Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and this week Julie is
Speaker 1: out on vacation, so we thought we would rerun a
Speaker 1: pair of episodes that we were really proud of, and
Speaker 1: we received a lot of positive feedback from our listeners
Speaker 1: about I'm speaking, of course, of the Scientists and the Shaman.
Speaker 1: This two parter deals with psychedelics, with the psychedelic compounds,
Speaker 1: electropic compounds that have been with this for ages. Uh,
Speaker 1: their effects on the human mind, and how modern science
Speaker 1: is turning back to some of these substances to see
Speaker 1: how they can aid us in understanding how the mind works,
Speaker 1: how to treat various disorders, et cetera. So uh, and
Speaker 1: have a listen to this classic pair of episodes. Just
Speaker 1: up front, I want to mention that on this podcast
Speaker 1: and the other Shaman and Scientists podcast that we're putting out,
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about psychedelics, and by
Speaker 1: which I mean psychedelic drugs of it. So just be
Speaker 1: aware we're gonna handle this and a mature science backboned
Speaker 1: since but I know that this subject is probably not
Speaker 1: for everybody, So just a fair warning that that's what
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about. And we do not advocate
Speaker 1: the use of psychedelic substances and illicit substances at all
Speaker 1: in orged you not to do them. But the science
Speaker 1: behind them is really fascinating. The current scientific investigations of
Speaker 1: how they affect our mind and what they can help
Speaker 1: uncover about how our minds work is totally game, totally
Speaker 1: in our wheelhouse. So we just had to cover it.
Speaker 1: We've covered a little bit in the past, So here
Speaker 1: another couple of slices from that particular cake. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we just couldn't help it because a lot of times
Speaker 1: we talk about what is consciousness and we'll get deeper
Speaker 1: into that question in this podcast, but psychedelics, turns out,
Speaker 1: can help us answer that question or get a little
Speaker 1: bit closer to what we think consciousness is. Um. But
Speaker 1: all of this was actually inspired by a talk that
Speaker 1: you went to, Yes, and you went to in a
Speaker 1: sense yeah, yeah, yeah, via the wonderful recording that you
Speaker 1: took of it. Um. It was a talk at Emory University. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was called four I Am the Black Jaguar. Well,
Speaker 1: it was part of the four I Am the Black
Speaker 1: Jaguar exhibit, which is an art exhibit they did having
Speaker 1: to do with shamanistic visionary experience in ancient American art.
Speaker 1: So a lot of ancient American art that depicts things
Speaker 1: that that you know, it might be jaguars, it might
Speaker 1: be mushroom men, things of this nature that have something
Speaker 1: to do with shamanistic traditions, particularly as they relate to
Speaker 1: the consumption of psychedelic psychotropic substances. And a lot of
Speaker 1: it too, is this unity with nature and this unity
Speaker 1: of man, or the duality i should say of of
Speaker 1: human and animal, and then the bringing together of these
Speaker 1: different aspects right our humans. And the talk that I
Speaker 1: attended was given by Dr Catherine McLean, and also Dr
Speaker 1: Charles Raison was there as well. But McLean is particularly
Speaker 1: interesting because she is involved with some really groundbreaking investigations
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins where they are looking into again how
Speaker 1: these substances affect the human mind and human consciousness and
Speaker 1: human perceptions and what that can tell us about how
Speaker 1: our brains actually work. Because one of the things she
Speaker 1: pointed out in her talk is that you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about how these things change our consciousness affect our consciousness,
Speaker 1: and we already have a difficult time actually saying what
Speaker 1: human consciousness is and how it works. To get back
Speaker 1: to the title of the episode, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: show like the voice she did? So can you do
Speaker 1: that again? Which one the title of not just the episode,
Speaker 1: but of the exhibit for I am the Black Tech War.
