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First Evidence For Higher State of Consciousness Found (neurosciencenews.com)

New submitter baalcat quotes a report from Neuroscience News: Neuroscientists observed a sustained increase in neural signal diversity -- a measure of the complexity of brain activity -- of people under the influence of psychedelic drugs, compared with when they were in a normal waking state. The diversity of brain signals provides a mathematical index of the level of consciousness. For example, people who are awake have been shown to have more diverse neural activity using this scale than those who are asleep. This, however, is the first study to show brain-signal diversity that is higher than baseline, that is higher than in someone who is simply "awake and aware." Previous studies have tended to focus on lowered states of consciousness, such as sleep, anesthesia, or the so-called "vegetative" state. For the study, Michael Schartner, Dr Adam Barrett and Professor Seth of the Sackler Center reanalyzed data that had previously been collected by Imperial College London and the University of Cardiff in which healthy volunteers were given one of three drugs known to induce a psychedelic state: psilocybin, ketamine and LSD. Using brain imaging technology, they measured the tiny magnetic fields produced in the brain and found that, across all three drugs, this measure of conscious level -- the neural signal diversity -- was reliably higher. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports.

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  1. Re:"Neural signal diversity" by quonset · · Score: 0, Troll

    So you're arguing that these drugs don't get you high?

    That's what I'm told about marijuana. It has no effect whatsoever which is why everyone wants to smoke it. No matter how many articles come out about people jumping out windows, shooting themselves, ignoring train whistles, thinking it's funny to give someone laced food without their knowledge, or driving the wrong way in traffic and killing people, I'm always told it's not the weed. It has to be something else because marijuana is perfectly safe.