The nuggets (imho): > psychedelic drugs activate the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor. Once stimulated, these receptors make neurons more excitable, and their blanket

The nuggets (imho): > psychedelic drugs activate the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor. Once stimulated, these receptors make neurons more excitable, and their blanket activation by psychedelics causes widespread changes to neural networks. > There are 5-HT2A receptors throughout the brain, but they are most abundant in the cerebral cortex, particularly in areas responsible for cognition and self-awareness. Furthermore, 5-HT2A receptors are highly expressed in the visual cortex, and on the ends of axons that cortical neurons send elsewhere in the brain, such as the thalamus, where sensory information is processed. > these studies indicate that psychedelics lead to “more connections between networks, and less connectivity within networks,” ... brain areas that usually have strong functional connections — and that operate in a network that has a fairly circumscribed function — become less connected, suggesting that the drugs disrupt those networks’ normal outputs. And brain areas whose activity is normally only weakly correlated become more connected.