LSD's Effects on Relevance and Meaning Depends on Serotonin Receptor
We each have a unique particular individual experience of life. Each person is born at a unique time and location, and occupies an individual perspective throughout life.
One person might like rock 'n roll, while someone else prefers country. Different things affect us differently for various reasons, depending on our particular individual experiences in life that influenced and shaped us to become who we are, as well as genetic factors that influence us in an automatic bio-nature way. We each apply meaning, importance, value and salience towards various things.
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A new study published in Current Biology on Jan. 26 studied how the perception of meaning changes when people take LSD, the psychedelic drug. Showing how we can be influenced by a substance that alters our electrochemical functionality will help us understand more about the human experience.
LSD alters how we attribute meaning and relevance to what is in our environment. The distinction between ourselves and the world outside becomes more blurred. How LSD affected what parts of the brain and which neurochemicals were responsible, was something not known prior to this study.
Katrin Preller of the Zürich University Hospital for Psychiatry and colleagues have confirmed the usual effects on someone's state of consciousness, mood and anxiety. There were also able to block LSD from acting on serotonin receptors (5-HT2A), which erased the psychedelic effects.
fMRI Data
If only people understood more of biology, they could understand that electrochemical and neuronal stimulation is what is inducing a hallucinatory and psychedelic effect, but also alters their states of consciousness, mood and perception of reality and themselves. No one is actually going into another dimension, or seeing hidden parts of reality. All that is happening is that your specific bio-natural neurochemical processing and functionality is being altered.
As I have mentioned before, this can also be self-induced through intention to alter our states of consciousness, such as through meditation. And it can also happen through food poisoning. Your experience of yourself and the world will be altered when your neuro-electro-chemical makeup changes.
To test how the attribution of meaning was influenced by LSD, participants were divided into three groups.
- taking a placebo
- taking LSD
- taking LSD and ketanserin
Participants were then asked to rank the meaning they attached to various songs. There were three categories to attribute to the songs:
- Particularly meaningful
- Neutral
- Without meaning
Meaningfulness Ratings
Participants who previously had a meaningless response to some music now found that the song took on a special meaning when they were high on LSD. This increase in relevance of the song faded when they were given ketanserin to counteract the effect on serotonin receptors.
Using brain imaging along with this behavioral assessment of people applying relevance and meaning to music, the researchers were able to show neurobiological correlates in brain processes for personal relevance attribution.
"We found that personal meaning attribution and its modulation by LSD is mediated by the 5-HT2A receptors and cortical midline structures that are also crucially involved in enabling the experience of a sense of self."
When you take a substance, get food poisoning, or meditate yourself into an altered state of consciousness, you are altering the neurobiological and electrochemical processing within your own brain which alters the way you experience things.
Subjective Drug Effects
The researchers hope to extend their work to see if the same observations occur with visual or tactile stimulus. They are also hoping that these findings can help those with psychiatric disorders that have trouble attributing meaning.
Schizophrenia has been recently renamed 'salience syndrome' in the DSM-V, as an inability to correctly attribute salience, importance, significance, meaning or relevance to what is happening in the world or in themselves. A special personal meaning is given which distorts their perception of reality. This could potentially help understand or combat this in sufferers.
"Excessive stimulation of 5-HT2A receptors seems to underlay the experience of loosening of self/ego boundaries, disrupted self-referential processing and thus the related impairment of making meaning and attributing personal relevance to percepts and experiences seen in various psychiatric disorders."
Targeting this receptor could be a way to treat psychological illnesses where personal relevance attribution is not working properly.
The study also found that there was not a significant increase in so-called "spiritual experiences" while under LSD compared to previous studies. It is known that the setting we're in, the environmental stimulus, will affect how we feel about things, whether we are intoxicated or not. On LSD, since we attribute heightened significance, relevance and meaning to things in our environment as well as ourselves, it makes sense that a clinical atmosphere inside of a MRI machine does not provide the setting to induce a so-called "spiritual experience" through different meaning, relevance and significance being attributed.
In conclusion, the study found that the subjective effects of LSD can be fully blocked by a 5-HT2AR antagonist like ketanserin, and that LSD increases personal relevance and attachments to what was previously non-meaningful stimulus. This was correlated with 5-HT2AR stimulation and activation of associated brain areas related to self-relevant processing.
References:
- Answers to how our brains make meaning, with the help of a little LSD
- The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation
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2017-02-01, 10am
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"Myriads of molecules observed the harmony. Here the laws no longer acted under the veil of appearance; matter was so delicate and weightless that it clearly reflected them. How simple and cogent everything was." - Ernst Jünger.