Speaker 1: Y see, I was listening to an old Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: album earlier to get kind of stoked. Larry was first
Speaker 1: of scientists, then a shaman, and uh, anyway, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into that a little more. But on the surface
Speaker 1: of things, you have the shaman in one category and
Speaker 1: the scientists and the other. Right, dragging in a lot
Speaker 1: of stereotypes here, but the shaman. You think of the shaman,
Speaker 1: you think of somebody that's spiritual. They're ritualistic, they're magical,
Speaker 1: their heartfelt, they might have a really long beard and
Speaker 1: varying degrees of robes or no robes at all, right,
Speaker 1: man or a woman, man or woman. Then you have
Speaker 1: the scientist, which again can be a man or a woman,
Speaker 1: but logical, meticulous, reasoned um with a certain amount of
Speaker 1: distance between themselves and their their feelings and the subject
Speaker 1: matter they're looking into. So we on the surface of things,
Speaker 1: we tend to think of these as very different, different
Speaker 1: people and very different modes of perception when it comes
Speaker 1: to the realities of the world and the realities of
Speaker 1: the mind. But the curious thing, okay, is that all right?
Speaker 1: So the shaman he looks inward, He or she looks
Speaker 1: inward at the mysteries of the soul and human consciousness,
Speaker 1: and so too, of course, does the con and a neuroscientists. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the questions of who are we, what's the
Speaker 1: root cause of human suffering? How do we achieve liberation
Speaker 1: from it? How can we treat mental illness? Questions of
Speaker 1: these nature's nature are on various levels covered by both sides.
Speaker 1: So while they're they're very different. If you were to
Speaker 1: form a then diagram, you know, with the two circles
Speaker 1: with partial overlap, and you had one circle as the shaman,
Speaker 1: one circle as the neuroscientists, there would be a definite
Speaker 1: overlap there. Now, of course, the shaman helps you explore
Speaker 1: these questions by bringing into a sacred space, producing a
Speaker 1: tray of magical substances that, when consumed, alter your perception.
Speaker 1: Uh an experience of reality, setting you on a journey
Speaker 1: of exploration. Meanwhile, the scientist brings you into a lab, right,
Speaker 1: gives you a pill that might be a placeba, and
Speaker 1: then run some tests on you, maybe throws you into
Speaker 1: a brain imaging machine or hooks you up to some sensors. Right,
Speaker 1: these seem like very different scenarios that one might find
Speaker 1: oneself in. But then there's also some interesting overlap here
Speaker 1: as well, particularly John hop Into University School of Medicine.
Speaker 1: That's where again Dr Kathery McClain conducts her research along
Speaker 1: with a very talented assortment of professionals, and they find
Speaker 1: themselves not going completely halfway between the shaman and the scientists,
Speaker 1: but entering a little more into that shamanistic territory because
Speaker 1: they keep like a calm, meditative space to put the
Speaker 1: test subjects in when they are given some of these
Speaker 1: likedelic substances. And Kathery McClain in this talk at Emory
Speaker 1: actually spoke a bit about her role as a kind
Speaker 1: of guide for these people too, because they end up
Speaker 1: trying to to color their experiences to a to an extent,
Speaker 1: you know, to to guide their trip, as it were,
Speaker 1: in a direction that's more positive so that they can
Speaker 1: study it. Yeah, we talked about this a bit in
Speaker 1: our podcast about hallucinogens and stage four cancer patients who
Speaker 1: were taking hallucinogens in an effort to try to UM
Speaker 1: get over this huge obstacle of fear that was really
Speaker 1: actually um just of affecting them on a level where
Speaker 1: they were like deer in the headlights. They couldn't even
Speaker 1: operate in the space of their lives anymore. And so UM,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about this idea where in a
Speaker 1: lab setting you want to have a level of trust,
Speaker 1: you want to make it as comforting as possible, and
Speaker 1: so the researchers, the scientists are, as you say, taking
Speaker 1: on this persona of guide, of spiritual guide to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, because they have to guide people through this.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really interesting that Kathleen McClain is
Speaker 1: also a Buddhist and she does kind of inhabit that
Speaker 1: space of the Shawoman from time to time, heavy and the
Speaker 1: the meditation and all that. And I can't help to
Speaker 1: think about another past podcast UM having to do with
Speaker 1: magicians in neuroscience, because again you've got neuroscience looking at magicians, UM,
Speaker 1: looking at these hundreds of years old practices and trying
Speaker 1: to learn something about reality and illusion and how our
Speaker 1: mind tricks us and what if so central to this
Speaker 1: idea of mind trickery, I think is something called the
Speaker 1: monkey mind. And probably a lot of you out there
Speaker 1: are familiar with this concept that this constant chatter in
Speaker 1: our brains UM can sometimes hamstring us when we're trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish things in our lives. UM. And of course
Speaker 1: this all points back to the question of consciousness and
Speaker 1: this idea about whether or not consciousness is actually a
Speaker 1: static thing. Now McClain and her talk says, I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure consciousness is something that is coherent, UM. But
Speaker 1: again it's this idea of trying to get into what's
Speaker 1: going on in these three pounds of computation material in
Speaker 1: our brains. UM. She says, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: to really try to pin it down and figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on. She says, we can't explain normal consciousness
Speaker 1: in terms of neuroscience, so explaining altered states of consciousness
Speaker 1: is even more difficult. And UM, I also wanted to
Speaker 1: point this out too, as we begin to delve into
Speaker 1: consciousness and the monkey mind. UM. I've brought this up before.
