How seizures (potentially) alter consciousness

Studies of psychedelic use may help shed light on the nature of consciousness

The nature of consciousness—what it is, where it comes from, and how it manifests as moment-to-moment experience—remains under debate by scientists. Recent studies show psychedelics were found to boost low-frequency brain signals known as delta waves, a behavior also seen during dream states.

Losing a brain-computer interface can trigger lasting psychological distress

A clinical trial participant with severe epilepsy described becoming “one” with her implant after it gave her unprecedented control over her seizures. When the device was removed due to the company shutting down, she experienced deep emotional trauma and a sense of personal loss.

Psychedelics set off a flurry of brain activity that may permanently alter it

The brain seems to experience a sharp increase in communication between areas that generally don't interact. New research suggests a thin, sheet-like gray matter structure tucked deep within the brain, between the insular cortex and striatum, may be the key to this change. The area is centrally located and home to many of the receptors that psychedelics target, potentially rewiring the brain and rewriting thought patterns.

NDEs typically change people's outlooks drastically and can prompt depression

The phenomena are regularly categorized as hallucinations, but some specialists are interested in their psychological nuances. Many survivors report feeling less anxiety about death, though some surveys show the experiences can increase physiological sensitivities.

How four types of psychedelics affect the brain

Brain imaging shows that ayahuasca, MDMA, DMT, and psilocybin profoundly affect neural activity, giving rise to higher states of introspection and consciousness. This article details exactly how each of these drugs physically affects the brain and what that means for mental health treatment. Some of these drugs quiet the brain or trigger the release of neurochemicals associated with mood regulation and learning.

Brain activity sometimes goes into overdrive around the point of death according to researchers' recent analysis of patients' brains before and after they were taken off their ventilators.

Accounts of near-death experiences share similarities with hallucinogens, with reports of mystical-like states of consciousness across both contexts.

The body's response to cardiac arrest has been linked to near-death experiences.

Near-death experiences can be reminiscent of religious visions, yet people across different faiths as well as those with no declared religion have reported them.

How can octopuses and MDMA help scientists understand the human brain?

Research shows that psychedelics may induce something called "critical periods" in the adult brain, which can make our brains more open to learning and changing, like they once were back in early childhood. Psychedelics similarly change how social creatures like octopuses behave, which demonstrates that these animals could help us better understand our own neurobiology.

Sleep is no longer considered a binary state—scientists are seeking to map a variety of liminal states between sleep and waking, including the hypnagogic state associated with boosts of creativity.

This is the human brain on the world's strongest psychedelic

Within seconds of inhaling a high dose of vaporized synthetic 5-MeO-DMT—a lab-produced substance that otherwise is naturally derived from the glands of the Colorado River toad—it induced slow brain waves. Such waves are typically associated with unconsciousness due to a coma or anesthesia, perhaps explaining why users describe feeling like everything falls away. The compound is currently in clinical trials for treating depression.

Mental health applications of psychedelics

Scientists are investigating psilocybin, ketamine, LSD, and MDMA (also known as ecstasy) as potential treatments for mental health issues. These drugs enable an altered state of consciousness, which can have beneficial or harmful impacts depending on the nature of the experience. Research suggests these drugs can be effective in treating substance use disorders, mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety, and psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia.

A leading expert on near-death experiences, psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Greyson, says that during his decades of research on this topic, this area of research has become far more mainstream and accepted as a rigorous area of inquiry.

The neurobiology of meaningfulness: the benefits of psychedelics

Psychedelics produce powerful emotions in its users, including a profound sense of meaningfulness. The philosopher William James called this sense "noetic" in the late 19th century, but for decades researchers avoided studying the effects of such drugs on the brain. However, the recent resurgence in psychedelic research has heightened interest in the relationship between this noetic sense resulting from the therapeutic use of drugs. Learn what researchers have found out here.

Misfired motor signals may explain why many people with schizophrenia hear voices

Up to 80% of schizophrenia patients may have auditory hallucinations. Recent research concluded that this symptom may be from misfired motor signals that feed into each other, essentially failing to suppress certain sensory neural activities and that resulting overexcitment fuels hallucinations. The finding suggests that, one day, magnetic pulses might be used to stimulate specific nerves to better regulate the errant signals and reduce or stop hallucinations. (Some users may encounter a paywall.)

