"At the conference, they reported new findings on how these drugs scramble brain activity in ways that might help explain their mind-bending effects."
mind-bending .. as spacetime ..bending .. curving spacetime ..
mind space .. as any other kind of space .. whatever its ..flavour .. combined with ..time .. as spacetime .. something like ..mind spacetime .. you have another approach to provide an explanation to the aforesaid effects of the hallucinogenic drugs ..
Einsteins .. relativity in mind space ..
Image: Taís Melillo/Flickr
cooollll...
"Araújo’s team found that ayahuasca reduces neural activity in something called the default mode network, an web of interconnected brain regions that fire up whenever people aren’t focused on any specific task. It’s active when people daydream or let their minds wander, for example."
.. default mode network .. a web of interconnected brain regions that fire up whenever people aren’t focused on any specific task ..
.. reduces ..neural activity in the default mode network ..and as a result of this reduction .. the psychedelic effects(??) ..
"Scientists don’t really know what it does, but they love to speculate. One interpretation is that activity in this network may represent what we experience as our internal monologue and may help generate our sense of self."
network .. and as such ..it has been identified .. may represent .. internal monologue .. or ..in some sense ..a dialogue .. with an ..un-identified ..participant .. or even ..participants .. generate our sense of ..self .. out of the ..self(s) ..
..out of the whole is more than the sum of its parts .. approach .. kind of dialogue-monologue .. hell .. why not ..loads-a conversations going on there ..
self ..as such ..its meaning .. how it is derived .. the self ..the product out of self-referential processes .. the self ..out of self-referential ..
.. the equation derived state .. after each bout of a self-referring process .. always changing to reflect the outcome of the current referring process ..
only to last for as long the next process in the self-referential loop ..takes to complete .. the unit of time .. there are no limits .. even to quantum scales .. as small it can be ..
cybernetics .. concept arriving processes .. procedures ..
Open Your Mind to the New Psychedelic Science | Wired Science | Wired.com
Neuroscience: Idle minds : Nature News & Comment
"Last year, British scientists reported that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, like ayahuasca, reduces activity in the brain’s default mode network."
.. reduces activity .. neural .. and ..in .. in the brain’s default mode network.. again .. discrete .. specific .. that holds the key .. in understanding the findings ..
"The researchers proposed that interfering with the default network could be how psychedelic drugs cause what users often describe as a disintegration of the self, or even a sense of oneness with the universe."
.. disintegration of self .. sense of oneness with the universe ..
(..what came to my mind now .. the approach .. the attitude ..ingrained ..in us .. to deny this dimension of human activity its comeuppance .. its use and usefulness ..out of an arbitrary measure based upon the worthiness imposed by religion, self-righteous societies .. hypocriting in the sense that what does not serve a purpose worthy of the standards, imposed shove it under the carpet .. it does not suit our ideas about the human being ..)
.. disintegration of self .. sense of oneness with the universe .. the reduction in neural activity in this
..default network .. brings about .. disintegration of self .. self aggregated ..out of its parts .. integrated .. into a whole .. that process is ..inhibited .. stalled .. the self remain in ..scattered .. into its pieces .. and in that state .. the sense of oneness with the universe .. achieved .. claimed as been achieved ..
"The results suggest psilocybin affects not only the default mode network, but also disrupts a certain type of rhythmic brain activity."
..disrupts a certain type of rhythmic brain activity..
"Individual subjects who experienced more of this desychronization while on the drug tended to report a greater subjective sense of disintegration. ”For me this is the most interesting observation of the lot,” Carhart-Harris said. “Our sense of self, the sense of being someone, really is a kind of an illusion. All we are is a product of our brain activation.”"
desychronization.. synchronisation ..being the process that the disparate parts coalesce into the whole .. the self .. and as such is .. desynchronised .. therefore ..disintegration ..of self .. self as such ..self-dom .. the process (..or the outcome of..) that separates us .. detaches ..us from the oneness of the universe .. in a sense denies us .. the oneness ..and the hallucinogenic drugs ..disrupts that process .. assists in the disruption ..
the state(s) that ..it allows us to be .. illusions .. hallucinations .. deemed as ..
but ..
..our sense of self, the sense of being someone, really is a kind of an illusion. .. the reality ..turns out to be the ..illusion .. turns heads ..upside down ..
.. all we are is a product of our brain activation..
product ..mass produced .. outcome .. processes ..machinery .. brain .. activated ..on-line ..
attempting to make sense .. passing it through my filters ..
Psilocybin Study Hints at Rebirth of Hallucinogen Research | Wired Science | Wired.com
"Formerly the focus of academic and government inquiry, hallucinogens were abandoned by researchers in the aftermath of the Sixties, when rampant recreational abuse frightened authorities and the drugs became culturally intertwined with chemical excess. But with a small but growing number of researchers now studying hallucinogens, the once-promising field is alive again."