Speaker 1: There was a study by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert and
Speaker 1: Matthew Killingsworth, and they actually developed an iPhone app that
Speaker 1: would track people's um waking states and their ability to
Speaker 1: concentrate and so on and so forth and something like
Speaker 1: a people participated in this study and what they found
Speaker 1: was that mind wandering is something that takes up half
Speaker 1: of our time. And that seems pretty big, But when
Speaker 1: you step back and you look at it throughout the day,
Speaker 1: you know how, when you're not speaking, when you're not
Speaker 1: um doing something that really requires you to fire in
Speaker 1: all four cylinders, what are you doing your daydreaming? Right?
Speaker 1: So hence you've got this monkey mind, and hence you
Speaker 1: have this idea that maybe some of this consciousness points
Speaker 1: back to this chatter in our brains. Yeah. There you
Speaker 1: see that this represented various ways to another um out
Speaker 1: modes of thought. Outside of science, there's always the classic
Speaker 1: vision of the guy with a demon on one shoulder
Speaker 1: and an angel on the other. These little voices that
Speaker 1: are chattering Adam, saying you should be doing this, No,
Speaker 1: you should be doing this. You should steal that candy bar, No,
Speaker 1: you should pay for that candy bar with with hard
Speaker 1: earned money, can you steal it? Um? I always try
Speaker 1: and compromise still half of it by the other half,
Speaker 1: you know. But it's the classic more dilemma whether to
Speaker 1: to steal the candy bar. But then you also have
Speaker 1: people like new Age guru Akarta who calls it the
Speaker 1: going mind um and you see that term thrown around
Speaker 1: a lot as well, this idea that it's a this
Speaker 1: this mode of thinking that very tied into who I am,
Speaker 1: what my story is. We've talked about that before when
Speaker 1: we're talking about storytelling and the power of storytelling and
Speaker 1: how we all kind of see our lives in this
Speaker 1: mode of story. I am the central character in my story,
Speaker 1: and these are the obstacles I am up against. These
Speaker 1: are the things I have achieved, and these are the
Speaker 1: things that I've lost. Um. So it's this default mode network,
Speaker 1: as it's called in the scientific papers, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with depeche mode network, because that's that would waver
Speaker 1: between just can't get enough in black celebration. Whereas the
Speaker 1: default mode network is again this this this sort of
Speaker 1: idle thinking zone, and you know, it's it's in it's
Speaker 1: better states. It's introspective. It's daydreaming, and it's worst states,
Speaker 1: it's depressive. It's that that demon on your shoulder beating
Speaker 1: you up and saying, oh, these are the things that
Speaker 1: that I don't have anymore, These are the things about
Speaker 1: me that suck and and and I'm never going to
Speaker 1: succeed in this kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is where when we start talking about consciousness and defining
Speaker 1: the eye of ourselves, you start to look at the
Speaker 1: default mode network, because this is where you have your
Speaker 1: pastiche of memories, feelings, and thoughts and again that chatter
Speaker 1: that me, me, me. What we're talking about when we
Speaker 1: talk about the default mode network is the medial prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: the medial parietal cortex, and the medial temporal lobes. And
Speaker 1: the idea there's a couple of different theories about what
Speaker 1: they're doing ing um. The idea is that these associations
Speaker 1: between these different parts of the brain are the brain's
Speaker 1: baseline of processing and information, where we consolidate experiences and
Speaker 1: we prepare to react to the environment. The second theory
Speaker 1: is that it also facilitates stream of conscious thought, also
Speaker 1: known as stimulus independent thought, which I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting to know stimulus independent thought, meaning you're not even
Speaker 1: aware of your surroundings. You're just chattering, chattering, chattering to me.
