Hey everyone,
I study Cognitive Neuropsychology in Amsterdam and aspiring to become a psychedelic researcher . My interests include Artificial Intelligence, Neurophilosophy and Predictive Processing. I'm here because I want to unload topics that keep me busy and to write about topics related to consciousness and neuroscience. I believe that psychedelic drugs can be used as powerful scientific tools that will provide unique insights as to how our brain produces consciousness. I am also an organizing member of the Amsterdam Psychedelic Research Assosciation (APRA), a group that seeks to promote the research of psychedelics to a wider audience. I am also in the process of organizing a field study that will test the cognitive effects of microdosing. Here is a quick introduction on the shape of things to come:
Psychedelic Science: Revisiting the Doors of Perception
“There are things known, and things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
-Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
When Aldous Huxley first took mescaline in 1954, he described his experience of ego-dissolution as a diminishing of the barriers between the known and the unknown. He obtained an obscure sense of knowledge about the infinite that lay beyond what he called the doors of perception. He proclaimed that psychedelics have a unique capability of exposing the narrowness of our internal representations to the vast and infinite beauty of the external world. Since Huxley wrote these epistemic descriptions, the psychedelic state has also become formalized within the paradigms of modern neuroscience, predictive processing amongst others. Neuroimaging studies show that psychedelics cause widespread changes the brains communication patterns . Most interesting is that fact that psychedelics increase the communication between different brain regions but decrease the communication within them [1]. This induces a wider and more diffuse set of conscious mental states [2]. Researchers (including me) are now interested to know whether these changes may result in enhanced creativity or present a therapeutic window to treat addiction, obsessive compulsive disorders and depression!
Predictive Processing: Perception is in the eyes of the beholder!
Predictive Processing has become a prominent theory in the field of cognitive neuroscience due to its large explanatory power that may potentially unify ideas that have divided scientists for many years. This paradigm views the brain as a prediction machine that constantly tries to explain away incoming bottom-up signals with top-down predictions in a manner that continuously tries to minimize the resulting prediction error. As Jean Piaget once put it, what we see changes what we know and what we know changes what we see. Or in other words, we are constantly conforming reality to what we have already experienced in the past. This theory has tremendous implications, especially if we pair it with psychedelics. If psychedelics drastically breaks down constraints on our prior knowledge , we may rediscover the world with new eyes and form new relationships with our environment!
Adapted from (Swanson, 2018) [3]
Googles DeepDream: Hallucination Machines
Most people are familiar with the trippy pictures generated by Google’s deep convolutional neural network, otherwise known asDeepDream[4]. But what are these images actually conveying? Is the network dreaming or tripping on acid? Let us take a step back. Google constructed this network to perform image classification; the network is fed thousands of pictures of dogs and houses in order to sort these two categories apart. This a form of supervised learning, which means that researchers must tell the network whenever it is doing somthing right or wrong. The network gradually adjusts its behavior based on this feedback and learns what we want it to do. Over time it can separate the pictures on account of their ‘houseness’ or ‘dogness’ better than humans. The network can be run backwards, hich produces some very trippy results.
Is this neural network actually doing somthing that our brains would do (on psychedelics)? This seems intuitively doubtful. After all, it learns completely differently than we do! We don’t require anybody lurking behind us, constantly telling us whether what we do is right or wrong. Even if we did learn like that, neural networks can update themselves on a global scale, whereas our brains have far more limited oversight which part of itself needs updating. Amazingly, scientists have found that the network activity does infact show a remarkable functional resemblance to what our brains are doing. This means that the information structures within our brains are organized in a manner that reflects the information processing properties of the environment. These networks can provide a proof of concept, regarding the theories I mentioned earlier.
]
Let me know if any of these topics have sparked your interest and tell me if you would like to read more about such topics in the future. Images were generated with deepdreamgenerator .
Best regards,
Yours truely, an aspiring Psyentist
Sources:
[1]: Carhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., ... & Nutt, D. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 20.
Entropic Brain Theory
[2]: Petri, G., Expert, P., Turkheimer, F., Carhart-Harris, R., Nutt, D., Hellyer, P. J., & Vaccarino, F. (2014). Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 11(101), 20140873.
