14 DAY TRIAL // A recent investigation whose findings are detailed in a paper in the journal Human Brain Mapping has revealed that, when consuming magic mushrooms, folks really do experience mind expansion.
Specifically, researchers say that, according to evidence at hand, a compound found in magic mushrooms has the ability to birth an altered view of the world by toying with the way the brain works, Medical Express informs.
This compound is known to the scientific community as psilocybin. Looking to establish how it affects the brain and, consequently, world view, scientists carried out a series of experiments with the help of a group of volunteers.
These volunteers were all injected with psilocybin, after which researchers mapped the patterns of activity in their brains. The focus was on how the compound altered the volunteers' normal brain processes.
It has thus been discovered that, when exposed to psilocybin, the human brain experiences a boost in activity levels in its more primitive networks. Besides, the compound has been found to trigger hectic activity patterns in brain regions linked to high-level thinking, sense of self included.
Writing in the journal Human Brain Mapping, the specialists who carried out these experiments explain that these changes in brain activity patterns are the reason psilocybin boosts emotional thinking and induces dream-like states.
“I was fascinated to see similarities between the pattern of brain activity in a psychedelic state and the pattern of brain activity during dream sleep, especially as both involve the primitive areas of the brain linked to emotions and memory.”
“People often describe taking psilocybin as producing a dreamlike state and our findings have, for the first time, provided a physical representation for the experience in the brain,” says Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris with the Imperial College London in the UK.
Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris and fellow researchers argue that studies like this one can help lead to a better understanding of the human brain. They further explain such information has the potential to shed new light on perception, even help treat depression patients by altering pessimistic thought patterns.
“A good way to understand how the brain works is to perturb the system in a marked and novel way,” study lead author Dr. Enzo Tagliazucchi with the Goethe University in Germany explains in a statement.
“Psychedelic drugs do precisely this and so are powerful tools for exploring what happens in the brain when consciousness is profoundly altered,” the researcher goes on to comment on the importance of researching the impact of psilocybin and other similar compounds on the human brain.