Speaker 1: I think of it as like, you know, driving to
Speaker 1: work every day and I pulled into the parking lot
Speaker 1: and go, oh, how did I get here? I don't
Speaker 1: really have a memory of that because I was so
Speaker 1: consumed with my own thoughts. Um. So sort of stuff
Speaker 1: that you see in daydreaming. Again, keep in mind that
Speaker 1: half of our day is spent in the state of daydreaming.
Speaker 1: Um and it's important that here right also totally takes
Speaker 1: you out of your surroundings. You know, like on your
Speaker 1: your drive to work, we've kind of go into autopilot
Speaker 1: mode and suddenly you're there because it's like you weren't
Speaker 1: actually on that drive to work. You were wrapped up
Speaker 1: in these thoughts of what happened yesterday or what's going
Speaker 1: to happen and with the rest of your day, uh,
Speaker 1: totally wrapped up in your thought life. You everything else
Speaker 1: in your surroundings, be it you know, the the highway
Speaker 1: on the drive to work, or a beautiful park or
Speaker 1: the love of your family, all of it just kind
Speaker 1: of fades as this inner dialogue kicks up, and by
Speaker 1: pointing out the parts of the brain, I think that's
Speaker 1: the really amazing part here is that you know, on
Speaker 1: one hand, we're talking about the devil and angel on
Speaker 1: your soldiers. We're talking about grasping in the Buddhist sense
Speaker 1: for for things that you want or don't have, and
Speaker 1: and all of this this inner and kind of spiritual stuff.
Speaker 1: But we can actually look at the brain and look
Speaker 1: at the part the network that lights up when the
Speaker 1: when this kind of thinking takes place right. And this
Speaker 1: this kind of thinking does need to happen right because
Speaker 1: it is balancing the sense of self and this ego
Speaker 1: and again it's giving us some sort of um consciousness
Speaker 1: or idea of ourselves through this process. The problem, of course,
Speaker 1: is when there's hyperactivity in this area. It's like like
Speaker 1: when a dog has some sort of problem on its scan. Right,
Speaker 1: it's gonna lick, it's gonna know a little bit. But
Speaker 1: then it gets out of hand when that gnawing and
Speaker 1: that looking never stops, when it turns into self harm.
Speaker 1: And certainly we see that time and time again in
Speaker 1: patients of a variety of mental problems, where we see
Speaker 1: that that see this heightened activity in this default mode network. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and according to Dr Charles Frey Salam, who is also
Speaker 1: part of that talk, people with depression exhibit hyperactivity in
Speaker 1: the default mode network. So, as you say, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: because you can literally point to that brain scan and
Speaker 1: you can see that hyperactivity and you can see that
Speaker 1: it's the cause of some of this depression. Because now
Speaker 1: think about that chattering in this UM, this idea of
Speaker 1: that that chattering is absolutely involved with self and worry.
Speaker 1: So what you have going on is is this sort
Speaker 1: of midline chatter that is encouraging a person to turn inward.
Speaker 1: And then in addition to that hyperactive default mode network,
Speaker 1: it becomes more and more entangled with the anterior singulate cortex,
Speaker 1: which is responsible for the fear response. So not only
Speaker 1: do you have this turning in word, you now have
Speaker 1: a fear factor that's involved, and this can contribute really
Speaker 1: heavily to depression. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Stay tuned for more. So we bring all
Speaker 1: of this up because this is really important in terms
Speaker 1: of UM some experiments with hallucinogens and perhaps relieving this depression.
Speaker 1: This quieting the default mode network as well as meditation. Right,
Speaker 1: and before we get that, do of course need to stress.