Psilocybin & the Brain
[3]: Swanson, L. R. (2018). Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 9(172). doi:10.3389/fphar.2018.00172
Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects
[4]: Mordvintsev, A., Olah, C., & Tyka, M. (2015). Inceptionism: Going deeper into neural networks. Google Research Blog. Retrieved June, 20(14), 5.
Inceptionsim
Welcome :) Great you already found out about @steemstem, it will be of big help for your #science posts ;) Resteeming your for some publicity! Greets
Welcome to Steemit @psyentist!
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Oh yea, I have upvoted you and followed you. Many blessings from @introbot & @bycoleman
Hey @psyentist,
it is damn good to have you here with us. You will find quite a few fellow entheogenics ethusiasts here on steemit and I'm sure the steemSTEM community will take interest in your contributions. I am looking forward to reading your articles :)
The Doors of Perception had a big impact on me and I have re-read it 3 times since. By the way, do you know that Google has offered a Machine learning crash course to the public very recently?
Steem on!
Thanks, that course looks worthwhile!
The taboo on psychedelics is definitely a barrier when it comes to researching for medical usage.
Indeed, the ethical committees aren't always keen on allowing such research. However, the greater barrier is the lack of government funding. This is a shame because psychedelics show more promising efficacy than the classical antidepressants. The problem is that pharmaceutical companies can't own patents on psychedelics, so they won't invest in such research. Also there are serious profits in antidepressants (even if they don't work ).
This attitude toward psychedelics is thankfully being chipped away by the sharing of the very few studies that do receive funding or donations. I am a cognitive therapist for the geriatric population currently but am transitioning out of the healthcare industry and into research that can help support accurate information being shared with the public for the benefits and the risks associated with psychedelics so they may decide for themselves. I, too, want to progress the field of psychedelic-assisted therapies (and am also extremely interested in machine learning, as I am also a communication/learning therapist as well) because we do see so many unintended side effects from current approaches to complex medical conditions like depression. Your last statement prompted me to share my own review of some recent research in the hopes that you would review and share your thoughts, as my understanding is that antidepressants work a little too well, in the manner that they tend to knock out positive feelings instead of just negative feelings. I am looking forward to seeing more information about these topics on the platform!
Hey,
I had the pleasure of hearing the lecture from the Carhart-Harris group and the way I see it there are two vital factors as to why psychedelics can treat depression.
The first issue has to do what you have already mentioned in your post and in your review article. Psychedelics increase the reactivity of the Amygdala to both positive and negative stimuli. SSRI on the other hand seem to do the exact opposite. The reason why SSRI are perscribed so widely is because the therapeutic goal seems to be a general flattening of affect in order endure mental problems. So the therapeutic goal seems to be the suppression of mental problems.
Now psychedelics seem to do the opposite, so the idea here is to create a different therapeutic goal. What a lot of therapists are postulating is that psychedelics catalyze the process of confronting your mental problems. The therapeutic goal here is to overcome your problems by facing them full on. This is promising but also dangereous, because you have to make sure that the patient is ready to face his/her problems.
The second issue is the profound effects on the brains Default Mode Network. This network constitutes the brains central maintenance activity, presumabley for functions such as autobiographic memory and memory consolidation. In depression this network seems to be overactive, which corresponds to depressed patients constantly ruminating over themselves. There is the expression, one cannot escape their own thoughts. Depressed people also tend to have a pronounced negativity bias towards others.
Psychedelics tend to decrease Default Mode Network activity, which is why they may help people escape their own thoughts. Ketamine is thought to be effective for the very same reason. I'm not a clinician but those are my two cents. Hope to have more of such conversations!
Fantastic, thanks for taking the time to check it out. I am so motivated to help make it possible for patients to have these options to consider when faced with debilitating disorders like depression. I use mindfulness training to guide patients away from the loop that occurs in the default mode network currently, to optimize their safety awareness, problem solving, body awareness to help out with rehabilitation program and it has fantastic impacts for those that seek to utilize it. The longer-term effects observed with psychedelic-assisted therapies is extremely promising for sustaining improved quality of life for patients, which could help relieve some of the strain on overburdened health providers that treat populations like veterans or the elderly.
