THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHEDELIC ENLIGHTENMENT

Even a casual glance at the psychedelic molecules indicates a resemblance to each other...and to Serotonin. All four are tryptamine, a type of organic compound distinguished by the presence of two lined rings, one of them with six atoms and the other with five.  

Serotonin binds with a dozen or so receptors found throughout the body including the digestive tract. Depending on the type of receptor and its location, serotonin is liable to make very different things happen.... sometimes exciting a neuron to fire, other times inhibiting it.  Psychedelic compounds have a strong affinity with one type of serotonin receptor, called the 5-HT2A receptor.  The psychedelic compounds look sufficiently similar to serotonin to attach themselves to this receptor as to activate it to do various things.

But while we know what psychedelic compounds do, we do not know how they affect consciousness. Consciousness itself is not understood by scientists, at least in the sense that we cannot explain how the subjective quality of experience for a person is correlated to the physical structures or chemistry of the brain. Scientists are using psychedelic compounds to better understand the links between our brains and our minds.

Perhaps the most ambitious neuroscientific expedition using psychedelics to map the terrain of human consciousness is taking place in West London in the labs of David Nutt (the author of the infamous Lancet article on the relative harm of various drugs and alcohol).  There volunteers are being injected with LSD and psilocybin and scanned with MRI and MEG to observe changes in their brains, giving us our first glimpses of what something like ego dissolution or hallucinations look like in the brain as it unfolds in the mind.

One working hypothesis in the study is that brains on psilocybin would exhibit increases in activity, particularly in the emotion centers, which would be observable in a fMRI scanner. But when the first results came in, the results were the opposite - a decrease in blood flow (a proxy for activity) in the brain.  Psilocybin reduces brain activity, especially in one area:  the default mode network (or DMN).

Psilocybin reduces brain activity, especially in one area:  the default mode network (or DMN).

The Default Mode Network

The DMN was not known to brain science until 2001.  The DMN forms a critical and centrally located hub of brain activity that links part of the cerebral cortex to the deeper and older structures involved in memory and emotion.  This is the area that becomes active when the brain is not focused on other things; it's where the mind goes to wander, daydream, and worry.  It may be through these structures that the stream of our consciousness flows.  It is most active when we are engaged in higher-level "meta cognitive" processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, mental constructions (such as the self or ego), moral reasoning and "theory of mind" - the ability to attribute mental states to others, as when we try to imagine "what it is like" to be someone else.

The brain is a hierarchical system, with the highest-level parts (developed late in evolution) typically located in the cortex.  Those systems exert an inhibitory influence on the older, lower-level parts.  The DMN exerts a top down influence on other parts of the brain, many of which communicate with each other through the hub.  It acts as an uber-conductor to ensure the cacophony of competing signals from one system do not interfere with those from another.  

The DMN is where people construct the image of themselves - linking experiences with what happens to them and with projections of our future goals.   There is also a link between self-reflection and many types of unhappiness; there is a strong correlation between unhappiness and time spent in mind wandering, the principal activity of the default mode network.

In an early study, the steepest drops in DMN activity correlated with volunteers' subjective experience of ego dissolution - the loss of the sense of self that can occur in higher dose psychedelic experiences.  This is the same effect recorded when experienced mediators experienced transcendence.  Some believe that a central hallmark of a mystical experience is fact that the insights it sponsors are felt to be objectively true can be explained by the dissolution of self: the lack of the sense of self literally removes the sense of the subjective. The ego-self is no longer available to question the insights validity.

The mystical experience may just be what it feels like when you deactivate the brain's default mode network. This can be achieved not only by psychedelics and meditation, but perhaps also by means of breathing exercises, sensory deprivation, fasting, prayer, overwhelming experiences of awe, extreme sports, near-death experiences and so on.

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The DMN exerts an inhibitory influence on other parts of the brain.  This may explain why during a psychedelic experience repressed emotions and memories may come forth.  But the DMN also helps regulate what is let into consciousness from the outside world.  The brain is a prediction machine, taking as little sensory information as possible from the outside world as it needs to make an educated guess.  Our perceptions of the world offer us not a literal transcription of reality but rather a seamless illusion woven from both the data of our senses and the models in our memory.

Carhart-Harris recently published an ambitious paper titled "The Entropic Brain:  A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs".  The question at the heart of the study is whether we pay a price for the achievement of order and self hood in the adult human mind.  By promoting realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to recognize and overcome wishful and paranoid fantasies, the brain tends to constrain cognition and exerts a limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness.  In earlier development, the human brain relied upon "magical thinking" to make order of the unknown.  Later the default mode network developed, allowing for self-reflection and reason.  