Speaker 1: The thing about the default mode network is that under
Speaker 1: normal situations, it's more active during rest than it is
Speaker 1: during cask performance. So it's it's when you're in that uh,
Speaker 1: that easy state of driving to work a road that
Speaker 1: you travel every day, or you're waiting on something, you're
Speaker 1: sitting around, it's it's like the screen saver of your mind.
Speaker 1: But if you're busy, if you are just vigorously trying
Speaker 1: to get something done at the last minute, or you're
Speaker 1: in that state of flow the job or a hobby
Speaker 1: that you love, or certainly if you're engaging saying yoga
Speaker 1: where you're you're totally in your body and not in
Speaker 1: your mind, we see that network shut down to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because
Speaker 1: there is this idea of getting outside of yourself. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're doing something that's in the state of flow,
Speaker 1: then you're getting outside of that chatter and that that
Speaker 1: mind and you're quieting the default mode network. Now, this
Speaker 1: is where we're gonna get a little more back into
Speaker 1: into psychedelics. And I just want to do a quick
Speaker 1: note about the nature of psychedelicist reminded about what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here. Okay, uh, for the most part, especially
Speaker 1: as far as shamanistic practices go, you know, ancient spiritual
Speaker 1: practices that date back long before ability to create synthetic drugs.
Speaker 1: We're talking about naturally occurring substances such as psilocybin, mushrooms, iowa,
Speaker 1: sa vines. We're talking about peyote, cacti and other naturally
Speaker 1: occurring psychoactics, after substances in vegetation, in animals, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: code centipedes, what have you. And then when taken, they
Speaker 1: have the potential to alter vulturally every level of awareness
Speaker 1: and experience. Now, some of you listening may have had
Speaker 1: some sort of experiences with this kind of altered state
Speaker 1: of mind, either naturally occurring or due to illness or
Speaker 1: any other lucid dreaming that sometimes dreaming and sometimes in
Speaker 1: this character. But for for a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of other people, you may think you may hear about,
Speaker 1: you know, tripping on psychedelics, and you instantly think of
Speaker 1: the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or any
Speaker 1: number of movies that have attempted to show an altered
Speaker 1: state of awareness and perception. It's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: like Hollywood tripping. And it's important to note that while yes,
Speaker 1: if one took enough of certain hallucinogens, they could have
Speaker 1: this kind of very visual, crazy fantastic experience of dinosaurs
Speaker 1: climbing out of the walls and all that. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: that's possible, but that's not that in and of itself
Speaker 1: is just like one slice of the cake. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of other modes of perception and modes of
Speaker 1: understanding that can be altered by psychedelics. We're talking about
Speaker 1: changes in your awareness of your own body, of visual peculiarities,
Speaker 1: audible peculiarities, strangeness and thought, and perception in the experience
Speaker 1: of time and self. So pretty much any way that
Speaker 1: we think or see the world can be tweaked, you know,
Speaker 1: because what we talked again earlier, like what is consciousness?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, what do we know about how we
Speaker 1: think and what our brain is. We know that their
Speaker 1: chemical processes, that biological processes, and it's subject to change.
Speaker 1: You can change the way you think by looking at
Speaker 1: a puppy or or a cat. We've talked about that before.
