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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.
Also known as 'lots of activity'. That may translate to *altered* state of consciousness, but calling it a *higher* state just tells me someone really likes their psychedelic drugs.
Your brain trying to figure out what to do with random signals produced by chemical disruption of brain activity is in no way 'higher' consciousness, no matter how many drug users tell us it feels that way.
So what I'm curious about is if the extra activity is productive, or if it's just the firing of synapses without purpose.
As an analogy, consider electrical short-circuits in a ball of unshielded wires with various currents applied, versus a properly laid-out circuit. Depending on how the various short-circuits in the ball line up one might see patterns, but those patterns do not accomplish anything. One might even see heat and light that are absent on the properly laid-out circuit, and one might see more power draw, but again, that might not mean anything advantageous is occurring.
Last time I looked at the subject, oxygen supply and the ability to exchange oxygen between blood vessels and the brain was the limiting factor, more than any other factor. I'm curious if there are any other factors since found.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Poppycock. This stuff has been studied extensively for years, with copious FMRI modeling and psychological measures. See this article or watch this video for some more interesting results that don't rely on psychedelics (not that the results for psychedelics are wrong, mind you).
Personally I had a very profound experience on LSD. I became aware of the illusion that we have a unified consciousness. It started out when I noticed my right hand was moving of its own accord, and I had to "consciously" make it stop. I have this happen on mushrooms as well, but the experience became deeper when I become actually become aware myself as split left/right into two entities. I remember just sitting their slack jawed and told my wife "I think I'm experiencing something profound right now". It was a totally novel experience I can't even adequately describe or even really remember what it was *actually* like. It proceeded like this for a while and I eventually reached some sort of state where I somehow "knew" how consciousness arises from matter, I remember saying something like "this is what this is?" then I feel as if I was "breaking through" back into reality and my consciousness unified and the trip was over just like that. It was amazing, I can't wait to experience it again knowing what to expect, I was kind of caught completely unawares the first time. I'd actually like to record what I say the next time. I immediately started reading all I could about the psychedelic experience, ego death, etc.
As long as you're in the right frame of mind and surroundings (set and setting) psychedelics are some of the safest drugs imaginable. I'd rather be around someone on LSD or mushrooms than alcohol any day. Like literally anything else, idiots that don't know what they're doing can hurt themselves or others if they don't do it properly.
There's always the possibility my experience was just some sort of delusion I suppose. I really believe it does offer some insight into the nature of consciousness, something I've always been utterly fascinated by. It's doing something at the lowest level of neural pathways. It's just something you have to experience first hand otherwise you just have no room to say anything about it. The hard problem of consciousness seems like an even more intractable issue than the fundamental problems of physics. How something like consciousness can emerge from matter.
"Creating complexity" in the sense of more measurable neural events is not a measure of "higher conscience". You can get the same effect with a pair of electrodes, or even getting patterns of neural events in seizures. The destruction of existing structures, and the inability to retain those "new insights" long enough to explain or use them either during or after the influence of psychedelic "events" is evidence that disruption is possible, not evidence of a "higher" consceience.
It's very *exciting* to get blitzed, and it can be *fun* to taste the color red. But it's hardly insightful. You can get more "insight" by simply paying attention.
You could not be more wrong. External electrical influences or seizures absolutely do not create more "complexity," in the same sense as psychedelics; they create dysfunction through disruption, which is very different. And using a ridiculous blanket term like "getting blitzed" shows that you have no understanding whatsoever of the difference between mere intoxication and other types of altered states, such as those produced by psychedelics. This study, while not groundbreaking, is interesting because it has produced more data supporting the notion that psychedelic states are not simply a form of random intoxication, as you suggest, but are indeed indicative of stimulation of certain brain functions.
You are interpreting the summary completely backwards, and you sound like someone who calls all drugs "narcotics," or thinks that any drug use simply amounts to "getting high," regardless of the intentions, results, or method of action in the body. Nancy Reagan and Richard Nixon would be proud.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Of course, after rereading the /. summary and title again, I can see how people might misinterpret the findings of this study, since the linked article is much more careful not to jump to grand conclusions, and explicitly mentions that they don't believe the psychedelic experience to necessarily be a "better" state of consciousness. But expecting anyone to actually RTFA instead of basing their opinions on the /. title is silly, I guess.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Study the medical aspects involved and you'll have lots of knowledge that is inapplicable to the experience of skydiving. This analogy is a pale example of how these studies really miss the point. And anyone who comments about these experiences without having tried them is truly blowing hot air with no valuable substance at all.
I could describe in detail and pontificate for a decade and you would still not have any grasp of what these experiences are like. You simply cannot, and are being foolish if you think otherwise.
