Communication between brain networks in people given psilocybin

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/magic-mushroom-brain/

by eksith • 12 years ago

189 97 12 years ago

jeremysmyth2• 12 years ago

The article's title is somewhat misleading, because it talks about how one of the main chemicals (psilocybin) temporarily creates or encourages connections between typically unconnected parts of the brain. The effect is temporary, and reverts when the drug wears off.

This is not to be confused with earlier findings that are more permanent but are psychological rather than neurological in effect, such as those found at http://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personality... and http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/p...

Raphmedia2• 12 years ago

Time for an anecdotal experience.

I tried psilocybin once and I had a great time. However, I strongly feel like it changed me. The problem is that I've never been someone that felt depressed. I'm a "the glass is half full" kind of guy.

Well, you hear all over how psilocybin can help people who are depressed. For me, it was quite the opposite. I woke up in the morning, and I couldn't even get out of the bed. Work felt like a chore. This lasted a few months, and it was horrible. The only thing that got me through it was the thought that this wasn't me. This was chemicals in my brain. I was a positive person, I could be again. I could be myself again.

Anyway, fast forward to now, I feel a lot better. My outlook on life really changed, and I'm sure people could say that I act differently. I don't regret trying it, nor do I regret the experience it made me live afterward. I could never understand depression. How could those people simply not get on with their lives and be happy? Well, I know now.

pmoriarty2• 12 years ago

Psychedelics are immensely powerful tools.

Like a plane, like an ocean liner, like a battleship, you can have fun with them, but you can also blow your head apart. They should be given the utmost respect, since they can, as you found out, radically change your life and outlook on the world.

If you are after their psychotherapeutic effects, you would be wise to only take them under the supervision of a trained and experienced therapist who you respect and trust.

ap22213• 12 years ago

Sorry to hear about your depression, and I hope that you pull out of it ok. Here are my thoughts on it, for what they're worth to you.

I've suffered from depression for most of my life, so I've spent a great deal of time thinking about it, 'Why me? Why do I feel this way?' I have tried to 'cure' it with therapy (CBT). I've tried to cure it by adjusting the chemicals in my brain with medications. Neither of these have worked well, or at least they have been temporary fixes.

After 30 years or so, I've discovered a much simpler approach: remove all of the things in one's life that doesn't 'seem' right or 'feel' right. Like any other disease (take diabetes, for example) some people have a genetic predisposition for it. But, in many cases, the odds of being affected is a combination of both one's genetics and environment. I try to solve my depression by thinking similarly. That is, awareness and sensitivity to one's environment are factors in the disease for those with a natural disposition for these traits.

Perhaps the mushroom experience has opened your brain to new insights and awareness, and these are now negatively affecting you?

I suggest trying CBT and medications: they're the right things to do, medically. But, concurrently, try to start removing things from your life, even if temporarily. It's can be difficult process to remove from one's life the things that cause disease because they're often enjoyable (bacon to a heart disease sufferer). In the case of depression, it may mean removing things that help define one's identity. Perhaps it means quitting jobs, selling houses, getting divorce, abandoning friends, changing habits, changing patterns of thought, solving addictions, destroying routines.

In the end, all I can give you is anecdote, but if the depression remains or gets worse, it's at least worth a shot.

Edit:

I'm suggesting taking a systematic and rational approach for finding the environmental factors. I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and do these things without thought, wholesale, on impulse. But, unless the ratio of positive to negative is above 1, they're at least things to consider changing. It's up to each person to determine what these things could be.

kingkawn• 12 years ago

Rather than the mushrooms causing your depression, they may have exposed it, allowing you to continue to develop and be aware of parts of your experience that you'd previously not been able to feel. That you went through that, came out of it, and now feel whole, sounds like a wonderful thing.

tbastos• 12 years ago

Psychedelics make you learn stuff that you cannot easily "unlearn", like any major life experience. It expands your awareness in ways that sometimes are not pleasant (very often, "ignorance is bliss"). That's the reason most psychedelics are not recreational, but rather "spiritual" drugs. They are self-development tools, and like any tool you must know how to use them.

It's totally possible to be enlightened by a bad trip, rather than traumatised. It all depends on your outlook on life, how you instinctively react to adversity. You should see everything under the self-development lens, where everything is an opportunity for growth, and never feel victimised. Your goal after a bad trip should not be just "to recover", but rather to become your best yet. Much like a muscle that grows stronger after you strain it at the gym, psychedelics exercise the mind, and can make you mentally stronger. However, like in the gym, the recovery periods are essential, and over-exercising is detrimental.