Speaker 1: They're there are all sorts of ways to tweak what
Speaker 1: you're experiencing and how you're experiencing the world, and how
Speaker 1: you're constructing this world that you perceive. We talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole child versus adult. The child has
Speaker 1: this lamplight view of the world and then the human
Speaker 1: has the flashlight view. I mean, all of this is
Speaker 1: we're talking about changes in perception and these substances. Depending
Speaker 1: on what a person takes, how much they take, and
Speaker 1: also an individual's particular biochemistry, it'll it'll affect that person
Speaker 1: on varying levels. Yes, So I think it's interesting to
Speaker 1: introduce it like that because there are various ways, as
Speaker 1: you say, we can change our perception, and you can
Speaker 1: sort of do it a little bit or a lot,
Speaker 1: and certainly through something like psilocybin, that is something that
Speaker 1: will get you into that spot where you are sort
Speaker 1: of blowing open the doors of perception. And that is
Speaker 1: why scientists use it, because they are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how it is interacting with the brain, what it's
Speaker 1: doing um to personality as well. So we talked about
Speaker 1: the default mode network and depression. Then it makes sense
Speaker 1: that neuroscientists want to look at psilocybin and see what
Speaker 1: sort of effect it has on the human brain. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing about research into this, and we've stepped
Speaker 1: in this in the past, and around the mid fifties,
Speaker 1: that's when science really got that interested in psychedelics and
Speaker 1: and that's also you know, you saw the advent of
Speaker 1: LSD in that age, and you also saw of course
Speaker 1: the rise of the counterculture and all that. So by
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen sixties you saw the the
Speaker 1: end of actual research into this because it started off
Speaker 1: people were looking into, Okay, what are these chemicals doing,
Speaker 1: how are they affecting the mind? And then you have
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary out there, but you know, again initially approaching
Speaker 1: things from a more scientific standpoint, but then becoming more
Speaker 1: and more of a cultural figure and more of the
Speaker 1: shaman and less of the scientists. And then eventually you
Speaker 1: have people like John C. Lily who are just taking
Speaker 1: LSD in there in the tank next to the apartment
Speaker 1: in which the dolphin lives, so that he can communicate
Speaker 1: with the dolphin people, and and subsequently losing his funding
Speaker 1: because eventually it just gets so nunny that they pull
Speaker 1: his funding. So you're right, it starts to get clouded
Speaker 1: with this idea that it's not a good idea to
Speaker 1: research this culturally, politically, it just falls off until basically,
Speaker 1: I'm saw the dawn of the twenty one century and
Speaker 1: and so we that's where we are now a decade
Speaker 1: and some change into that. Yeah, then these really saw
Speaker 1: a resurgence in this and particularly the last couple of
Speaker 1: years too. We've seen a ton of data coming online
Speaker 1: about this UM. But when we talk about the default
Speaker 1: mode network and depression and psilocybin, it's important to talk
Speaker 1: about someone named David Jane Nutt. He's a psychiatrist at
Speaker 1: the Imperial College of London, and his team recruited fifteen
Speaker 1: healthy people, people that they made sure to scan beforehand
Speaker 1: and that they are sort of thing that they were
Speaker 1: sound and mind and body UM. And then they also
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that these people had previous experience
Speaker 1: taking hallucinogens. This is key and this is something that
Speaker 1: McLean brought up in her talk as well. Because you're
Speaker 1: bringing people into experiment UM, you know how their brains
Speaker 1: work and how they perceive things in the state. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be to introduce them to it for
Speaker 1: the first time because that can be a very overwhelming
Speaker 1: and frightening experience better that the that the test subjects
Speaker 1: have some experience with this altered state of awareness, some
Speaker 1: sort of context, so that they can study the effects
Speaker 1: of it better. Over a two day period, the researchers
Speaker 1: monitored activity in the brains of these volunteers as they
Speaker 1: land a scanner for up to an hour. On the
Speaker 1: first day, participants received an intravenent shot of the placebo solution. Uh.
Speaker 1: The next day they got a shot of psilocybin that
Speaker 1: was dosed to peak about uh, let me see, about
Speaker 1: four minutes, and then was mostly over at about thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: We're talking to my short, short amount of time here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the traditional you know, hippie way of taking these
Speaker 1: in the shamanistic way of taking these substances, of course,
Speaker 1: just to eat it, which then is a gradual absorption,
Speaker 1: gradual trip. That with a gradual you know, I'm thinking hippies,
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who would say, pick one of these
Speaker 1: things in the natural world and eat it. That is
Speaker 1: going to be a slower uptake and then a slower
Speaker 1: fall off. But this is introduced with I V. So
Speaker 1: it's just like a rocket ship. On a side note, too.
Speaker 1: It's probably really obvious to the participants which was the
Speaker 1: placebo in which was the actual psilocybin in this case.