And mushrooms (preferably as tea) are the best.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
So there's a hypervisor or Intel Management Unit in our brains. And you can root it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Happy 420.
Used responsibly, LSD is a phenomenal tool for introspection and "thinking about things from a higher plane". It's hard to describe to anyone who has not tried.
Remove your consciousness from your life experiences, everyday minutia, your body's senses, and politics/history pegged to a timeline, and so on. Freed from these tethers, incredibly insightful things can be realized for the first time in the mind. After you come down, and you remember the experience, you will never view the world the same-old way again, but will process subsequent life experiences from an additional, fresh, and wholistic view-point. It is a marvelous eye-opener.
Once you've "climbed the mountain" of a strong and positive LSD trip a few times, you will no longer need to take the drug to "get to that place", and to see things in this additional, new light. It is a breathtaking experience and changes your perspective forever. Well, for decades, at the least.
* Pardon the slang and 'short-for' phrasing. I tried to make the point as concise as possible to anyone who hasn't tried it – an impossible task. *
This bares a question - does "vegetative" state + LSD == normal state?
What I still want to know is how they were able to administer these ILLEGAL drugs with federal funding and not go to jail for contributing to someones delinquency by theretofore giving SCHEDULED SUBSTANCES.
The research wasn't done in the USA.
Fuck you just blew his mind more than any drug ever could. I'm not sure if he can grasp that reality.
The primary effect of LSD is that it breaks down the brains ability to perceive and evaluate those perceptions. This is not experienced as a loss of ability (internally) as many of the processes involved in perception are inhibitory in nature. If you switch off the negative signals about possible perceptions that do not match the incoming data from the environment then suddenly the brain sees a lots more hits, and there is a massive spike in reinforcement - everything feels cool as fuck and makes perfect sense because your brain is awash in the neurotransmitters that reward observing patterns. Of course the brains spends a lot of time observing and evaluating itself in relation to its observations of the world, and so the same rush of positive associations will occur about "deep personal development".
What is really happening? Hard to say: my guess is that our brains are constantly searching for equilibrium and taking a psychedelic causes a massive batch of noise in the search process. It does seem to cause to long-term changes in people's attitudes towards themselves, and the people around them. I've not seen any evidence that those changes are consistent across people - the only consistent pattern is that it changes their relationship to the world. I would speculate that it is just random noise, kicking a vast chunk of their learned behaviour into a different equilibrium. The perception that the change is accessing "a higher state of consciousness" is just another form of buying into some bullshit.
My take on it is that LSD provides access to a type of experience that is unavailable to most people: psychosis. The experience of un-evaluated perception of reality. Whether or not that experience has any value does not seem to have a universal answer, and depends largely on where people are in their lives, what they take into that experience, and what they hope to gain from it. Interpreting a measurement of one property of a brain that may correlate with a level of consciousness in some forms of test is simply reckless.
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External electrical influences or seizures absolutely do not create more "complexity," in the same sense as psychedelics; they create dysfunction through disruption, which is very different. And using a ridiculous blanket term like "getting blitzed" shows that you have no understanding whatsoever of the difference between mere intoxication and other types of altered states, such as those produced by psychedelics. This study, while not groundbreaking, is interesting because it has produced more data supporting the notion that psychedelic states are not simply a form of random intoxication, as you suggest, but are indeed indicative of stimulation of certain brain functions.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. The conclusion says "In sum, we found increased global neural signal diversity for the psychedelic state induced by KET, PSIL and LSD, suggesting the psychedelic state lies above conscious states such as wakeful rest and REM sleep on a one-dimensional scale defined by neural signal diversity. ".
It's a one-dimensional scale measuring neural signal diversity. Random electric shocks to the brain would result in a higher state on that scale. Actually, random electric shocks to the person (random torture?) would raise the scale too. GP was absolutely spot on that these results mean nothing; higher signal diversity could mean "capable of deeper insight", or it
could
mean "unable to function at all", but the actual study doesn't have any results one way or another.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Actually, this may be a 'higher' state of consciousness, but that does not necessarily denote 'better'.
Think about hearing someone on the other end of a phone whisper, it's useless because you can't make it out.
Then at a 'normal' speaking level, they make sense and things function.
Then if they yell into the phone, there's no denial there is heightened activity, but it's so noisy and clipping and chaotic as to be useless again.
Increased activity and/or diversity does not always equal better (particularly increased diversity of a signal generally leads to problems).
So 'higher' can still be 'crazy'.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Heck, or you could let a brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight describe it.
It's still a controlled substance in the UK, where the studies were performed, much like the US. From doing some reading, they had received licenses after going through a bunch of red tape. Finding someone who'd be tightly monitored by the UK Gov't for the purpose of manufacturing the drugs is apparently mind-numbing.