CWL

Open Your Mind to the New Psychedelic Science

‘The illegality of these drugs … is one of the greatest scandals in modern research’

Greg Miller over WiredScience writes an enticing piece on the development of psychedelic drug usage not just as a recreational activity but also for psychological health benefits. I picked out my favorite excerpts from the article but I recommend going over and reading the whole thing:

“Now that we’ve been able to start getting some evidence on the benefits, it changes people’s calculus,” said Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), one of the meeting’s sponsors.

Doblin and MAPS have been battling regulators since the mid-80s to allow research and clinical trials with psychedelics. The recent revival of psychedelic science may be one sign their efforts are finally paying off.

Public attitudes towards illegal drugs in general may be shifting. A recent Pew Research Center survey, for example, found for the first time that more than half of Americans think marijuana should be legal. Baby boomers in particular, who may have hidden their stash while raising kids, seem to be loosening up in their old age, the survey found.

The interest in psychedelics may also have something to do with a growing sense of frustration over the lack of promising new psychiatric drugs in the pipeline. Many of the current drugs are based on compounds discovered serendipitously in the 1950s, and true innovation has been so hard to come by that many companies are giving up.

Meanwhile, people have been using hallucinogens for centuries, often in religious healing ceremonies, and yes, sometimes just for the hell of it. But just because they’re party drugs for some doesn’t mean they can’t be the subject of serious scientific inquiry. Or does it? After all, it didn’t end so well the first time around.

From its inception in 2010, the Psychedelic Science meeting has brought together an interesting mix of people. A record 1,800 of them attended this year. The prevalence of ponytails, nose rings and hemp accessories is predictably higher than at a typical science conference. There was also a tea lounge, a psychedelic art gallery, and a quiet room for anyone in need of riding out a rough trip.

“Absolutely some scientists would see the rainbow colors on the logo and the psychedelic art exhibits and say ‘that’s not real science,’” said Brad Burge, the communication director for MAPS. At the same time, some of the more mystically inclined devotees of psychedelics are averse to the scientific dissection of what they see as a sacred experience, Burge says. The conference isn’t for the folks at those ends of the spectrum.

Burge acknowledges there’s a tricky balancing act involved in hosting a forum for scientists who want their work to be taken seriously without excluding those who use psychedelic drugs recreationally. Even so, “we’re trying to get around the idea that there has to be a separation,” he said.

After all, this latter group helps fund much of the research through their donations to MAPS and other private organizations like the Heffter Research Institute and Beckley Foundation. Government funders like the National Institutes of Health are still skittish about psychedelic research.

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Dráulio Barros de Araújo, a neuroscientist at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, presented new findings from an fMRI brain scan study with 10 experienced ayahuasca users, followers of Santo Daime, a spiritual practice that uses the brew.

Araújo’s team found that ayahuasca reduces neural activity in something called the default mode network, an web of interconnected brain regions that fire up whenever people aren’t focused on any specific task. It’s active when people daydream or let their minds wander, for example.

The default mode network has been a hot topic in neuroscience in recent years. Scientists don’t really know what it does, but they love to speculate. One interpretation is that activity in this network may represent what we experience as our internal monologue and may help generate our sense of self.

Full Article

How to brake bad habits.. or any habits at all!

TEDxAlamo: David Eagleman Abuses Your Idea of Reality

Why Impatience May Hurt Your Heart

Side Note: To keep the attention this blog has somewhat taken towards ‘getting to know yourself the science way’, I wanted to bring up this article from Livescience about how impatience can lead to health complications. I’m sure many of you will reply with the usual “WE’VE ALWAYS KNOWN THAT” but give this article a read so you can have the data that backs up your claims. But what’s more, I feel like actually knowing and having some understanding of how impatience alters our state of mind is also important within the realms of brain control. Because if outside conditions, however minute they could be, alter you into an impatient person, it can also make you less inclined to indulge in the patience required to learn new things. I have a little bit of impatience myself at times, and I notice that for the most part, living ‘the fast life’ of wanting it now can become a habit in itself and that’s when things like attention spans get shortened. Read the article for yourself and make your own judgement, but in any case please share this information with others. Not everyone knows what you know.