Speaker 1: Don't you think I have to guess there's not much
Speaker 1: of a placebo effect. Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. So
Speaker 1: all of the participants described kaleidoscope vision with images of
Speaker 1: bright and angular shapes. UM. The rush of the first
Speaker 1: tend to thirty seconds and do some fear nuts said,
Speaker 1: but positive feelings then swept over them, and many participants
Speaker 1: said that the benefits of the experience were profound and
Speaker 1: they felt that they had moved on from where they
Speaker 1: had been. UM. So what they found when they were
Speaker 1: scanning the brains of these participants was a decrease in
Speaker 1: both blood flow and metabolism in several key areas after injection.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the anterior singulate cortex, so that
Speaker 1: was the one that I mentioned that has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the the fear and pain response. And
Speaker 1: also they saw that default mode network quieting itself. So
Speaker 1: what they found is that here is this way that
Speaker 1: you can dial down hyperactivity or activity in general in
Speaker 1: this area of the brain and perhaps relieve depression through
Speaker 1: this process. And on one level. I mean, how into
Speaker 1: your own problems can you be if the wall is
Speaker 1: breathing right, This is true, there's not a lot of me,
Speaker 1: me me going on, and it is interested. Along those lines,
Speaker 1: one of the things that mcclaimantion is how a lot
Speaker 1: of this research she feels needs to get out of
Speaker 1: the lab and deal with because traditionally shamanistically they're not
Speaker 1: taking these substances and then watching twin peaks in the basement,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're not shutting their eyes and plugging
Speaker 1: in some headphones. Now they're taking them in nature. They're
Speaker 1: they're experiencing the natural world through these substances. Granted, they're
Speaker 1: experiencing an altered understanding and experience of the natural world,
Speaker 1: but it's a rather different kettle fish than taking it
Speaker 1: inside of a closed environment. So again, someone is suddenly
Speaker 1: becoming more aware of what's around them and outside of themselves,
Speaker 1: as opposed to that same sad old story about who
Speaker 1: they are and what their their deal is. Now there's
Speaker 1: still the question about how long this um this can
Speaker 1: actually affect person, and that's what they're trying to still
Speaker 1: go through this data and figure out if these are
Speaker 1: long term, meaningful changes in terms of alleviating depression. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about that in in part two of
Speaker 1: this episode. So I did want to mention that there's
Speaker 1: another way to go about quieting the default mode network,
Speaker 1: and right now it seems to be the best way
Speaker 1: to go about it in terms of sustaining long term,
Speaker 1: meaningful changes to your brain. And this is through meditation. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is yeah, this is really fascinating. We spoke earlier.
Speaker 1: You know, when you when you're you're looking at the
Speaker 1: brain and activity in the brain, you can we're able
Speaker 1: to identify what's happening with this particular network that we're
Speaker 1: identifying this uh, this default mode network, and then under psilocybin,
Speaker 1: we're watching the activity there decrease. But then the same
Speaker 1: thing occurs, the same decreation occurs during meditation. Now it's
Speaker 1: important to note here that that the similar brain activity
Speaker 1: in brain scans, that doesn't mean it's the same experience.
Speaker 1: So it's not saying that that anyone going into meditation
Speaker 1: should you know, should be seeing crazy amazing things in
Speaker 1: their mind, not to say that there's not that some
Speaker 1: of that isn't going on, But identical brain scans don't
Speaker 1: mean the exact same experience for the individual. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: what it's pointing to you again is that there's just
Speaker 1: quieting in this chatter area. Dr Judson Brewer, medical director
Speaker 1: at the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, and his colleagues asked
Speaker 1: ten experienced meditators in thirteen people with no meditation experience
Speaker 1: to practice three basic meditation techniques concentration, loving, kindness, and
Speaker 1: choiceless awareness. And the team then used FMR I to
Speaker 1: observe the participant's brain activity when they were practicing the techniques,
Speaker 1: and then we are when they were instructed not to
Speaker 1: think of anything in particular. So the experienced meditators had
Speaker 1: this decreased activity in the default mode network. Moreover, they
Speaker 1: found out that this region of their brain was much
Speaker 1: quieter than in their inexperienced counterparts. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before. The the idea that you can actually change
Speaker 1: your brain to a certain extent through meditation again long
Speaker 1: term changes, and you'll see this again and again in
Speaker 1: studies with meditators, is that there's just this ability to
Speaker 1: concentrate better, to quiet the chattering mind and not wander
Speaker 1: as much. And I wanted to point this up because again,
Speaker 1: the mind is going to wander. Half of our day
Speaker 1: spent doing this. But there are some studies that point
Speaker 1: to this idea that if you can be conscious of
Speaker 1: your own mind wandering, you can actually be a more
Speaker 1: creative individual. You can harness your thoughts a lot better.