.. when rampant recreational abuse frightened authorities and the drugs became culturally intertwined with chemical excess ..
abuse .. frightened authorities .. culturally intertwined with chemical excess .. the mindless brute ..the human .. treated ..beneath .. combined with lack of information .. un-armed by knowledge .. the authorities the proverbial ..watchdog ..hound ..built out of perpetual distrust of people .. determined to adhere to standards put forth by their enlightened members ..know-all individuals .. themselves ..heaped in ignorance ..all that they represent simply a facade ..
and the people that are treated as dirt .. behave like dirt .. a self-fulfilling process ..
one that could be seen even in the current revival of the study of the hallucinogenic drugs .. the ..yesterday's ..dirt .. become the enlightened of today's .. the mix of people reported that attended the conference in 2010 .. which was not the usual cohort attending scientific conferences ..
"In 2008 Griffiths and his team at Johns Hopkins reported that the majority of 36 ordinary people who took psilocybin for the first time in an 8-hour session in his lab still regarded the experience as one of the five most personally meaningful events of their lives more than a year later. Two-thirds of them rated it among their top five spiritual experiences."
"More recently, Griffiths surveyed 1,600 recreational psilocybin and found that 40 percent ranked the experience in their top five most personally meaningful."
..personally meaningful.. meaning .. for selves .. actively engaging into .. the process to make sense out of events we are engaged in .. achieve meaning .. understanding why we have engaged\are engaging .. judging ..assessing the impact upon self ..
less .. 'I don't know's' .. as we progress through life .. and more ..'I know's' ..
and that meaning achieved .. carried on in life .. directs one's future engagements .. profoundly ..
"The classic psychedelics, including psilocybin and LSD, stimulate receptors for serotonin, a neurotransmitter that’s also targeted, albeit in different ways, by approved antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs like Prozac and Zoloft."
Psilocybin. Image: Jynto/Wikimedia Commons
The default mode network and self-referential processes in depression
"The recently discovered default mode network (DMN) is a group of areas in the human brain characterized, collectively, by functions of a self-referential nature. In normal individuals, activity in the DMN is reduced during nonself-referential goal-directed tasks, in keeping with the folk-psychological notion of losing one's self in one's work."
.. functions of a self-referential nature .. self-referential processes .. the groundwork for chaos .. deterministic chaos .. as all chaos related processes are.. even just for lack of evidence ..against .. merely the absence of knowledge ..at the current state that knowledge is ..
avoiding ..dipping into chaos .. feared .. scared of .. and that is ..that what ..DMN .. represents .. the default mode network .. the group of areas in the human brain .. scientifically specified ..
..and by being ..default .. or merely ..claimed as such .. as we will always end up there .. only if we take our mind of .. engage in ..non-self-referential tasks .. towards achieving goals .. set out as ..meaningful(?) .. making money(?) .. loose one's self in one's work .. deemed as ..
what have been called as well ..as existential problems .. doubting our own existence .. meaningless .. and the anxiety it brings out .. the depressive moods .. lingering into states of loosing one's own mind .. the oneness equated to ..nothingness .. an onslaught of despair ..and oblivion ..
the disintegration of self ..healing ..provides experiences ..otherworldly ..presumably ..
avails an informed approach .. self-learning ..self-engaging ..active-ly.. knowing why
work .. as a means of defense for the individual .. work presents itself as a necessity ..
people in society delving into stupor .. the fear authorities are engulfed in ..see it as a threat .. but for people is .. see it as a soul-searching endeavour ..mystical experiences .. mystical in need to be ..demystified
"Imaging and anatomical studies in major depression have found alterations in both the structure and function in some regions that belong to the DMN, thus, suggesting a basis for the disordered self-referential thought of depression."
.. the disordered self-referential thought of depression ..
.. they ask the wrong question .. there is a fault in the question .. and it would only produce false results ..
the self-referential term adheres to the DMN .. the DMN by their definition is self-deferential and as such makes it chaotic ..and is disordered by nature .. and it does exist in all human individuals .. but do not all humans suffer from depression .. depression arising out of the circumstances each individual finds self in ..
..should be accepted ..that this is our nature .. as it has been since we set foot upon this planet ..or better since our consciousness ..kicked in .. and elevated us to the current status we are in today ..
and this nature of ourselves ..has driven us to constantly make meaningful our life events .. first at a personal level and by that to the next stage to the collective level ..and that is how knowledge have amassed ..
and that is every individual's potential
depression kicks in when the individual does not fulfill the potential carried .. when society treats the individual like a cog in a machine .. alienate the individual from its very self .. do not allow individual to delve deeper into self .. to gain knowledge for self .. to achieve meaning for self ..
..something that can be achieved ..if armed with knowledge ..
