Drug hallucinations look real in the brain

[MelCat]

An article from 2011 about aya visions and MRI scans.

Drug hallucinations look real in the brain

The visions induced by an Amazonian brew used by shamans may be as real as anything the eyes actually see, according to brain scans of frequent users of the drug.

Draulio de Araujo of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, and colleagues recruited 10 frequent users of the brew – called ayahuasca. They asked the volunteers to look at images of people or animals while their brains were scanned using functional MRI, then asked the volunteers to close their eyes and imagine they were still viewing the image. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that neural activity in the primary visual cortex dropped off when volunteers imagined seeing the image rather than actually viewing it.

But when the team then gave the volunteers a dose of ayahuasca and repeated the experiment, they found that the level of activity in the primary visual cortex was virtually indistinguishable when the volunteers were really viewing an image and when they were imagining it. This means visions seen have a real, neurological basis, says de Araujo – they are not made up or imagined.

Michael Brammer, head of the brain imaging unit at King's College London, says the study's statistics appear to indicate something relatively robust. However, he says it's difficult to pin down whether the eyes-closed responses on the drug are quantitatively the same as normal, eyes-open neural activity. "Functional MRI is not a one-to-one mapping of cerebral activity. If it were, things would be easier," he says.

Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial College London has done similar fMRI work using the "magic mushroom" hallucinogen psilocybin. He says the results also have practical implications, such as for the application of psychedelics in psychotherapy.

Ayahuasca may also find its way into the psychiatrist's drug kit. The pharmacology of its ingredients tallies with the way some conventional drugs work; because of this, researchers are interested in ayahuasca's potential for treating addiction, depression or conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the brew's two ingredients is the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which contains chemicals that act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors – a major class of antidepressant drugs. The other ingredient is the shrub Psychotria viridis: it contains the powerful hallucinogen DMT (dimethyltryptamine), which acts on the mood-altering serotonergic system, the target of antidepressants such as Prozac.

 

[brokin]

Antidepressants ? Are you serious.

Pills for depression Is like a pill for getting over a divorce or some sort of emotional problem.

You are only masking and destroying a possible problem which could have had some very creative or positive endings to it.You could just take DMT, why the hell use some pills?
There are some very constructive feelings and emotions, blocking them means blocking progress.You can't take a pill for every problem you have.Although they would be very happy if you could.
If anyone would really care about your health they would give you the pills freely.But they don't they want you to struggle to work a lifetime and at the end get some usual chronic disease and get some more profit out of your guts.
Well let me tell you MONEY!!!Pills require your money.DMT doesn't.


And give DMT to a blind person ALLREADY!!!

 

[corpus callosum]

^^I think that the term 'depression' is used for a whole range of psychological disquiet and antidepressants do get used quite often inappropriately when the normal vicissitudes of life become 'medicalised'.Some people have crappy lives for which antidepressants are used, and unsurprisingly have little beneficial action.Having a partner whose been cheating, being unable to pay your bills , children running amok, noisy neighbours.......the list goes on.But, this should not obscure the fact that antidepressants, whilst still pretty crude in their ability to correct the underlying neurochemical upset (which is still not fully understood), can and do have a useful role in some patients.

This age of financial chaos and the modern desire for a quick fix ensures these agents are not going to disappear any time soon.DMT and the other psychedelics are likely to be beneficial in some depressed patients but I doubt they will be a panacea for all who are thus afflicted.Even if the psychedelics do become available for psychiatrists/physicians to prescribe they are going to have a financial cost attached to them, and to get the best out of these agents, the patient would need a guide to allow them to make the experience beneficial.

Each patient is an individual with their own story and baggage and to serve them as well as possible, their case needs considering individually and the treatment plan should be constructed with this in mind.Because of this, one cannot say that SSRIs, or tricyclics, or even psychedelics is the blanket answer for 'depression'.

Good article ,MelCat, thanks for posting it.

 

[jamie]

can you really just imagine seeing something and then see it with ayahuasca? I mean this study is interesting for sure, but from my experience I just dont get what the hell they are talking about. I cant just imagine something and have it appear when I am laying out floored with the tea..I cant will myself to see something..the visions come to me and they are often weirder than I can imagine. Sitting there and looking at a picture of a lion, and then closing my eyes saying " I want to see a lion" and then seeing a lion while peaking on ayahuasca sounds just weird to me.

I can understand though how the visual cortex would be just as active though as it is when looking at something while sober..just that the visions for me are not so mundane as looking at a picture, closing my eyes and then viewing the same picture. I wonder if these people ever drank ayahuasca themselves.

The visions are, in a way more real than real. I would not be surprised if the neural activity surpasses that of sober consciousness.

 

[universecannon]

can you really just imagine seeing something and then see it with ayahuasca? I mean this study is interesting for sure, but from my experience I just dont get what the hell they are talking about. I cant just imagine something and have it appear when I am laying out floored with the tea..I cant will myself to see something..the visions come to me and they are often weirder than I can imagine. Sitting there and looking at a picture of a lion, and then closing my eyes saying " I want to see a lion" and then seeing a lion while peaking on ayahuasca sounds just weird to me.

