Very interesting article, but I thought they should have at least mentioned the central role of the serotonin receptor 5HT-2A in psychedelic drug activity in th

Very interesting article, but I thought they should have at least mentioned the central role of the serotonin receptor 5HT-2A in psychedelic drug activity in the brain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT2A_receptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT2A_receptor This receptor also seems involved in synesthesia, a psychedelic-like condition thought to involve a cross-wiring of visual and auditory brain pathways that result in 'seeing sounds' and 'hearing colors'. Here's a bit of research on that: > "Synesthesia has been reported with LSD5 as accompaniment to other visual hallucinations. These sound-induced visual perceptions and the visual hallucinations can be well formed and complex. The cause of synesthesia is thought to be chemical deafferentation of lateral geniculate body, which will deprive the occipital cortex from visual stimuli. LSD is known to selectively activate serotonin 2A receptor. Brang and Ramachandran19 hypothesized that serotonin 2A receptors are the “synesthesia receptor”. Auditory visual synesthesia also has been reported with other serotonin 2A agonists including mescaline and ayahuasca. Ayahuasca contains serotonergic psychledic N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and beta-carboline, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. DMT is a partial agonist of serotonin 2A receptors and beta-carboline inhibits the visceral metabolism of DMT, increasing its systemic levels." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218766/ Incidentally, static output from old analog CRT televisions tuned to dead channels is a kind of ideal 'blank sheet' for producing hallucinations. Unfortunately there don't seem to be many good simulations of this once-common phenomena (the YT videos of TV static seem to suffer from replication issues of various sorts and aren't that realistic). Similar natural effects might be obtained by looking at fog and clouds, waves breaking on a beach, wind blowing over a field of grass, etc. I'd argue that one of the great potential benefits of psychedelics is that they encourage us to look closely at the world around us.