Carhart-Harris suggests that some psychological disorders are not the result of a lack of order in the brain but rather stem from an excess of order.  When the grooves of self-reflective thinking deepen and harden, the ego becomes overbearing.  This is perhaps most clearly evident in depression, when the ego turns on itself and uncontrollable introspection gradually shades out reality. He believes that excessively rigid patterns of thought can be improved by psychedelics, which disrupt stereotyped patterns of thought and behavior by disintegrating the patterns of neural activity upon which they rest.

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In brain under the influence of psychedelics (or possibly deep meditation) the specialized neural networks, such as the default mode network and the visual processing systems, become disintegrated, while the brain as a whole becomes more integrated as new connections spring up among regions that ordinarily kept mainly to themselves or were linked only via the central hub of the DMN.  The various networks of the brain become less distinct and specialized, communicating more openly.

A 2014 study produced a map of the brain's internal communications during normal waking consciousness and after an injection of psilocybin.  Under psilocybin, thousands of new connections form, linking far-flung brain regions that don't normally exchange much information.

Psychedelics allow a thousand mental states to bloom, many of them bizarre and senseless, but some number of them revelatory, imaginative and at least potentially transformative.  Science has not shown whether the new neural connections that psychedelics make possible endure in any way.  But the long term change in thinking that some studies have shown raises the possibility that some kind of learning takes place while the brain is rewired and that it might in some way persist.

In the days following a psychedelic experience, people are more able to identify their own state of consciousness, and the state becomes somewhat more easy to manipulate.  Some find their consciousness following a psychedelic state to be in more generous or grateful state, open to feelings and people and nature, often accompanied by a diminution of ego and a falloff attention to the past or the future.  There is a sense of contraction when he's obsessing about things or feeling fearful, defensive, rushed worried and regretful.  The ego is more present, and thoughts about the past or future are more in the forefront.  

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A young child has an entropic brain, and baby consciousness is so different from adult consciousness as to constitute a mental country all of its own.  The closest we may be able to come to visiting that foregin land may be a psychedelic journey.  A video of a discussion including Carhart-Harris and Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby, can be seen on this YouTube video.

Gopnik draws a useful distinction between the "spotlight consciousness" of adults and the "lantern consciousness" of young children.  The first mode gives adults the ability to narrowly focus attention on a goal.  The child's attention is more widely diffused, allowing the child to take in information from virtually anywhere in the field of awareness, which is quite wide.  Gopnik believes that the child (under 5) and the adult on psychedelics rely more on novel thinking than on applying known information to processing sensory information. 

This appoach may result in more errors and require more time and energy to process, but occasionally returns answers of surpassing beauty and originality.  In some experiments young children are better at problem solving than adults, precisely because of the requirement for novel thinking.  In one experiment, she presented children with a toy box that lights up and plays music when a certain kind of block is placed on top of it.  When it's programmed to only work when two blocks are placed on it, four year olds figure it out much faster than adults; children test more "far-out" hypothesis than adults.

Both Gopnik and Carhart-Harris believe that the psychedelic experience can be helpful to who are mentally ill and those that are not.  For the well, psychedelics, by introducing more noise or entropy into the brain, might shake people out of their usual patterns of thought in ways that might enhance well-bering, make us more open and boost creativity.  It may help us achieve fluid thinking in a way that is second nature the children. 

For the unwell, those patients suffering from mental disordered characterized by mental rigidity may be helped, including addiction, depression and obsession.  Each of these are associated with a narrow, ego-based focus.

In sum, psychedelics suppresses the work of the default mode network, which allows disperse parts of the brain to directly communicate with each other. Rigid patterns of thought are broken, at least temporarily, and new ways of thinking are allowed to occur. Not all thought developed may be helpful, but insights might be gained as a result.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Note: We have no affiliation with any resource listed below and derive to benefit, financial or otherwise, for recommending resources anywhere on this website.

Non-Violent Communication, A Language of Life. 3rd Edition. Note, while reading the book is helpful, we recommend starting with reviewing this website or other online learning resources. Many do a better job than than the book in explaining the process.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg, an easy-to-read book that provides useful insights on what habits are and how to change habitual behavior.

Tony Robbins Personal Power or Personal Power II. Tony Robbins has marketed NVC techniques better than anyone. His 30 day course, which requires around one hour per day, in a highly effective way to change your life through a combination of intellectual and emotional exercises, goal setting and healthy habit-forming activities. This program can be found used on Ebay for around $30 for cassettes or $60 for CDs (be sure you are buying the entire set, not just one disc!). You can also check YouTube or torrent sites if that’s your bag. But one way or the other, it’s a good way to cement what has happened during your psychedelic trip into a life change,

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by Shunryu Suzuki. A beautiful introduction to Zen, regardless of the reader’s prior experience. This is not a how-to book, and those seeking to be introduced to Zen Buddhism, will want to read this book along with a more traditional instructional guide to most quickly understand Buddhist practices. But this books is a wonderful read for anyone, regardless of spiritual orientation.