading the word

Thanks for the heads up ND I'm gonna track down a copy of this.