10 ms·

Psychedelic scientist sends brains back to childhood

123 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

unstatusthequo 3y ago
https://archive.is/jd5oW https://archive.is/jd5oW
more_corn 3y ago
Lone and meandering article refusing to get to the point promised in the headline.
- MrDresden 3y ago
  Yeah, just skimmed it and it comes down to: Psychadelics seem to have the ability to leave the user (after the actual 'trip' has worn off) in a state of heightened receptiveness for a long duration (length is different dependent on the drug, but counts weeks in some cases). This state is called a 'critical period' and is usually experienced in childhood. This state might allow for easier digestion of new material, forming new habits or skills or allow the user to be taken advantage of (Charles Manson, and his LSD fueled cult, is mentioned in this regard).
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    It's worth noting this is not new knowledge, it's completely obvious to anyone who's tried psychedelics. I haven't properly dug through the paper for all the details yet, maybe there's some interesting nuggets of new insight in there. But so far it's looking like this is further confirming what us psychonauts have always sort of understood. It's very encouraging to get rigorous science to back the intuition up though. It will obviously help guide future research in clinical applications. Here's the actual most recent research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
  - criddell 3y ago
    I wonder if that would be a way for adults to acquire perfect pitch?
- JPLeRouzic 3y ago
  This publication by the same scientists is probably more interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 "Here we demonstrate in mice that the ability to reopen the social reward learning critical period is a shared property across psychedelic drugs."
  - avodonosov 3y ago
    Thank you for that! I was going to ask if a scientific abstract is available.
- avodonosov 3y ago
  Thank you for finding so mild words to describe the style of this article.
nanidin 3y ago
The headline sounds exactly like the premise of Crouch's Recursion.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Interesting factoid in the preamble: the biochemical basis of the addictive nature of social media? > "Oxytocin and serotonin, she found, work together in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens to produce the good feelings that come from social interaction." LSD and similar drugs can definitely improve one's 3D-visualization capabilities, but I think this requires putting in a fair amount of work on the concepts beforehand. It's reminiscent of the saying, 'chance favors the prepared mind', so if you spend say a month working extensively with 3D models of molecules, proteins, platonic solids and what not and then (under controlled conditions) ingest a psychedelic, a cognitive breakthrough is possible, such as gaining the ability to visualize what a 3D object looks like after successive x-, y-, z- axis rotations and so on, which is useful skill in many fields, from auto mechanic to protein chemist to structural architect. Nice to see this subject finally being studied in a rigorous manner, at least.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > "Oxytocin and serotonin, she found, work together in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens to produce the good feelings that come from social interaction." Well, this supports my hypothesis on why talking to people was a really good coping mechanism for ADHD. As far as I can tell, oxytocin isn't dampened(?) like dopamine presumably is. (I say presumably because of the specific symptoms I had and also the specific ways in which stimulants help with them, but I've never had my brain dissected or anything to confirm, seeing as I'm still alive and all.)
rendx 3y ago
"There is, of course, a catch. For mice, having a critical period open for too long causes neural disruptions. Some experts fear that, for people, carelessly flinging wide the doors of personal development could put the very core of their identity in jeopardy by erasing the habits and memories that make them them. A critical period is also a time of vulnerability. While childhood can be filled with wonder and magic, children are also more impressionable. “We can really screw kids up much more than we can adults,” she says. This is why responsible adults intuitively know to protect children from exposure to potentially scary or disturbing material. Or, as Dölen puts it, “You want to teach children new things, but you don’t want them to learn Japanese from Japanese porn.” An adult who undergoes this kind of treatment to heal PTSD could, in the wrong hands, end up traumatized further. In the worst scenarios, patients could be vulnerable to abuse. Unscrupulous therapists or other predators could try to use psychedelics to manipulate others, Dölen says. This is more than paranoid speculation. Quite a few experts, Dölen included, think that Charles Manson’s ability to completely brainwash his followers relied on the high doses of LSD he regularly gave them prior to bombarding their minds with hate-filled lectures and murderous orders."
- randomopining 3y ago
  Sounds like the reason why there's a backlash against exposing kids to all of these controversial topics in the "culture wars" in the West.
  - sbelskie 3y ago
    Can you expand on this? I find it hard to understand what similarities you see to what children today are being “exposed” to and Charles Manson drugging people with LSD and convincing them to kill other people.
    - riskable 3y ago
      I think they're suggesting that young children--in their critical (mental) periods--can somehow turn gay or transgendered due to exposure/normalisation of gay and trans people. Except there's no science to back this up. All the scientific articles I've ever seen on the topic of gender and sexuality seem to indicate that the critical period for those attributes develop in the womb and not during childhood. The most likely reason for such deviations from what conservatives would consider, "normal sexuality" is endocrine-distrupting pollution. The kind that causes amphibians to change their sex, for example.
funnym0nk3y 3y ago
There is so much psychedelic research happening right now. But when will it reach patients outside of trials?
- mtizim 3y ago
  Most of the psychedelic research I've seen boils down to "take psychedelics and do stuff to get a result, here's why you get the result". You can absolutely take psychedelics and do stuff yourself.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    The American Medical Association says 'no no this is so unsafe, you need a Physician who completed US residency, doesnt matter if they are a lifelong expert in the craft from Europe, you pay our cartel or else. Ignore our blood letting, opioid, and ivermectin dark pasts.' I dream of a science based medical system in the future.