Physiological changes to the brain on LSD can be captured via MRI

Psychedelics like LSD often take users on novel experiences that can result in lasting shifts in perspective and behavior. See how LSD affects brain activity in this video that details how scientists visually captured the psychedelic's effect for the first time.

Psychedelics interact with neurotransmitter systems to alter one's perception

LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA can suppress the brain's default mode network and enhance connectivity. Research shows that, when paired with therapy, psychedelics may help treat mental health conditions, including depression, addiction, and PTSD.

Psychedelic side effects, including worsening mental health for some patients, give pause

This article explores whether the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drug use is really as good as current research suggests. Scientists are exploring its applications for conditions ranging from the existential crisis that can accompany terminal diagnoses to chronic mental health conditions, including anxiety and PTSD.

There's a new (contested) physiological explanation for near-death experiences based on analysis of the brains of resuscitated coma and cardiac arrest patients.

Historians theorize Vincent Van Gogh suffered from Ménière's disease or epilepsy

A century after researchers suggested he suffered from epilepsy, some researchers in the 1990s began to support an alternate diagnosis: Ménière's disease, since he had suffered from severe, repeated attacks of disabling vertigo. Still, some researchers remain skeptical of the Ménière's diagnosis. One posits that Van Gogh had temporal epilepsy complicated by his absinthe consumption.

Some scientists argue NDEs are constructed by the brain, not actually experienced

Despite the powerful memories associated with NDEs, scientists question the idea that the experiences prove consciousness endures after death, opting instead to find physiological explanations for common reports of out-of-body experiences, euphoric and lucid thinking, and more.

What happens in a dying brain?

Near-death experiences usually happen during death or on the border of life and death when a person isn't understood to be conscious. This article details the science of what's going on with the brain during NDEs.

How psychedelics can potentially reinvent learning

Critical periods, discovered in the early 20th century, describe a period when someone is incredibly sensitive to their environment, and any information learned can stick with them for life. Some researchers argue these states can be "reopened" via psychedelics, which put the mind into a malleable state that can potentially be used to treat conditions ranging from lazy eyes to PTSD.

Why might someone want to stay in psychosis?

Author Abigail Gosselin writes that her verbal auditory hallucination, often assumed by others to be harmful or threatening in nature, offered a salve to loneliness, even as it told her to kill herself. This perceived benefit and others Gosselin shares offer insight into why people in psychosis may struggle to adhere to treatment and medication plans.

Why 'spacing out' or dissociating may help reduce trauma awareness

Dissociation may have developed as a defense mechanism in the brain to help navigate intense emotional or physical situations by providing out-of-body experiences that put distance between the mind and the environment. However, in about 1.1% and 1.5% percent of the general population, a severe form of this separation can produce alternate identities, or alters.

The main criticism of a recent neurophysiological explanation for near-death experiences is that these events are too complex to be explained as a neurochemical response to an oxygen-deprived brain.

Schizophrenia literally means 'split mind'—a reference to patients' break with reality

Contrary to the name, patients do not have multiple personalities. Rather, the split mind refers to the sufferers' inability to distinguish reality from hallucinations when they are aware and awake. Cognitive difficulties, including challenges focusing and communicating are also common among those with schizophrenia, as well as auditory and visual hallucinations.

Two scientists argue consciousness evolved through 'unlimited associative learning,' the ability to learn almost any new pattern during a lifetime.

A mescaline-induced hallucination stayed with Jean-Paul Sartre throughout his life

In 1935, Sartre was injected with mescaline, a psychedelic drug that was then used to treat alcoholism and depression, by his friend at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris. It was not a good trip: Sartre saw nightmarish crabs for days and suffered a mental breakdown. For the rest of his life, crustaceans like the ones he saw during the hallucination appeared in his works.

For most of recorded history dreams were considered divine in origin.

Examining self-diagnosed synesthesia

A growing number of people on social media claim to have a perceptual condition that lets them smell colors, see music, or taste sounds. But do they really?

Psychedelic drugs are having a scientific renaissance

After decades of repression, psychedelic research is making a resurgence. Hear from a host of experts in this 20-minute video on what that could mean for the future of mental health. The current science on psychedelics believes LSD can cause a particular brain network to quiet or deactivate.

