Nico Dosenbach, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, got to find out firsthand what happens to the brain when it’s on psychedelics. For science, of course.
He got a high dose of psilocybin from his colleagues — what else are friends for? — and as he started tripping, entombed himself in the claustrophobic confines of an MRI machine. At first, Dosenbach actually didn’t know whether he’d taken psilocybin or the stimulant Ritalin as a placebo, because his colleagues didn’t tell him which one it’d be.
That is, until he felt his brain turn into a computer.
"I was the computer tablet, and my thoughts were like computer thoughts, which of course makes no sense," Dosenbach told CNN . "I was aware this was not normal, but it wasn’t frightening."
This was done as part of a new study , published in the journal Nature and of which Dosenbach is a coauthor, to unlock the psychedelic secrets behind the active compound in magic mushrooms. Scientists — and dedicated trippers — have long wondered: how is it that psilocybin and drugs like it, like LSD, can distort our perception of space-time, induce ego death, and also perhaps be a promising therapeutic tool ?
According to what the researchers found, the drug may be causing these mind-melting effects by disrupting a key network of areas in our brain — namely the ones that are involved in introspective thinking, like daydreaming and remembering. As the study’s title puts it: "Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain."
"The idea is that you’re taking this system that’s fundamental to the brain’s ability to think about the self in relation to the world, and you’re totally desynchronizing it temporarily," study lead author Joshu Siegel, an instructor in psychiatry at WUS, said in a statement about the work .
And the lasting effects this has on our lumps of gray matter appear to be positive from a therapeutic point of view, boosting what’s known as plasticity, or our brain’s ability to change and grow.
"In the short term, this creates a psychedelic experience," Siegel added. "The longer-term consequence is […]
Scientist Takes High Dose of Psilocybin, Clambers Into MRI Machine to Scan His Own Brain