    - breck 3y ago
      The scientific models of the past were so dumb. Like the ancient Humoral Theory, which modeled health as `health = fn(blood, phlegm, yellow bile, blackBile)`. Or models like Ayurveda which is roughly `health = fn(Vata, Pitta, Kapha)`. Modern science has put all those dumb ideas to rest! Now we know that the true model is: `health = fn(bigPharmaMed1, bigPharmaMed2, bigPharmaMed3)`.
  - funnym0nk3y 3y ago
    But what stuff to do?
    - coffeebeqn 3y ago
      Seems to be CBT therapy. I’m not sure if I would recommend DYI if only because it’s very hard to stick to a lesson (or any other) plan when you’re on shrooms. Just practically - it’s very hard to read for example
Xen9 3y ago
I use LSD for similar reasons. I actually ordered a lifetime supply of acid and got into big trouble from that. Really good stuff, makes me joyous.
- bakedoatmeal 3y ago
  How do you keep a lifetime supply of LSD? Isn't it an unstable molecule with a limited shelf life?
  - thesaintlives 3y ago
    Er no... LSD stored correctly can last an awfully long time. A lifetime supply for one person? Sure unless that person is Timothy Leary and his entourage!
  - pantalaimon 3y ago
    It keeps pretty well when kept cold and dry.
  - h0l0cube 3y ago
    Someone accidentally tripped on LSD while cleaning a vintage synth from the 60s https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/1960s-rock-music-san-francisco-lsd-buchla-100-synthesizer-grateful-dead/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/1960s-rock-music-s...
  - Xen9 3y ago
    The plan was to order 350 tabs to Finland. The 300 tabs letter was scanned with lights and got caught. The 50 tabs letter actually arrived but was obviously lost because customs began their investigation. In Finland, LSD happens to be "an extremely dangerous" substance and 350 tabs gets "offensive / serious drug crime" (349 would not necessarily). I didn't know this; kind of funny. However, this was all calculated in the sense that with all probability I will not go into prison nevertheless. Simply cannot try again any criminal activity in Finland / ever / for a long while. LSD will last long time stored properly. Putting those small bags that packages use to remove moisture into airtight plastic bag and that into dark place where tempest doesn't vary lots.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
DISCLAIMER: all advice given here is given under the assumption that you did your research, and that you have good reasons why you're interested in psychedelics as a tool. They're a powerful tool, and powerful tools cut both ways. Turning into a new age woo head is a real risk, I've seen it happen to the staunchest of sceptics, no one is immune. Do your research, people, test your drugs, and be careful. I think this research sort of puts the kibosh on microdosing as a paradigm, which has been my intuition all along. If you really want the potential from psychedelics, microdosing is sort of the wrong approach I always thought. What you want to do instead is take them maybe once a year at most, though just one trip in a lifetime can be sufficient depending on your situation, then spend the following period of plasticity putting a lot of effort into changing your life the way you want to, establish habits, pick up new techniques, whatever it is you want to accomplish. You will learn faster, be more able to establish habits. And that learning is forever. You can reap the benefits for the rest of your life, completely sober. I have done extensive self experimentation with microdosing of various psychedelics and the results were fairly clear to me. I felt smarter, and overall pretty great. I felt like I was making all these brilliant connections. But whenever there was an objective source of truth available, it became clear this was all an illusion, I was struggling to make connections that would otherwise be obvious to me, and that made it feel more significant than it was. Chess, for instance, was one such source of truth. Played a couple long games against evenly matched opponent(rated and everything). Made a complete ass of myself. Played easily 3-400 elo points below my usual level. And all the while thinking I was playing brilliantly and calculating deep lines, I was really just imagining lines that never worked. My working memory was terrible. Time management completely off.
- StanislavPetrov 3y ago
  >Chess, for instance, was one such source of truth. Played a couple long games against evenly matched opponent(rated and everything). Made a complete ass of myself. Played easily 3-400 elo points below my usually level. And all the while thinking I was playing brilliantly and calculating deep lines, I was really just imagining lines that never worked. My working memory was terrible. Time management completely off. As a supplemental anecdote, I won my first chess tournament at Manhattan Chess club in the early 1990s while dosed on a significant amount of mushrooms. Certainly the perception of time is an issue and I'm certain the results would have been different if the game had been shorter (as most games are these days), but in a 120 + 60 it wasn't an issue.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Anybody have a tl;dr? I don't want to read about the seashell collection on the researcher's desk.
- nevertoolate 3y ago
  Research seems to prove that psychedelics can be a tool for opening up the so called critical periods. Critical periods are, in my understanding, the highly receptive periods of learning - brain wiring and rewiring. Childhood is abundant in these periods, but they open up in adulthood naturally after trauma, e.g. stroke as high plasticity periods, which go away quickly and possibly are too short. Totally subjective take: future result might be able to explain /why/ psychedelics have profound effect. Interestingly the life-changing traumatic experiences have similar effect, creating these critical periods - body responds to extreme conditions with risky high brain plasticity periods.
mikrl 3y ago
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is pretty accessible and although not scientifically rigorous, provides an ahem ergonomic framework for thinking about psychonautics (which I have, of course, never engaged in)
krrrh 3y ago
Her interview on the Psychoactice podcast was really good if you want more than this article delivers. Primarily she’s getting closer to a more appropriate definition of what a psychedelic is, with the more common modern usage including ketamine and MDMA instead of just tryptamines. All of them seem to re-open a critical period of learning through different mechanisms.

