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LSD Changes Something About the Way People Perceive Time, Even At Microdoses (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tonic: The perception of time is a fundamental process of the brain, linked tightly to attention, emotions, memory, psychiatric and neurological disorders, and even consciousness -- but while scientists have been anecdotally noting how drugs can change time perception for decades, very few have been able to address the question rigorously with tightly designed studies. Cognitive neuroscientist Devin Terhune says he's been interested in understanding the neurochemical mechanisms involved in the distortions in the perception of time, and these drugs are one way to do that. Psychedelics act on specific pathways and chemicals in the brain, and if they also change the perception of time, we could learn exactly how it happens. At the end of November, Terhune and his co-authors published a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in Psychopharmacology on the effects of microdoses of LSD on people's perception of time. They found that even at small doses, LSD seems to change the way people interpret time, though the specifics of how and when are still to be determined.
In the new work, 48 healthy people were split up into four groups. One group got a placebo, and the other three received different small doses of LSD: 5, 10, or 20 micrograms. Then, they did what's called a temporal reproduction task. In this task, you see something on a screen for a certain amount of time -- in the study it was a blue circle -- and are asked to remember and recreate how long you saw it. The participants were shown a blue circle for periods of time from 800 milliseconds all the way up to 4,000 milliseconds, in increments of 400 milliseconds. Terhune and his colleagues looked to see how accurate the different groups of people were in reproducing those intervals, and found that the people in the LSD groups tended to hold down the space bar for significantly longer periods of time than the placebo condition. The researchers call this "over-reproduction." "Terhune says that they saw these changes in time perception without any major conscious effects from the drug," the report adds. "They asked people to report if they felt anything from taking the LSD, like perceptual distortions, unusual thoughts, if they felt high, or if it affected their concentration. There were a couple of weak effects, but statistically, the change in time perception happened independent of any subjective influence of the drug."
In the new work, 48 healthy people were split up into four groups. One group got a placebo, and the other three received different small doses of LSD: 5, 10, or 20 micrograms. Then, they did what's called a temporal reproduction task. In this task, you see something on a screen for a certain amount of time -- in the study it was a blue circle -- and are asked to remember and recreate how long you saw it. The participants were shown a blue circle for periods of time from 800 milliseconds all the way up to 4,000 milliseconds, in increments of 400 milliseconds. Terhune and his colleagues looked to see how accurate the different groups of people were in reproducing those intervals, and found that the people in the LSD groups tended to hold down the space bar for significantly longer periods of time than the placebo condition. The researchers call this "over-reproduction." "Terhune says that they saw these changes in time perception without any major conscious effects from the drug," the report adds. "They asked people to report if they felt anything from taking the LSD, like perceptual distortions, unusual thoughts, if they felt high, or if it affected their concentration. There were a couple of weak effects, but statistically, the change in time perception happened independent of any subjective influence of the drug."
I wonder how the effects compare to Heptapod B, for changing time perception.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Way to tell anyone who has ever done LSD what they already know.
It's a drug, it fucks with your brain. How profound is it that effects your sense of time perception? Not at all.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I was thinking something similar. But Tfs stated that they asked if the participants noticed any effects like this.
Perhaps they should have had a 3 x3 foot panel with a hundred or so LEDs on it and asked the participants to shake their head back and forth to check for trails.
How is this news? In 2000 I took 6 tabs and we somehow stumbled across the South Park movie on TV. It lasted for eight hours and our chests hurt from laughing.
Acid makes 5 minutes feel like an hour. Did that need studying?
Since various Yuppie types have advocated taking microdosed LSD to increase their creativity at work, I wonder what affect this has on their ability to drive?
...and then...bunnies!...
...and if they were to do all these experiments in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in Psychopharmacology, we would find out an incredible amount of verifiable data about the brain (and LSD, ofc).
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
or it could just be the LSD....
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In laymen's terms, stoned.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Two years of my youth simply vanished, compared to my peers. Then three hours every Sunday.
Don’t get me started on the temple sessions where time moved so slowly that the only way to escape was by dozing.
No one has made a comment about Bandersnatch
You just broadcasted your cluelessness. Not only is LSD not addictive, it is self limiting. Tolerance increases extrremely rapidly. To get the same effects tomorrow as you experienced when you take 50 uGrams today you will need 500 the next day. While some have access to enough that they can trip repeatedly, nobody actually wants their high to last in permanence. IOW an LSD trip is a great place to visit, but you would *never* want to live there.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
LDS speeds up the refresh rate of your brain. You might "see" the object every 50ms normally. With LSD you "see" the object every 5ms; you're paying more attention more often, and we measure time by attention. 10x more views = 10x more time, give or take.
Sit in a bar and you'll see time fly by, sit in a meeting and you can watch seconds turn to hours.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is so true -- one hit today, means two tomorrow and three the day after that to get back to something like one had today.
My problem was always that the good part of acid didn't last long enough and the last half of the trip was always too long with all the good effects dwindled down. Taking more (even if it wasn't a second day trip) didn't really help, either -- the good part got more intense and maybe lasted longer, but the lingering effects lasted longer yet.
I mostly switched to mushrooms, which gave me mostly the same experience but with less "tail end" effect.
I haven't had acid in probably 25 years, but I'd do it again if I had some Xanax or something else to bring the whole thing to an end when I wanted it to end.