The problem I see today is that they are taking "Synthesized LSD" instead of Distilled LSD. There are big differences in effects and in self-awareness.
The second is very artificial, gives more "body power", but it seems to short the regressive catharsis of the initial trip.
It seems to me that the artificial LSD, people talk more to themselves than they feel the spirit inter-experience with others.
This essay is very good to understand the genesis of the LSD phenomena.
My Problem child - Albert Hofmann
And the fabulous book of Ernst Jünger - Visit to GodenholmThis is a very important finding. As one who has experienced the effects of several psychedelic substances confirming the validity of this information is important in understanding what I experienced.
I encourage anyone who has also experienced these effects to confirm or reject this information. If this information is indeed true, it alone could change how you perceive reality.
Question everything, believe only what you can confirm. What constitutes sufficient evidence to cross the threshold between unbelief and belief is of course subjective to each of us. I encourage you to use careful judgement.
Thank you @krnel for this research and all you do, it's greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the feedback. I find this understanding is crucial to get people to understand themselves more: self-knowledge. As I have said in some posts: We fool ourselves all too easily. Consciousness is a double-edged sword to grasp reality or unreality hehe.
What a great article and discovery. Thanks for sharing, this is definitely a subject that has attracted me over the years and still does, as you can see. So much researches are needed, yet so much is known. Awesome!
All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Great stuff... In the 1950's LSD was used (somewhat infrequently) for it's therapeutic qualities. -- many Hollywood celebrities swore by it. Not much was produced and availability was uncertain. When the FDA tightened-up regulation on the drug, many states outlawed it's use, driving it onto the black market, where it blossomed and more people than when it was legal, were now exposed to it's psychedelic effects.
Makes sense...I never liked Hendrix until after taking acid (It was awesome live)
No wonder why "LSD parties" featured music.
I have always wondered whether the feelings of meaning, or having the seen a fundamental truth of the universe while on psychedelics could just be attributed to an activation of the neural pathways inducing these feelings, instead of actually really meaning anything.
What does that specifically refer to?
It's an assumption that such a thing as "reality" really even exists, IMO. It might be that all there is is consciousness and its myriad states, essentially making the "material", or "objective", a dream state. And, if all there is is consciousness, then whatever touches conscious awareness is no more or less "real" - the fact that one experiences it at all means that it exists in "experiential potential", which would be the only relevant question in such a case.
I would expect the opposite.
It's reality that exists, and consciousness that is the illusion.
What are you? You're physical matter, configured in such a way that you think you have thoughts.
But you don't fool me. I just remember that evolution is true, and that the origin of your existence is chemical and physical in nature. It is reality that is real. Your mind is the illusion. Consciousness is the illusion.
Why should we expect anything? On what basis?
On the basis of thought and reason? On empirical evidence?
All that I know, in my inescapable experience of myself (subjective experience) is an endless echo of reactions (causes and effects) between sensation, observation, and recollection, which is just more echos - everything is experienced in my mind and body. I know not whether there is really an "inside" or an "outside" to myself. I assume there is because there are very different experiences of sensation when I apparently "move" towards a water source than to a lava source. But I can't be sure that the water and lava, with their very different effects on my senses, are any different than the fairies and demons within my dreams, which are only separated by thought, not physical distance, even though they appear to take time and space to reach.
You tell me that there's only one dream state and it's opposite, the "awake state", but I'm not so sure, not so much so that I'd bet my life on it, anyway. Why can't there be dreams within dreams? Why not infinitely so? There may be no limits to how many dimensions (depths) of dream states that consciousness can achieve.
As I see it, it's equally ludicrous to state certitude in either direction: 1.) that consciousness is primary (or) 2.) that physical matter is the "real" (reality).
I think it's really disingenuous of us, with our admittedly, collectively limited knowledge (regarding empirical evidence) of what/ how/ why everything is, or appears to be as it is, to think that we can make such statements of certitude. To me, it signals either extreme arrogance or ignorance, likely both.
I find that it's liberating to admit to ourselves that we don't know a damn thing about what "this" (life) is. And we can do this without giving up on trying to reverse-engineer matter (pursue scientific knowledge), just like we can have a lucid dream and still have interest in what the dream will reveal next.
You might not know a damn thing about what "this" (life) is.
But perhaps I know more than you. That's why I would clearly state that dreams are instances of using your imagination while asleep, and reality as it appears to a living thing, is an abstraction of the information our primitive sensory organs provide us.
It is why we can look up at the stars at night, and we all see the same things. It is not imaginary, nor is it formed from some subjective consciousness. Yes, our senses are limited, and we are animals, filled with instinct and delusion, but is that really all you can say, in order to try to convince me that I should adopt a stance of being content with having no knowledge or curiosity?