In answer to the people who always bring up the subject of psychosis: any extremely stressful event can trigger psychosis in people who are prone to have it (for example a divorce, or any big loss). As a rule of thumb, if you're close to 30 and you've been through tough times and feel fine, you're safe. I personally believe that if you're a lucid, clear minded person, looking for self-development, psychedelics are for you. If you're an easily scared person not interested in self-development, psychedelics are definitely not for you.

electromagnetic2• 12 years ago

You mention your outlook on life changed, would you mind elaborating on this? What influence has this altered outlook had on your life and goals?

Speaking from personal experience, my use of psychedelics has profoundly realigned my goals.

One of my earliest goals was to become a clinical psychologist. I like people and I like how they tick, but my first use of LSD caused a reevaluation on that.

I hate giving advice that gets ignored, and I was entering a profession where this is the majority of what happens. You have to be nice and calm and keep repeating steps until people finally get the picture and listen to you.

Not only was that not for me, but I didn't even want to stay where I lived. It not only made me reevaluate my goals but my perception of risk.

I wanted to travel and visit friends I had made online, so I did. I was 18 and did it alone, friends said I was insane for taking such a "risk". I'm now living in a different country (continent too) and married to one of those friends I visited.

Recently I took a strong dose of magic mushrooms and it had an unusual response. Normally I experience what I call uber-Ego. It's a solipstic euphoria where I feel like I'm God and my subconscious created everything to entertain me. However, this time it felt like something dealt a death blow to my soul.

This last time, I realized I hated my life. I live in an urban area, which I hate. I'm a country boy, I always wanted to live in the country. Now with a 18 month old, I'm dealing with hating the life he has and is going to have.

Me and my wife are never home because cost of living is so high. I see my son between 5pm and 7pm on weeknights, so does my wife. He spends almost 5/6ths of his waking time with other people.

We're now planning on selling up and moving to the country where her family lives. Within a couple years we can quarter our living expenses, which would put our costs low enough that I could be a career writer - something I gave up because I had to pay exorbitant expenses to hate my life.

This last time made me depressed, and I still feel it. I've been working almost every night from when my kid goes to bed until I do on writing.

I don't think the mushrooms made me depressed, not one bit. I think the mushrooms made me bypass my superego that was blocking me from seeing my wants whilst catering to my needs.

I definitely changed personality wise afterward, but I know I had been annoyed and angry for months for reasons I couldn't explain, and in hindsight I'd been annoyed ever since we put our son into daycare.

api4• 12 years ago

An expert in the psychedelic experience would likely say that through this experience you learned both the nature of depression and how to grow beyond it.

These things are not "recreational." Their effects are difficult to predict, highly individual, and while often transformative are not always pleasantly so. Yet I've found both myself and with most people I've known who have used these things, the effects tend to be on balance positive.

The only exception is people who chronically abuse these substances. Using them irresponsibly, repeatedly, and carelessly can indeed destroy your mind. I've seen it.

I had an interesting experience myself many years ago that was very beneficial.

When I was younger I was often an underachiever. When I tried I scored off the charts, and when I found things I liked (like programming) I would self-educate to the amazement of adults (was doing 6502 machine code at 8). But I just didn't have any desire to do anything "out there" that was strong enough to motivate me to deal with the annoying hoops you have to jump through to get there. I always hated school and did poorly at it, and had no idea what I wanted to do. I think I really dreaded growing up.

After the experience, all that changed and rather abruptly. I returned to college after having left, and my GPA went from <2.0 before to >3.5. My first quarter back was full of A's and B's, not C's and D's, and this mostly continued through to the end. I did change major, from CS to biology, because I'd had this huge epiphany about how if you want to understand AI you have to understand how life actually does intelligence. So I proceeded to finish all my bio prereqs in accelerated time and still managed to finish with a high GPA in 2 years. Then I went into research, biotech, and eventually got into startups (but that's another story).

I ended up working in CS, but the bio-inspired intelligence research is still a strong interest of mine and I follow the literature pretty religiously. I might go back to it if I'm ever able to make a gig out of it. In bio I also learned a lot of math and science stuff that I've used on a regular basis since then for other purposes, as well as a uniquely biologically-informed way of looking at complex systems and economies and such.