123 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

unstatusthequo 3y ago

https://archive.is/jd5oW https://archive.is/jd5oW

more_corn 3y ago

Lone and meandering article refusing to get to the point promised in the headline.

MrDresden 3y ago
Yeah, just skimmed it and it comes down to: Psychadelics seem to have the ability to leave the user (after the actual 'trip' has worn off) in a state of heightened receptiveness for a long duration (length is different dependent on the drug, but counts weeks in some cases). This state is called a 'critical period' and is usually experienced in childhood. This state might allow for easier digestion of new material, forming new habits or skills or allow the user to be taken advantage of (Charles Manson, and his LSD fueled cult, is mentioned in this regard).
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  It's worth noting this is not new knowledge, it's completely obvious to anyone who's tried psychedelics. I haven't properly dug through the paper for all the details yet, maybe there's some interesting nuggets of new insight in there. But so far it's looking like this is further confirming what us psychonauts have always sort of understood. It's very encouraging to get rigorous science to back the intuition up though. It will obviously help guide future research in clinical applications. Here's the actual most recent research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
- criddell 3y ago
  I wonder if that would be a way for adults to acquire perfect pitch?
JPLeRouzic 3y ago
This publication by the same scientists is probably more interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 "Here we demonstrate in mice that the ability to reopen the social reward learning critical period is a shared property across psychedelic drugs."
- avodonosov 3y ago
  Thank you for that! I was going to ask if a scientific abstract is available.
avodonosov 3y ago
Thank you for finding so mild words to describe the style of this article.

nanidin 3y ago

The headline sounds exactly like the premise of Crouch's Recursion.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Interesting factoid in the preamble: the biochemical basis of the addictive nature of social media? > "Oxytocin and serotonin, she found, work together in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens to produce the good feelings that come from social interaction." LSD and similar drugs can definitely improve one's 3D-visualization capabilities, but I think this requires putting in a fair amount of work on the concepts beforehand. It's reminiscent of the saying, 'chance favors the prepared mind', so if you spend say a month working extensively with 3D models of molecules, proteins, platonic solids and what not and then (under controlled conditions) ingest a psychedelic, a cognitive breakthrough is possible, such as gaining the ability to visualize what a 3D object looks like after successive x-, y-, z- axis rotations and so on, which is useful skill in many fields, from auto mechanic to protein chemist to structural architect. Nice to see this subject finally being studied in a rigorous manner, at least.