There is knowledge to be had. There is wisdom to be understood.
I cannot agree with you that reality is as wishy-washy as you make it out to be.
You might not have a firm foundation regarding the nature of this universe, but don't confuse your ignorance with the studies and experiences that I've had.
Yes, it might be arrogant or ignorant of you to make a firm decision, but I've spent my entire life, since childhood, searching for the answers to these questions. I have found those answers, and I have accepted them.
Do you know what answers I've found? These answers are "cold, hard truths".
They are cold, hard, and they are true, because I am unrelenting with my search for truth.
I will not accept bullshit answers, and what you say seems like nothing more than an attempt to undermine truth by telling me that I don't know, when I do know.
You just need to ask the right questions.
Like I said, there is knowledge and wisdom in this universe, and it's free for the taking, if you have the courage to accept truth and fact. You just need that courage, and the sheer intelligence to comprehend it, if you want to stop with your opposition of certainty.
I don't disagree with any of this, I was merely pointing out the fact that we can't be certain that something like "solipsism" (as an example) isn't the true nature of "reality". And, since this is the case, we're being dishonest, either out of arrogance or ignorance, to state that anything is the "truth".
We can say that something is true relative to our current understanding of how the world operates (current scientific models of the universe/ physics/ etc.), but to say that something is absolutely, undeniably true is ignorant, it's simply not true.
You can be certain that you exist, because, well, there you are, thinking, breathing, etc. However, you can't be certain that anything exists outside of your mind. You can't be 100% sure that you aren't always dreaming, even when you have thousands of memories, creating continuity of experience and consistency of environment/ laws of physics/ what-have-you, to draw on to assure you that you're experiencing the "real", as opposed to the dream.
Call it wishy-washy if you want. Call it whatever you fancy. The fact remains that the scientific approach fails, and, in fact has no way, to disprove the alternate hypothesis that consciousness, not matter, is the "real".
What good does it do to dwell on what you're saying?
I wouldn't say you're wrong about it being utterly provable or unprovable. Only that it's irrelevant.
It seems like a way to be able to undermine any argument you want, the same way that "maybe it's aliens" guy is able to say "I'm not saying it was aliens, but it might be aliens".
Of course, it MIGHT be aliens, but at the end of the day, I do want to make a decision on how this universe works, instead of just standing in limbo. And I don't want to just accept the most stupid answer either, just because "maybe it's true".
Now, I'll forgive you if you're young. If you're new to this world, then yeah, your opinion is a good starting point. But if you're some geezer, and you're still stuck at not knowing if reality is real or not, then I really don't know what to say.
The scientific approach does not fail to disprove that consciousness is more real than matter.
The scientific approach, if we take every single fact we know all at the same time, and comprehend it all at the same time, we get a very reasonable picture of reality. One that consistently makes sense, and doesn't feel like it's deliberately wrong, the way "consciousness exists, but matter doesn't" sounds.
You need to have a firm footing in philosophy, as well as true courage and determination if you want to get by in this life. You need to make a choice on what you believe.
Do you think that consciousness is the basis of reality, rather than reality being the basis of reality? I mean, do you think it so much that you're going to call it truth or wisdom? Are you going to live your life on this principle?
I am not interested in a hypothesis that doesn't go anywhere and doesn't provide useful information.
I just don't have time for this sort of wishy-washy behavior from you.
You are being troublesome if you're going to tell me that reality isn't real.
It's just not a wise move to go that direction.
You'll end up insane.
First of all, I don't dwell on such philosophical topics. Let's make that much clear. Also, notice that I agree with your stance on reality that matter (the objective universe) is real. I'll accept being categorized as insane, but I can't accept being labeled as a flat-earther or no-earther (to coin a term) ;)
You confuse me in your latest post when you agree with my assertion that the alternate hypothesis can't be "utterly" disproved:
,then you go on to say:
That's a total contradiction. That is, unless you intended to qualify the second case of using the word "proven" as being more of a "soft prove", as in "not 100% certain", which only supports my argument further.
Also, you say it's an irrelevant topic, but please realize that relevance is a very subjective term in this context. Irrelevant to what? To whom?
I know of many philosophers, past and present, whom think that this is a VERY relevant topic, as just one example, off the top of my head. I personally see it as a topic that can really expand one's imagination and creativity and that it can be a very healthy exercise, when approached from the right frame.
Oh, and it is possible that the alternate hypothesis IS true...and the alien things, too! and God! and Santa Claus (although it would probably have to be in some alternate universe)! etc., etc.
That's one of the beauties of life: you can't be certain of anything!