New Study Shows How LSD Affects Your Brain
Researchers from Imperial College London have become the first team to visualize the effects of LSD on the brain.
A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has shown what exactly happens in the human brain during visual hallucinations caused by LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide). The researchers gave doses of LSD, also known as acid, to 20 volunteers and then used brain scanning techniques to visualize how the chemical alters the brain.
Of particular interest is the discovery that during an LSD trip the volunteers brains were contributing to visual processing in a new and unique way. “We observed brain changes under LSD that suggested our volunteers were ‘seeing with their eyes shut’ – albeit they were seeing things from their imagination rather than from the outside world,” said Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial. “We saw that many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD – even though the volunteers’ eyes were closed. Furthermore, the size of this effect correlated with volunteers’ ratings of complex, dreamlike visions.”
Carhart-Harris explains that typically independent networks within the brain perform separate specialized tasks, but under the influence of LSD there is no separation between these networks and instead, a more unified brain.
“Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience. It is also related to what people sometimes call ‘ego-dissolution’, which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world,” Carhart-Harris explained. What he described is also sometimes known as an “ego-death.”
The researchers also discovered that LSD seems to reset users’ brains to a state not unlike an infant. “In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained. This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant’s mind.”
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