LoganDark 3y ago
> "Oxytocin and serotonin, she found, work together in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens to produce the good feelings that come from social interaction." Well, this supports my hypothesis on why talking to people was a really good coping mechanism for ADHD. As far as I can tell, oxytocin isn't dampened(?) like dopamine presumably is. (I say presumably because of the specific symptoms I had and also the specific ways in which stimulants help with them, but I've never had my brain dissected or anything to confirm, seeing as I'm still alive and all.)

rendx 3y ago

"There is, of course, a catch. For mice, having a critical period open for too long causes neural disruptions. Some experts fear that, for people, carelessly flinging wide the doors of personal development could put the very core of their identity in jeopardy by erasing the habits and memories that make them them. A critical period is also a time of vulnerability. While childhood can be filled with wonder and magic, children are also more impressionable. “We can really screw kids up much more than we can adults,” she says. This is why responsible adults intuitively know to protect children from exposure to potentially scary or disturbing material. Or, as Dölen puts it, “You want to teach children new things, but you don’t want them to learn Japanese from Japanese porn.” An adult who undergoes this kind of treatment to heal PTSD could, in the wrong hands, end up traumatized further. In the worst scenarios, patients could be vulnerable to abuse. Unscrupulous therapists or other predators could try to use psychedelics to manipulate others, Dölen says. This is more than paranoid speculation. Quite a few experts, Dölen included, think that Charles Manson’s ability to completely brainwash his followers relied on the high doses of LSD he regularly gave them prior to bombarding their minds with hate-filled lectures and murderous orders."

randomopining 3y ago
Sounds like the reason why there's a backlash against exposing kids to all of these controversial topics in the "culture wars" in the West.
- sbelskie 3y ago
  Can you expand on this? I find it hard to understand what similarities you see to what children today are being “exposed” to and Charles Manson drugging people with LSD and convincing them to kill other people.
  - riskable 3y ago
    I think they're suggesting that young children--in their critical (mental) periods--can somehow turn gay or transgendered due to exposure/normalisation of gay and trans people. Except there's no science to back this up. All the scientific articles I've ever seen on the topic of gender and sexuality seem to indicate that the critical period for those attributes develop in the womb and not during childhood. The most likely reason for such deviations from what conservatives would consider, "normal sexuality" is endocrine-distrupting pollution. The kind that causes amphibians to change their sex, for example.

funnym0nk3y 3y ago

There is so much psychedelic research happening right now. But when will it reach patients outside of trials?

mtizim 3y ago
Most of the psychedelic research I've seen boils down to "take psychedelics and do stuff to get a result, here's why you get the result". You can absolutely take psychedelics and do stuff yourself.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  The American Medical Association says 'no no this is so unsafe, you need a Physician who completed US residency, doesnt matter if they are a lifelong expert in the craft from Europe, you pay our cartel or else. Ignore our blood letting, opioid, and ivermectin dark pasts.' I dream of a science based medical system in the future.
  - breck 3y ago
    The scientific models of the past were so dumb. Like the ancient Humoral Theory, which modeled health as `health = fn(blood, phlegm, yellow bile, blackBile)`. Or models like Ayurveda which is roughly `health = fn(Vata, Pitta, Kapha)`. Modern science has put all those dumb ideas to rest! Now we know that the true model is: `health = fn(bigPharmaMed1, bigPharmaMed2, bigPharmaMed3)`.
- funnym0nk3y 3y ago
  But what stuff to do?
  - coffeebeqn 3y ago
    Seems to be CBT therapy. I’m not sure if I would recommend DYI if only because it’s very hard to stick to a lesson (or any other) plan when you’re on shrooms. Just practically - it’s very hard to read for example

Xen9 3y ago

I use LSD for similar reasons. I actually ordered a lifetime supply of acid and got into big trouble from that. Really good stuff, makes me joyous.