Speaker 1: So again pointing to this idea of meditation as a
Speaker 1: way not only to quiet the monkey mind, but also
Speaker 1: to access some really novel ways of thinking. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's the you listen to various gurus on this matter,
Speaker 1: and then that's always like, the first step is being
Speaker 1: able to identify the monkey mind, the egoic mind, the
Speaker 1: devil on your shoulder, whatever however you choose to to
Speaker 1: see conceived that the deep all mode network, if you
Speaker 1: can identify it when it's happening, I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: the first big battle that you can actually stop and say, like,
Speaker 1: what am I doing? What what are my thoughts doing
Speaker 1: right now? Why am I relaying this stupid idea or
Speaker 1: this silly fear or even this very real fear. Why
Speaker 1: am I occupying my mind with it at this moment?
Speaker 1: And what else could I potentially be using it for?
Speaker 1: Right or if you're if you realize that your brain
Speaker 1: is working stay on a problem and turning things over
Speaker 1: and over in your mind, but you know that your
Speaker 1: mind is wandering and it's dealing with this. Then you
Speaker 1: can kind of have a breakthrough if you have the
Speaker 1: realization that your mind is doing this, and then instead
Speaker 1: of sort of going into the feedback loop of negativity
Speaker 1: that our brains can kind of do with certain stories
Speaker 1: that we tell ourselves, you catch yourself like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a problem my brain is working on, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a solution here. Yeah, because sometimes sometimes you
Speaker 1: just need to turn the dryer off and take the
Speaker 1: clothes out before the cycle finishes, you know, slaying them
Speaker 1: up before they get rankled. On the note of meditation
Speaker 1: and hallucinations and psychedelic experiences, I will say that in shavasa,
Speaker 1: the period at the end of yoga where one after
Speaker 1: one has been their yoga exercises for you know, an hour,
Speaker 1: hour and a half, whatever the length may be, and
Speaker 1: in this state, you're getting out of your mind, You're
Speaker 1: getting engaged in your body. You're shutting down the default
Speaker 1: mode network just by putting yourself through a lot of
Speaker 1: physical poses and engaging the physical body rather than the mind.
Speaker 1: At the end of that, you go into this this
Speaker 1: state where you you either said or you lay back
Speaker 1: or maybe legs up the wall, and you go into
Speaker 1: this this meditative state and and on. On a personal note,
Speaker 1: I regularly see some really crazy stuff during that period,
Speaker 1: you know, colors, explosions, clouds, smoke, that kind of thing. Occasionally. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I see people. I don't interact with them
Speaker 1: or anything that that would be a different situation. But um,
Speaker 1: but but I do have these uh these in a
Speaker 1: sense psychedelic experiences during Shavasa, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: do get this well. And so that's sort of that's
Speaker 1: sort of a perfect way to segue into what we
Speaker 1: will talk about in the second podcast, which is this
Speaker 1: idea of whether or not hallucinations are natural to humans,
Speaker 1: to all creatures. So there you have it. That's part
Speaker 1: one of The Scientist and the Shaman. Make sure you
Speaker 1: tune in Thursday for the second episode. And if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this on down the line, well it's probably
Speaker 1: there for you to just move on to right away
Speaker 1: without any pause, without any stop. Um. As always, you
Speaker 1: can find us at stuff double your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the mothership. That is the home page. That
Speaker 1: is where you will find all of our content, our videos,
Speaker 1: our blog post links to anywhere on the internet we
Speaker 1: might be doing some sort of business, you will find
Speaker 1: it there. And we'd certainly love to hear back from
Speaker 1: you about this particular topic about the psychedelics, about their
Speaker 1: potential for use in intreating various elements, and in their
Speaker 1: ability to help us understand the human mind, and also
Speaker 1: just the rich historical and cultural significance of these substances,
Speaker 1: and how are you going to get in touch with us? Well?
Speaker 1: You can interact with us on our various social media accounts,
Speaker 1: or you can send us an email at below the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.