Now that the holiday season is here, nearly everyone’s patience will be tested at one time or another. Long lines, crowded malls and unbearable travel delays are among the reasons why some people will lose their cool.

But those episodes of impatience can trigger physiological responses that may sabotage your health. “Being impatient could cause anxiety and hostility,” said Daniel Baugher, dean of graduate programs at Pace University in New York City who has studied personality and social psychology. “And if you’re constantly anxious, your sleep could be affected, too.”

Baugher said living in the hyper-paced, technology-obsessed 21st century has left many people short on patience. “They seem to want everything yesterday,” he said. “People expect things to be done more quickly.”

But some individuals may simply be hardwired for impatience. “Everyone’s tolerance threshold is different,” he said. “We all feel impatient when certain things happen, but some more than others.”

Type A personalities are at high risk

Often high-strung and competitive, type A personalities seem suspended in a constant state of urgency. They’re unable to cope when things don’t go their way, be it snarled rush-hour traffic or the glacially slow line at the grocery store. “People with this personality type are more likely to experience anger when they’re held up,” said Dr. Redford Williams, an internist at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, who estimates that roughly 25 percent of Americans have a type A personality, which increases their risk for health problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

In a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers reported that the more impatient and hostile the 18- to 30-year-old study participants felt, the more likely they would develop high blood pressure later in life.”High blood pressure is a symptom that the body is going into overdrive,” Baugher said. “The whole body gets geared up for a fight.”

Impatience + hostility = stress

People who frequently become impatient and angry are in a constant state of stress. The body reacts to that stress by releasing hormones such as adrenaline or cortisol which help the body respond to a stressful situation.

“When you’re about to be attacked by a saber-toothed tiger, this response can help you survive, but not when you’re sitting in traffic or waiting in a long line,” Williams said. High levels of cortisol and adrenaline could ultimately lead to weight gain, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

In a 2000 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that young adults who had high hostility levels were predisposed to plaque build-up in their coronary arteries. “Stress hormones stimulate platelets, making them more likely to clot in arteries already narrowed by heart disease, a process that can result in a heart attack,” Williams said. “These hormones also cause the body’s fat cells to release fat into the bloodstream.”

Williams said this fat can be deposited in plaque in the arteries that feed the heart, enlarging the plaques and raising the risk for an artery-clogging clot.

Coping with impatience

Some studies suggest that stress-management programs may help naturally impatient people relax. Teaching people how to head off or control feelings of anger and hostility could reduce blood pressure and lower body weight over time. “The evidence we have on stress training is encouraging, but studies haven’t shown that it can save lives,” Williams said.

The best way for people to handle a situation that taxes their patience and triggers negative responses is to take a deep breath and evaluate what they’re feeling, Williams said. “Ask yourself, ‘Is this important to me? Is it reasonable to be angry over this? Is it worth it?’” Williams advised. “Basically, try to talk yourself out of the anger.”

Pass it on: Being impatient can cause high blood pressure and heart disease.

Meditation appears to produce enduring changes in emotional processing in the brain

A new study has found that participating in an 8-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on how the brain functions even when someone is not actively meditating. In their report in the November issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston University (BU), and several other research centers also found differences in those effects based on the specific type of meditation practiced.

“The two different types of meditation training our study participants completed yielded some differences in the response of the amygdala – a part of the brain known for decades to be important for emotion – to images with emotional content,” says Gaëlle Desbordes, PhD, a research fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH and at the BU Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology, corresponding author of the report. “This is the first time that meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state.”

Several previous studies have supported the hypothesis that meditation training improves practitioners’ emotional regulation. While neuroimaging studies have found that meditation training appeared to decrease activation of the amygdala – a structure at the base of the brain that is known to have a role in processing memory and emotion – those changes were only observed while study participants were meditating. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that meditation training could also produce a generalized reduction in amygdala response to emotional stimuli, measurable by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

scinerds:

But be careful what you put in it. Wish they told us that part of the equation too. —Scinerds