Ever since that experience, my output increased astronomically in every area. I also became more socially active and generally more positive.

Still, any time someone asks me about psychedelics I always give them both a dose of optimism and a dose of caution. As I said I've seen "acid casualties." These things are powerful and should not be used without respect. I haven't personally touched these things in many many years, and haven't had much interest in doing so. I feel like whatever benefit I was able to get has already been achieved.

Edit: I wasn't trying to make some point against the original commenter, just relating my own experience. If you delve into the literature you'll find an enormous variety of experiences both positive and negative.

goatforce5• 12 years ago

Dr Karl (he's roughly analogous to Bill Nye, I guess) does a radio show in Oz (and maybe the UK too?) where he answers listeners questions. Occasionally people will ask about psychoactive drug usage and he'll umm and ahh, acknowledge that lots of art and science has been helped along by various drugs but ultimately say that some people are just predisposed to have bad experiences, perhaps even inducing long term psychosis or similar, and for that reason he can't recommend recreational drugs. While many people may use drugs for years and have positive experiences, some people will be broken by their first usage.

As he is fond of saying: All drugs are poisons, what matters is the dose.

I'm curious: was your experience positive, perhaps even amazing, until you went to sleep and woke up depressed?

jpwagner2• 12 years ago

temporarily creates or encourages connections between typically unconnected parts of the brain

Does this imply that you could potentially practice connecting those "typically unconnected parts" (through meditation or other) such that this substance would have little or no effect on you neurologically?

jeremysmyth2• 12 years ago

Terence McKenna, someone who knew a lot about both hallucinogens and shamanism, didn't think so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdxWhKxpF8

pixl97• 12 years ago

If you work out all the time, would steroids have no effect on your body? Of course no one would say no to that, the steroids would enhance it even further.

dang• 12 years ago

The article's title is somewhat misleading

Ok, we changed the title to the first part of the photo caption.

murbard2• 12 years ago

As it's been pointed out, the title is a bit misleading.

That said, one should keep in mind that, technically, everything you experience changes your brain -- it's called learning.

codyb• 12 years ago

Yes, but a seven course meal unlike anything you've ever had will give you a bit more of an experience than the dollar menu at a new fast food chain you've never been to.

Everything you experience, may (and I'm not saying it's a definite) be learning, but to assign equal weight to all experiences is obviously naive.

xefer2• 12 years ago

Everything in moderation.

Ken Kesey wrote two of my favorite books "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962) and "Sometimes a Great Notion" (1964), but basically produced nothing of much merit after that.

I'm convinced that his subsequent over-indulgence in psychedelics destroyed his ability to produce great literature.

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

The number of great works a person produces is unfortunately something like power-law distributed.

xefer2• 12 years ago

Yes, but Kesey himself hints that damage that was done in this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Egz_ex3d_s (~6:00)

api4• 12 years ago

One thing I consistently saw in people that tried these substances is that abusing them -- heavy, careless use -- can be very harmful. I would not recommend it. I saw a few people in my youth who kind of just "never came back."

They seem able to produce beneficial effects in moderation and if treated with respect. I suppose that's true of lots of other powerful technologies. Treat them with respect and they can work well, but abuse them and they'll harm you.

michaelvkpdx• 12 years ago

Psychedelics, mushrooms in particular, are essential tools for any wise programmer. Very very powerful, only to be consulted on rare occasions, but immensely valuable in solving intractable problems.

We essentially owe our profession to psychedelic explorations by pioneers of software engineering. Companies who drug test developers are ignorant of this history, and are the enemies of the digital revolution.

Brilliant, beautiful languages and programs came from these pioneers, and it's likely because of their rich neural networks, enhanced by psychedelics as seen in the Wired article. The ability to connect humanistic art and feeling with symbolic systems and code requires a sophisticated neural network. Psychedelics help build the mental infrastructure for software development that actually benefits humans.

