Give science time - you never know when science will recognize the positive aspects of something that has been in use by people for centuries, even millennia.
From The Washington Post -
Psychedelic mushrooms put your brain in a “waking dream,” study finds
By Rachel Feltman July 3, 2014
Psychedelic mushrooms can do more than make you see the world in
kaleidoscope. Research suggests they may have permanent, positive
effects on the human brain.
In fact, a
mind-altering compound found in some 200 species of mushroom is
already being explored
as a potential treatment for depression and anxiety. People who consume
these mushrooms, after "trips" that can be a bit scary and unpleasant,
report feeling more optimistic, less self-centered, and even happier for
months after the fact.
But why do these trips change the way people see the world? According to a study published today in
Human Brain Mapping,
the mushroom compounds could be unlocking brain states usually only
experienced when we dream, changes in activity that could help unlock
permanent shifts in perspective.
The study examined brain activity in those who’d received injections of
psilocybin, which gives "shrooms" their psychedelic punch. Despite a
long history of mushroom use in
spiritual practice, scientists
have only recently begun to examine the brain activity of those using
the compound, and this is the first study to attempt to relate the
behavioral effects to biological changes.
After injections, the
15 participants were found to have increased brain function in areas
associated with emotion and memory. The effect was strikingly similar to
a brain in dream sleep, according to
Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, a post-doctoral researcher in neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and co-author of the study.
“You’re
seeing these areas getting louder, and more active,” he said. “It’s
like someone’s turned up the volume there, in these regions that are
considered part of an emotional system in the brain. When you look at a
brain during dream sleep, you see the same hyperactive emotion centers.”
In
fact, administration of the drug just before or during sleep seemed to
promote higher activity levels during Rapid Eye Movement sleep, when
dreams occur. An intriguing finding, Carhart-Harris says, given that
people tend to describe their experience on psychedelic drugs as being
like “a waking dream.” It seems that the brain may literally be slipping
into unconscious patterns while the user is awake.
Conversely, the subjects of the study had decreased activity in other
parts of the brain—areas associated with high level cognition. “These
are the most recent parts of our brain, in an evolutionary sense,”
Carhart-Harris said. “And we see them getting quieter and less
organized.”
This dampening of one area and amplification of
another could explain the “mind-broadening” sensation of psychedelic
drugs, he said. Unlike most recreational drugs, psychotropic mushrooms
and LSD don’t provide a pleasant, hedonistic reward when they’re
consumed. Instead, users take them very occasionally, chasing the
strange neurological effects instead of any sort of high.
“Except
for some naïve users who go looking for a good time…which, by the way,
is not how it plays out,” Carhart-Harris said, “you see people taking
them to experience some kind of mental exploration, and to try to
understand themselves.”
Our firm sense of self—the habits and
experiences that we find integral to our personality—is quieted by these
trips. Carhart-Harris believes that the drugs may unlock emotion while
“basically killing the ego,” allowing users to be less narrow-minded and
let go of negative outlooks.
It’s still not clear why such
effects can have more profound long-term effects on the brain than our
nightly dreams. But Carhart-Harris hopes to see more of these compounds
in modern medicine. “The way we treat psychological illnesses now is to
dampen things,” he said. “We dampen anxiety, dampen ones emotional range
in the hope of curing depression, taking the sting out of what one
feels.”
But some patients seem to benefit from having their
emotions “unlocked” instead. “It would really suit the style of
psychotherapy where we engage in a patient’s history and hang-ups,”
Carhart-Harris said. “Instead of putting a bandage over the exposed
wound, we’d be essentially loosening their minds—promoting a permanent
change in outlook.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/07/03/psychedelic-drugs-put-your-brain-in-a-waking-dream-study-finds/?hpid=z6
From Yahoo.com -
How Tripping On Mushrooms Changes The Brain
.By Erin Brodwin October 29, 2014 4:45 PM
Lightworkerpeace/Wikimedia Commons Psilocybe Pelliculosa mushrooms, one of the more than 200 psilocybin-containing species.
Tripping on magic mushrooms may
actually free the mind, a new study says. The compounds in the
(illegal) mushrooms change the way the brain works.
These new connections are likely
what allow users to experience things like seeing sounds or hearing
colors. And they could also be responsible for giving magic mushrooms
some of their antidepressant qualities.
When researchers compared the
brains of people who had received IV injections of psilocybin with those
of people given a placebo, they found that the drug changed how
information was carried across the brain. (Subjects received 2
milligrams of psilocybin; the dose and concentration of the chemical in
actual mushrooms — which are eaten, not injected — varies.) Typically,
brain activity follows specific neural networks. But in the people given
psilocybin injections, cross-brain activity seemed more erratic, as if
freed from its normal framework.
When the researchers looked more
closely, however, they noticed that the sparks of activity across the
brains of their drugged volunteers wasn't as chaotic as it seemed.
Instead, the activity formed distinct patterns, or cycles.
"The brain does not simply become a random system after psilocybin injection," the
researchers wrote, "but instead retains some organizational features, albeit different from the normal state."
Picture the information in your
brain being shared across an interconnected and heavily-trafficked
system of highways. In that example, psilocybin isn't removing the
highways. Instead, it's simply building new ones.
These new connections
allow parts of the brain that don't usually talk to one another to
communicate. People who use magic mushrooms and see the number 52 as
glowing bright blue and red, then, don't see it that way because the
drugs have made them crazy. Instead, they associate the number with
colors because the brain region that detects and interprets color has
been chatting it up with the brain region that processes numbers.
This new insight into what
psilocybin does to the brain could help explain years of earlier
findings on psilocybin's psychological effects, including how magic
mushrooms seem to curb symptoms of depression.
Loosening those connections and creating new ones, Nutt thinks, could provide intense relief.
Johns Hopkins psychologists came to similar findings when they
induced out of body experiences
in a small group of volunteers dosed with psilocybin. Immediately
following their sessions, participants said they felt more open, more
imaginative, and more appreciative of beauty. When the researchers
followed up with the volunteers a year later, nearly two-thirds said the
experience had been one of the most important in their lives; close to
half continued to score higher on a personality test of openness than
they had before taking the drug.
Nick Fernandez, a former cancer patient and psychology graduate
student who took psilocybin as part of a New York University study,
experienced those same feelings of freedom and positivity.
"For the first time in my life, I felt like there was... a force greater than myself," Fernandez
told Aeon Magazine.
"Something inside me snapped and I experienced a... shift that made me
realize all my anxieties, defenses, and insecurities weren't something
to worry about."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tripping-mushrooms-changes-brain-204500998.html