bakedoatmeal 3y ago
How do you keep a lifetime supply of LSD? Isn't it an unstable molecule with a limited shelf life?
- thesaintlives 3y ago
  Er no... LSD stored correctly can last an awfully long time. A lifetime supply for one person? Sure unless that person is Timothy Leary and his entourage!
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  It keeps pretty well when kept cold and dry.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  Someone accidentally tripped on LSD while cleaning a vintage synth from the 60s https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/1960s-rock-music-san-francisco-lsd-buchla-100-synthesizer-grateful-dead/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/1960s-rock-music-s...
- Xen9 3y ago
  The plan was to order 350 tabs to Finland. The 300 tabs letter was scanned with lights and got caught. The 50 tabs letter actually arrived but was obviously lost because customs began their investigation. In Finland, LSD happens to be "an extremely dangerous" substance and 350 tabs gets "offensive / serious drug crime" (349 would not necessarily). I didn't know this; kind of funny. However, this was all calculated in the sense that with all probability I will not go into prison nevertheless. Simply cannot try again any criminal activity in Finland / ever / for a long while. LSD will last long time stored properly. Putting those small bags that packages use to remove moisture into airtight plastic bag and that into dark place where tempest doesn't vary lots.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

DISCLAIMER: all advice given here is given under the assumption that you did your research, and that you have good reasons why you're interested in psychedelics as a tool. They're a powerful tool, and powerful tools cut both ways. Turning into a new age woo head is a real risk, I've seen it happen to the staunchest of sceptics, no one is immune. Do your research, people, test your drugs, and be careful. I think this research sort of puts the kibosh on microdosing as a paradigm, which has been my intuition all along. If you really want the potential from psychedelics, microdosing is sort of the wrong approach I always thought. What you want to do instead is take them maybe once a year at most, though just one trip in a lifetime can be sufficient depending on your situation, then spend the following period of plasticity putting a lot of effort into changing your life the way you want to, establish habits, pick up new techniques, whatever it is you want to accomplish. You will learn faster, be more able to establish habits. And that learning is forever. You can reap the benefits for the rest of your life, completely sober. I have done extensive self experimentation with microdosing of various psychedelics and the results were fairly clear to me. I felt smarter, and overall pretty great. I felt like I was making all these brilliant connections. But whenever there was an objective source of truth available, it became clear this was all an illusion, I was struggling to make connections that would otherwise be obvious to me, and that made it feel more significant than it was. Chess, for instance, was one such source of truth. Played a couple long games against evenly matched opponent(rated and everything). Made a complete ass of myself. Played easily 3-400 elo points below my usual level. And all the while thinking I was playing brilliantly and calculating deep lines, I was really just imagining lines that never worked. My working memory was terrible. Time management completely off.

StanislavPetrov 3y ago
>Chess, for instance, was one such source of truth. Played a couple long games against evenly matched opponent(rated and everything). Made a complete ass of myself. Played easily 3-400 elo points below my usually level. And all the while thinking I was playing brilliantly and calculating deep lines, I was really just imagining lines that never worked. My working memory was terrible. Time management completely off. As a supplemental anecdote, I won my first chess tournament at Manhattan Chess club in the early 1990s while dosed on a significant amount of mushrooms. Certainly the perception of time is an issue and I'm certain the results would have been different if the game had been shorter (as most games are these days), but in a 120 + 60 it wasn't an issue.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

Anybody have a tl;dr? I don't want to read about the seashell collection on the researcher's desk.

nevertoolate 3y ago
Research seems to prove that psychedelics can be a tool for opening up the so called critical periods. Critical periods are, in my understanding, the highly receptive periods of learning - brain wiring and rewiring. Childhood is abundant in these periods, but they open up in adulthood naturally after trauma, e.g. stroke as high plasticity periods, which go away quickly and possibly are too short. Totally subjective take: future result might be able to explain /why/ psychedelics have profound effect. Interestingly the life-changing traumatic experiences have similar effect, creating these critical periods - body responds to extreme conditions with risky high brain plasticity periods.

mikrl 3y ago

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is pretty accessible and although not scientifically rigorous, provides an ahem ergonomic framework for thinking about psychonautics (which I have, of course, never engaged in)

krrrh 3y ago

Her interview on the Psychoactice podcast was really good if you want more than this article delivers. Primarily she’s getting closer to a more appropriate definition of what a psychedelic is, with the more common modern usage including ketamine and MDMA instead of just tryptamines. All of them seem to re-open a critical period of learning through different mechanisms.