I am looking forward to more discussions as well!
Yes, there is also research from Milan Scheidegger which shows that psychedelics can also increase mindfulness. So there probably is some overlap between psychedelic and mindful states, but I'm not a mindfullness expert per se.
Oh wow, I'm sure we will have lots to discuss! I assume you are familiar with the work of Peter Gasser?
I enjoyed reading your article. I do not have any knowledge of Cognitive Neuropsychology, but as a physicist I was always fascinated by concept of consciousness (I read some articles about some quantum-mechanical attempts when it comes to explaining of consciousness, and I had a brief discussion with Sir Roger Penrose about it.
I was very fascinated with this information: "Most interesting is that fact that psychedelics increase the communication between different brain regions but decrease the communication within them [1]. This induces a wider and more diffuse set of conscious mental states [2]. "
When you say "psychedelics", on which psychedelics do you mean exactly?
Hello,
Psychedelics are indeed a bit vague as a category, as psychedelic substances are often categorized along phenomenological critera. So some people may even include ketamine and MDMA as psychedelics. Most psychedelics however, seem to enact the seretonergic pathway, namely the 5-HT2A receptor amongst others. These are an evolutionarily new group of receptors and they seem to fullfill modulatory functions.
When researcher say 'psychedelics' this commonly refers to mescaline, 2-CB, LSD, Psilocybin, Aya huasca and DMT, because these all enact the 5-HT2A receptor and because these are the most well studied substances up to date. On the darkweb you will probably find many other psychedelic substances but these are considered too risky for human testing. The classic psychedelics have been around for quite a while, so they aren't considered that dangerous.
I would like to write a more extensive blog post about the network properties of the brain on psychedelics and explain how the effects can be broken down into physical terms such as 'entropy'. I would add that these are still only adressing the soft-problem of consciousness and not the hard-problem. Quantum explanations aren't being actively pursued in my field, these usually resonate more with philosophers who argue for panpsychism.
Thanks for your feedback!
Great to have you here! Really looking forward to the conversations we can have, as this is an area that I'd love to know more about.
Thanks for the encouragement!
I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Welcome to steemit :)
I'll keep an eye out for your future posts. Psychedelics and their research fascinate me.
Thanks, between kickstarting my own research I want to write thourogh informative articles. I'll try my best to deliver!
Welcome to you!
Oh, great! I just looked you up to find your blog posts and now I read this! Very very interesting.
I will take my time and read it with joy and in silence.
What I want to ask before that: you certainly are familiar with Dr. Rick Strassman?
And knowing Aldous Huxley's work you also might have been led to Alan Watts. I am really delighted to meet you and what your field provides.
I will come back later on, for sure, and leave you also what I think about this particular article. :-)
Yes of course, it's hard not know Strassman in this field and yes I love listening to Alan Watts before falling asleep. He has very southing thoughts. Thanks!
LOL, I do that, too. I guess I am already in the third round or so, emptied youtube, so to speak.
I would like to add even though psychedelics might help to ease depression it probably will not cure it. I, of course, don't know. My assumption is that depressed people need other people and a lot more to overcome a depression. But I am really interested in the outcomes of research and what it might do good.
During a normal working week, I talk regularly to clients with either diagnosed depression or I can see that they are depressed. Just today I talked to an elderly woman and as it was not so busy as usual I had time to have a relaxed talk with her. She left way more cheered than she came. It was so good to support her and I learned another story as well.
Hey,
This could be a topic in its own right. No I don't think psychedelics will 'cure' depression, which is why I tend to say treat it instead :D . The interesting thing with psychedelics is that the positive clinical effects are sometimes only present when the patients actively strive towards positive clinical goals. Our current medical standards aren't particularly compatible with such notions because we generally expect our medicines to work regardless of whether people want it or not. So I think the general question is, can mental problems be cured in general? To what extent is a mental 'problem' a part of ones very personality? Is there a necessary amount of suffering?
These are all issues on account of which I wouldn't proclaim mental cures in the same sense I would call somthing a cure for cancer. But there are people who are resistent to all other forms of treatment and for these individuals I think psychedelics would bring the greatest benefit. So I agree with you, I wouldn't want to promote any miracle cures, but I do believe in opening therapeutic windows :D .