well i don't think the study said they actually see it with eyes closed- just that the visual cortex showed activity equal to that of actually seeing it. aya definitely turns on ones ability to visualize

what you described though does happen to me sometimes when i take high doses of harmalas with melatonin, especially with cannabis added in. Its not so much willing it and saying "show me this" (although that can work ime), but following a train of thought and giving the imagination a gentle shove.. then sort of stepping aside as the right brain steps in and goes on a sort of dreamy auto-pilot where i eventually will be sort of shocked and realize i'm actually seeing what i was thinking about, and i hadn't even realized it. it can be simple images but often its just too wierd to to language well. once i realize i'm actually seeing it i often snap out of it like with normal harmalas dreams and the thing fades with eyes open just like an after-image

i think this is something that can be worked out like a muscle and is just a different mode of consciousness where mind manifests more fully into awareness. in wizard of the upper amazon the shaman invokes several animals when first teaching Rios how to use aya, and they see them clear as day. i don't know if people remember, but terence also mentioned suggesting things to it (art deco, etc) and then visually witnessing it. This also sort of seems related to this whole glossolalia/visual language bit he would rap about

 

[EKUMA1981]

Sounds like the DMT entities and Hyperspace may be REAL after all. These entheogens maybe enable the brain to tune into other realities and allow the user to communicate with exotic beings. This is what I've suspected for a while.

I really thought other researchers (especially Ufologists, SETI enthusiasts, exo-biologists) would have seriously looked into this and tried to determine what exactly is going on.

I think we may see other 'evidence' in the near future that this phenomenon is more than just a hallucination or creative visualisations. Something profound is happening when users take this special drug, I'm sure!!

 

[Citta]

Sounds like the DMT entities and Hyperspace may be REAL after all. These entheogens maybe enable the brain to tune into other realities and allow the user to communicate with exotic beings. This is what I've suspected for a while.

I really thought other researchers (especially Ufologists, SETI enthusiasts, exo-biologists) would have seriously looked into this and tried to determine what exactly is going on.

I think we may see other 'evidence' in the near future that this phenomenon is more than just a hallucination or creative visualisations. Something profound is happening users take this special drug, I'm sure!!

This study doesn't suggest this at all really, and I would be careful to draw such conclusions from it. All it says is that from the point of view of a functional MRI scan, the observations of the visual cortex on ayahuasca are more or less indistinguishable from the observations without ayahuasca. This does not mean that the visions themselves represent anything that is independent of the individual person, i.e having an objective existence, such as the pictures do. All it suggests is that the brain reacts as though it would actually have received external stimuli. The same applies to REM sleep, during which brainwaves speeds up to awake levels - the brain is working just as hard as if you were awake. But this doesn't mean your dreams are happening outside your own head, does it?

The results from the experiment is not a huge surprise when you come to think of it either, as the psychoactive constituents of ayahuasca triggers this area, among others, in the brain. Neurons are stimulated. It also isn't so weird when you think about how profound the visions are subjectively. It does after all, feel more real than real. Finding the brain to be unable to distinguish these two situations is not a huge bomb.

As jamie also suggested, the neuroactivity is actually a lot stronger in many parts of the brain during these experiences because of the massive stimulation of neurons DMT produce. They buzz like hell and give off signals they aren't normally supposed to, and they do this without external stimuli. As the brain attempts to sort all of this information due to overstimulation out, I find it difficult to rationally assume this represents something outside our heads. Our brain is capable of producing vivid experiences during dream states that are indistinguishable from daily reality after all, and during massive stimulation due to an ingested drug it should come as no surprise that the brain produces states that are just as, or even more, vivid and profound. Not to say that these experiences are just hallucinations, because they are more personal and potentially life-changing, but to assume you actually visit some crazy worlds and talk to autonomous entities is currently too much of a long shot, and reminds me more of wishful thinking than anything else.

Whatever the nature of these experiences, they are important for sure, and we can't rule out the possibility that they represent something more than pure subjectivity, but there is currently not much of a rational foundation to assume otherwise.

 

[Vodsel]

Thank you MelCat, I found this article some time ago and for some reason I thought it had been already posted in the Nexus.

Leaving here the whole research text for whoever is interested.

 

[MelCat]

Awesome, thanks for the added info Vodsel.

 

[InMotion]

Ah yea this isn't really surprising at all. Dreams also show up with activity from the visual cortex. Sleep also has similar response times and activity as comatose(brain-dead) persons when 'probed' with electromagnetic stimulation. I am sure similarly as people on very high-doses of psychedelics and persons experiencing NDE's as well as death experiences.

Yea I can certainly interact/shape the psychedelic experience if I can maintain a sense of mental lucidity during the experience. At higher doses of course this isn't an option. I do find it funny that the psychedelic experience can turn 'dark' when I suggest things to it and they don't occur, as a sort of superceded amplified reflex of 'not having control' over the mind. With those doses it seems best to surrender to the experience and subconscious.

It is interesting how much dreams parallel the psychedelic experience. Fall asleep pissed off and you'll probably only recall a struggle dream, go into the psy experience with a bunch of baggage as a new user and you'll get swamped in it. However if I repeat happy thoughts before bed or get my mind right and setting ready for a psychedelic experience in general it's smooth and beautiful. It seems the lucidity and familiarity of the subconscious in these states can be a big game changer as well. The dream allegory is not completely in parrallel as dreams seem to serve an evolutionary and survival role rather then does taking say an entheogen(generating the divine from with-in). As Entheogens have direct activity on certain receptor sites in the brain generating some characteristic effects this way. Such as the differences between DMT, LSD, and say PCP for example.

This article suggests nothing that the psychedelic experience itself is 'real'. At least not real in the sense than what I see often implied on this forum. Entities are very real as manifestations and anthropomorphic hallucinations of the mind. Fractal hallucinations can be pretty easily explained, same with tunnel vision and bright white light, at least to my limited understanding. In fact there's even mathematical models for some subsets of drug induced hallucinations.

Never-the-less I'm glad to see that they finally put some tripping people into MRI's. Must have been a weird experience for the participants!