A team of researchers from Imperial College London, in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation, have visualized for the first time the effects of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in the human brain. Through a series of experiments, scientists have gained insight into how the psychedelic compound affects brain activity.
The experts administered 75 micrograms of LSD to 20 healthy participants and used various brain scanning techniques (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography) to visualize how LSD altered the way the brain functions. The results reveal what happens in the brain when people experience complex visual hallucinations often associated with the state that LSD produces.
Under normal conditions, the information perceived by the eyes is processed in the visual cortex; however, with LSD, many additional areas other than the visual cortex contributed to the visual processing of information.
“ We have observed changes in the brain under LSD that suggest that our volunteers were able to see with their eyes closed; that is , they were seeing things from their imagination, observing that there were many more areas of the brain than normal that were contributing to the visual processing under LSD -even though the volunteers had their eyes closed- ”, explains Robin Carhart- Harris, study leader.
Another of the fields observed in the brain was that the separation of the networks that carry out specialized and independent functions such as movement, hearing or vision, remained more integrated or unified under the effects of LSD. The separation of the networks disappeared, showing a profound alteration of consciousness.
” Our brains become more limited and compartmentalized as we develop, from infancy to adulthood, and we can become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature. In many ways, the brain with LSD resembles to the state in which our brain was when we were children: free and without restrictions ”, clarifies Carhart-Harris.
The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