This post has received a 0.15 % upvote from @speedvoter thanks to: @chriddi.
Hey and welcome here, fellow researcher!
Yes, I am very interested in reading more about your research!
I saw you already included the #steemstem tag, which is nice. You should continue to do so when writing science, and also join our discord chat some time!
Also, there is this great guide that I usually recommend to new steemians, that really covers a lot of the usual questions around our platform.
Upvoted/followed, and cya around!
Nice, I'd love to engage with fellow scientists :D
Hello! Great to see a new user with potential!
Feel free to write me on discord anytime you have a new article with good quality! I am dedicatedguy there as well. I will leave you another comment to invite you to a community in which you can receive good support.
Cheers mate!
You have been scouted by @promo-mentors. We are a community of new and veteran Steemians and we are always on the look out for promising authors.
I would like to invite you to our discord group https://discord.gg/SjXdM6K
When you are there send me a message if you get lost! (My Discord name is the same as here on Steemit)
PS: let me know if the invitation link works ok.
Seems to work yes, don't know how many new responsibilities I wanna take up atm though :D
Don't worry, there is no responsibility, this is just to give proper support to new promising authors.
Welcome on Steemit, fellow psychonaut ;) I resteemed your post to help you to get known in the community and I follow you. I like the book "Doors of Perception" a lot. If you ever come to Berlin have a visit @kaliberlin. This is a psychedelic bookshop @sature me and another friend opened in Berlin <3
Yes I saw it on a facebook post by the MIND foundation. I will probably be at the Insight conference this September!
Hello friend (soon to be).
I think you would greatly enjoy meeting two people very dear to me: Dr. Dirk Proeckl and Dr. Engelbert Winkler, they are the creators of the neuro-stimulating light that I use with my clients. It provides quick access into a colorful, vast, internal expanse within one's own consciousness. The experience is subtle and profound, at the same time.
The light I reference is believed to stimulate endogenous dimethyltryptamine levels above what monoamine oxidase in your body eats up. Really cool tech and the guys who created it are very approachable. Followed and Upvoted you today.
Nice, I haven't tried that one yet. I'm also curious about sensory deprivation tanks. Too bad you can't do any fMRI studies with those :D
Big challenges to monitoring while under the light would include being able to direct the light onto the eyelids during scanning and all of the magnetic fields it would generate. There's no reason scans can't be done before and after. My understanding is that Dirk and Engelbert worked with a Neurologist in Sweden and used an EEG with a graphic interface that provided them with a good bit of data.
Here's a link a link to a peer reviewed study on the Lucia No.3 originating at the University of Sussex called: EEG Functional Connectivity and Phenomenology of Induced Dissociative States. It sounds like it might be a fun read for you.
Let me know if I can ever answer anything about our experiences. We have been using the technology for about 3.5 years and think it's pretty nifty (medical terminology).
Oh... I reSteemed you also. Welcome to the community!
Cool, thanks for the support!
Welcome to Steemit, look forward to hearing about your ideas and research. A family friend of ours in Maine tripped with Aldus Huxley once.
I really enjoy the images here. And yes I have first hand experience with treating depression with psychedelics, as do some friends I know. Someone I met recently went to a site in Costa Rica for an ayahuasca ceremony and he went on to tell me how it changed his life, its something I am considering now myself. Welcome aboard, ill be following!
Welcome Friend. Recommenced reading?
The Futurologic Congress by Stansilaw Lem :D , or dou you mean somthing scientific?
Any books you would recommend at all! :)
The Psychedelic Renessaince from Ben Sessa, The Doors of Perception (if thats even worth mentioning(.
I’m excited for my first ayahuasca ceremony next month. Everything up until then has been a wonderful experience for me.
Welcome to Steemit!
Thanks!
Psyentist! Brilliant!
GREAT to SEE you! I guess, welcome aboard the Steemit Train! You are already a great blessing to us all by being on this platform with us.All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Thanks!
Wow, great to see a psychedelic researcher here on Steemit! Me myself covered DMT and psilosibin research, so I am more than happy to follow your work :)