I would love to see any stats or info about the relative consumption of psychedelics- both kind and amount- among engineers at specific companies or types of software firms.

rhgraysonii• 12 years ago

If you'd like to chat on the topic, email is in my profile.

ghuntley• 12 years ago

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143036769

bemused• 12 years ago

second that, this gives very interesting insight about the mixture of 60s counterculture, then still legal psychotherapeutic and/or recreational experiments with psychoactive substances and the beginnings of "personal" computing

reading this helped a lot realizing the innovation and impact "The Mother of All Demos" really brought and getting a understanding about the environment in which this was envisioned and implemented http://www.wired.com/2013/12/tech-time-warp-engelbart/

akavel• 12 years ago

Interesting. Quoting a review http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computi...:

"Markoff's book covers the years 1960 to 1975 and the area south of San Francisco around Stanford University that would later come to be known as Silicon Valley. I arrived in Palo Alto in 1980, after the period described in the book, but got to know most of the people Markoff depicts. I can report that if anything, he underplays the degree to which they behaved in ways that would today be considered outrageous and radical, and what I saw was said to have been mild compared with what had come before. [...]

And yes, there were drugs and naked people in the rooms where some of the code that now drives your e-mail around the globe was first set down."

api4• 12 years ago

http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/2006/06/podcast-042-–-“us...

penprog• 12 years ago

I find sleep to work most of the time. But yeah, once I was so stressed out I was constantly breaking out into cold sweats and felt like I was gonna vomit. Went camping on a Saturday and took acid. Left feeling more refreshed than I have ever had in my life.

osconfused• 12 years ago

In my own experience, every amazing engineer I have worked with has had at least one psychedelic experience, usually many.

kevinskii• 12 years ago

In my own experience, every engineer that I have worked with who regularly uses psychedelics has substandard problem-solving abilities.

Note that I'm not "knocking" psychedelics per se. I've never personally tried them and I don't know enough to comment on their effects or risks. I'm just providing an anecdotal counterpoint to yours.

There are a lot of general comments in this thread about people's minds being usefully expanded by drug use. I'm not disputing these, but could someone perhaps provide a specific example about a problem they were stuck on which they then managed to solve with the assistance of drugs?

clusterfoo• 12 years ago

To play devil's advocate: could it be that generally curious, risk-taking, meta-thinking individuals tend to make better engineers, which just happens to be a personality type that is naturally drawn to psychedelics?

Really, we can play arm-chair neuroscientist indefinitely, but there is only one way to get to the bottom of this. We must gather more, um, data.

andrey-p3• 12 years ago

Had my first acid trip a few weeks ago at a friend's place. I had brought my netbook to do some work on the train.

Midway through the trip I thought, "Wait a minute! My eyes are so open now. I can see patterns and bigger pictures like never before in my life. If I try doing some programming right now my abilities will be godlike."

I opened up my netbook, fired up Vim and was immediately distracted by the blinking cursor going up and down.

Lambdanaut• 12 years ago

I've found that psychedelics are far more useful for planning and conceptualizing, not actually doing the work.

Put away the laptop and get out a pen and notebook and start drawing diagrams. The next day when you're not high as a kite you can take advantage of your focus to implement the ideas you came up with.

marincounty• 12 years ago

I knew a girl who was a junior at Darthmouth. She went to a concert with her friends on a holiday break. At said concert she took some acid. She went to bed. She woke up and she didn't recognize the family members around her. She got better over the years, and finally finished her degree 20 years later. I'm not anti drug, but I think about her often. No, I have never tried anything other than pot. Pot is too strong for my constitution. I wish I had the personality to experiment, but I am just not willing to take the chance.

nwienert4• 12 years ago

First strong trip I had I threw my laptop across the room immediately, more symbolically than anything. There's no real knowledge to be found in them.

emotionalcode2• 12 years ago

My first thought is that the drug is showing you what was in your mind to begin with.

here_you_go3• 12 years ago

Suppose someone who knows your friend's dog asks if it's a very stupid idea to get LSD from one of the "darknet" markets. What would the owner of the dog's dog friend reply? Would his sister-in-law who may or may not exist know about any pointers on how to find a trustworthy source (to actually get the correct quality) on such a platform?

tesq3• 12 years ago

You are fooling nobody and your use of code words to organize a crime would be held against you in a court of law if anyone gave a damn about your post here on HN.

tesq3• 12 years ago

Sorry, any insights and perspective shifts brought on through tripping can be made just the same if you work on it through life experience instead of relying on a drug to enlighten you.