A near-death experience is a phenomenon experienced by roughly 5% to 23% of the population, and typically occurs after a traumatic physical event or a brief clinical death.

Predictive brain implants raise ethical concerns about patient autonomy after surgery

These devices can accurately forecast neurological events like seizures and suggest or even automatically deliver responses. Their constant monitoring and prescriptive functions may blur the line between patient choice and device influence.

LSD fueled a countercultural movement before evolving into a potential therapeutic

As the use of recreational psychedelics became common, authorities were quick to claim LSD had lasting adverse effects, criminalizing the drug and halting scientific study for decades. Over time, LSD's reputation shifted from a potential source of enlightenment to a dangerous drug that could dim a person's future, and back to a possible therapeutic compound.

Delirium tremens is the most severe form of alcohol withdrawal

Due to the impact of alcohol on the central nervous system, withdrawal from the drug can cause severe effects. Roughly 1% to 1.5% of heavy drinkers will experience delirium tremens, which includes tremors, seizures, hallucinations, and more. Onset typically occurs 48-72 hours after the last drink.

Individuals with synesthesia experience involuntarily overlapping sensations

Tasting words or seeing colors in music results from the brain retaining extrasensory connections from infancy. While most lose these neural pathways during development, about 4% of people are synesthetes, maintaining them without realizing it's unusual.

Dreams have long been used for religious and political power.

Can physics explain where consciousness comes from?

Consciousness is a complex emergent phenomenon of the brain, which is primarily composed of neurons and glial cells. Since all matter is composed of atoms that follow the laws of physics, there may be quantum processes beyond classical electrochemical interactions that can explain where consciousness comes from.

People with schizophrenia are excluded from psychedelic research

Individuals with this mental health condition are routinely eliminated from any psychedelic research due to concerns about triggering or worsening psychosis. Yet there is little high-quality research in this area, raising questions about if further research into this question is warranted as interest grows in using psychedelics for therapeutic purposes.

Dream interpretation has evolved from ancient mystical explanations, to dream reports, to tracking electrical activity in the brain and more.

Scientists are studying dying patients' brain activity in the final moments of life

In the final moments of life there are distinctive bursts of coordinated neural activity. Researchers are interested in parsing that data to better understand the dying process and also exploring how this data relates to our understanding of consciousness.

Some founders of quantum mechanics thought consciousness could influence phenomena

Since quantum systems exist as a superposition of states before producing a definitive outcome, some quantum pioneers wondered if the act of conscious observation was what collapsed the wave function of possibilities into one state.

Sharp wave ripples in the brain tag experiences for long-term memory storage

These ripples were known to quickly replay neuronal sequences during sleep for consolidation. While awake, they help the brain prioritize memories to remember, and their disruption can impair memory formation.

The dreaming brain, as understood by scientists

Technology has advanced to where the seemingly separate fields of psychology and neuroscience are asking the same questions about dreams, such as whether they're more closely related to perception or visualization. Some field-intersecting findings include research that shows people with impaired face perception don't dream of faces, those with brain legion-related cognition difficulties deal with similar issues in dreams, and children's dreams change in parallel to their cognitive development.

An essay exploring how living day-to-day with a brain implant helps restore a sense of identity

Companies like Neuralink are experimenting with volunteers who have lost control over their bodies. Many of the program's participants claim the most significant benefit from the tool is the ability to perform simple, mundane tasks, such as playing video games or shaking hands, rather than more obvious milestones like walking or eating. This essay explores what it's like, day to day, to use a brain implant.

Wearing a 'schizophrenia simulator,' designed to build empathy for patients, CNN's Anderson Cooper finds he struggles to function

Donning headphones that play a track mimicking the auditory hallucinations common in schizophrenia, Cooper finds he is very distracted, disconcerted, and frustrated. The auditory track aims to help listeners build empathy with patient populations by understanding the challenges they face in daily life.

In 1951, a small French town was likely overtaken by the fungus that ultimately led to LSD.

The myth of sugar rushes vs. the reality of sugar crashes

It's generally accepted that sugar rushes are a myth, and that hyperactivity is a more psychological experience. However, there is real science behind the rare sugar crash that primarily impacts those with diabetes. Read this article to understand how historical and cultural factors have shaped sugar perceptions, and how low blood sugar can trigger shakiness, fatigue, weakness, and more in diabetes patients.