Jagube
Esteemed member
Some of the effects I experience on Iboga show how amazing the human brain is. Just a couple of examples:
- I hear songs (or more generally audio 'tracks' ) from childhood I didn't know I remembered, e.g. TV commercials from nearly 30 years ago, in great detail. This would suggest we store in our memory literally everything we experience and when we can't recall something it's not because our memory of it has faded, but rather our brain has marked it as less important (after not using it for a long time) and is less likely to bring it to our consciousness, kind of like when we don't use an item but don't want to throw it away, we store it away in the basement or somewhere similar, so it's still in our house, but it's unlikely we'll see it again.
- When I put an eye mask on and open my eyes under the mask, I can see the room as if I wasn't wearing the mask. My interpretation is that my brain reconstructs the room with all the objects (ceiling lamp, furniture etc.) based on its memory of the image of the actual room seen earlier. It also uses proprioception, because the image moves when I move my head, and even is updated accordingly when I wave my hand before my (covered) eyes: I see the waving hand with my brain, not with my eyes. It's amazing that the brain can do that - completely subconsciously and without my knowledge - to the point it can trick my conscious mind into thinking I'm seeing it with my eyes when in fact it's a complex, high-resolution, interactive reproduction that even a modern computer would struggle to compute in real time.
I've recently read about people possessing amazing skills e.g. as a result of brain lesions, like absolute photographic memory whereby someone can see an image once and subsequently draw the same image in great detail. It's hypothesized we all have those skills, but in normal brains there is some sort of inhibition going on. When a lesion damages an area causing such inhibition, an amazing skill may suddenly be 'gained'.
This reminded me of the song hearing on Iboga. The songs have been in my memory all the time, but some mechanism in my brain marked them as material of low importance and caused me to 'forget' them - and for a good reason: I wouldn't want irrelevant material I've seen or heard once to bombard my consciousness forever (along with all the other things I've seen or heard), so there needs to be some selectiveness based on importance and relevance, hence the mechanism of forgetting. But when I take Iboga, the plant switches that off temporarily and selectively... it's like a trip to the basement / attic / shed where you discover things you had forgotten you had. And after dusting off, that old photograph of you as a 5 year old kid is like new.
- I hear songs (or more generally audio 'tracks' ) from childhood I didn't know I remembered, e.g. TV commercials from nearly 30 years ago, in great detail. This would suggest we store in our memory literally everything we experience and when we can't recall something it's not because our memory of it has faded, but rather our brain has marked it as less important (after not using it for a long time) and is less likely to bring it to our consciousness, kind of like when we don't use an item but don't want to throw it away, we store it away in the basement or somewhere similar, so it's still in our house, but it's unlikely we'll see it again.
- When I put an eye mask on and open my eyes under the mask, I can see the room as if I wasn't wearing the mask. My interpretation is that my brain reconstructs the room with all the objects (ceiling lamp, furniture etc.) based on its memory of the image of the actual room seen earlier. It also uses proprioception, because the image moves when I move my head, and even is updated accordingly when I wave my hand before my (covered) eyes: I see the waving hand with my brain, not with my eyes. It's amazing that the brain can do that - completely subconsciously and without my knowledge - to the point it can trick my conscious mind into thinking I'm seeing it with my eyes when in fact it's a complex, high-resolution, interactive reproduction that even a modern computer would struggle to compute in real time.
I've recently read about people possessing amazing skills e.g. as a result of brain lesions, like absolute photographic memory whereby someone can see an image once and subsequently draw the same image in great detail. It's hypothesized we all have those skills, but in normal brains there is some sort of inhibition going on. When a lesion damages an area causing such inhibition, an amazing skill may suddenly be 'gained'.
This reminded me of the song hearing on Iboga. The songs have been in my memory all the time, but some mechanism in my brain marked them as material of low importance and caused me to 'forget' them - and for a good reason: I wouldn't want irrelevant material I've seen or heard once to bombard my consciousness forever (along with all the other things I've seen or heard), so there needs to be some selectiveness based on importance and relevance, hence the mechanism of forgetting. But when I take Iboga, the plant switches that off temporarily and selectively... it's like a trip to the basement / attic / shed where you discover things you had forgotten you had. And after dusting off, that old photograph of you as a 5 year old kid is like new.