This is your brain on LSD, literally
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 6:24
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Scientists have for the first time visualized the effects of LSD on the human brain.
Using brain scanning and other techniques, researchers at Imperial College London were able to show what happens when someone takes the popular (and illegal) psychedelic, scientific-name Lysergic acid diethylamide.
The findings may indicate how the drug produces the complex visual hallucinations often associated with its
The drug, as well as a placebo, was given to 20 healthy volunteers with previous experience taking psychedelics. Their brains were then imaged inside an fMRI scanner to visualize their brain activity.
“Under normal conditions, information from our eyes is processed in a part of the brain at the back of the head called the visual cortex,” the researchers said in a statement.
“However, when the volunteers took LSD, many additional brain areas — not just the visual cortex — contributed to visual processing.”
Images of the brain under a hallucinogenic state showed almost the entire organ lit up with activity.
“We see this explosion of communication,” said Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the study.
The visual cortex became much more active with the rest of the brain, and blood flow to visual regions also increased, which the researchers believe correlates with the hallucinations reported by volunteers.
“Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience,” Carhart-Harris added.
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