I say this as someone who has had many psychedelic experiences and programs.

fsiefken• 12 years ago

The late Bob Wallace (Microsoft) experimented with low dose psychedelics as aid to programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace Undoubtedly there are more, but they keep understandably silent about it. Even more interesting would be (to me) programmers who would use meditative practices. Techniques - or better named attitudes - like mindfulness, self-awareness, the ability to take a step back to look at the bigger picture also aid in all areas of life. I was presently surprised to hear someone talk about mindfulness in relation to programming on a developer conference (Arrrrcamp): http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html

About other programmers, I think it's telling "Why the luck stiff" referred to John Lilly's metaprogramming of the mind in his famous kaleidoscopic Ruby guide page 107:

"You might be inclined to think that metaprogramming is another hacker word and was first overheard in private phone calls between fax machines. Honest to God, I am here to tell you that it is stranger than that. Metaprogramming began with taking drugs in the company of dolphins."

"We learn. But first we learn to learn. We setup programming in our mind which is the pathway to further programming. (Lilly is largely talking about programming the brain and the nervous system, which he collectively called the biocomputer.) Lilly’s metaprogramming was more about feeding yourself imagery, reinventing yourself, all that. This sort of thinking links directly to folks out there who dabble in shamanism, wave their hands over tarot cards and wake up early for karate class. I guess you could say metaprogramming is New Age, but it’s all settled down recently into a sleeping bag with plain old nerdiness. (If you got here from a Google search for “C++ Metaprogramming”, stick around, but I only ask that you burn those neural pathways that originally invoked the search. Many thanks.)"

For sure mushrooms and psylocybin are unsuitable for programming, but low doses of cocaine, acid or 2C-* might have their value. The best programmer however learns to meta-program and hack his mind without chemicals.

wefarrell• 12 years ago

I've maintained a regular meditation practice 2 years sitting for ~30 mins a day. The benefits are most noticeable when dealing with other people and if I have an important meeting with a client I'll meditate shortly before, which undoubtably improves the outcome.

It helps reduce the influence of my ego over these interactions. This in turn lowers my clients' guard and reduces their egos as well. Less ego makes meetings less about politics and more about solving real problems.

More generally, meditation has helped me maintain focus on my work and made me less susceptible to distractions.

blimblab• 12 years ago

Don't forget about the risks of taking psilocybin. I myself had a psychosis triggered by them, no fun at all (believe me) and in many cases not reversible.

fapjacks4• 12 years ago

There are risks in everything, everyday.

codeshaman• 12 years ago

Interesting that while the brain is interconnected the way it's depicted in the article, people report having mystical experiences (eg see God), traveling vast distances through galaxies and strange worlds, see spirits of plants and objects, see themselves as a small insignificant part of the large organism that is Earth and at the same time, realise that they are immortal and that this life is one of an infinity of others and that they are God. The larger the dose, the deeper the experience and I would speculate that the number of brain parts interconnected is even higher and the connecting lines even thiker.

Why is that ? What would happen if 100% of the brain would start exchanging information like this? What if we could connect only the blue or green areas?

Psychedelics are the new unexplored frontier in science.

Imagine a technology (or drug) which allows selecting which networks in the brain to interconnect (temporarily). This could be used to design new mental abilities, train or enhance existing ones.

I'm really pleased that the taboo regarding these substances is slowly being lifted. I'm also happy that more and more people will take these substances and as a consequence will "expand their minds".

auggierose2• 12 years ago

Jesus, when I read the comments it seems that most programmers are on drugs while coding. No wonder most of the code out there is so shitty. If you need drugs in order to be creative, that's pretty sad.

mvanvoorden• 12 years ago

Have you ever taken psychedelics? Did you even read the article? You cannot judge things you are ignorant of.

Also, none of the programmers in the comments are high while coding. Some who have used psychedelics only told it gave them more insight in i.e. patterns and structures.

To me personally, psychedelics saved my life. One trip showed me exactly what to do to be happy again and ever since my life is going exactly how I want it. Before I was living the life other people expected me to live, without even being aware of that (like the majority of people).

Using drugs to escape might be sad, but using psychedelics to expand your mind is something I could recommend to almost anyone. There's a lot of wisdom hidden inside of us that is mostly supressed by the way we are nurtured, psychedelics make us connect to this again and teach us to be our real selves.

auggierose2• 12 years ago

No, I've never taken psychedelics. I don't need them. My mind is already operating at full capacity without them. When I notice that something bothers me, I think about it, sometimes for a month or so. Eventually I will find the answer to the problem.

Communication between brain networks in people given psilocybin

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