LSD and other hallucinogenics have profound effects on consciousness. They alter a person’s sensations – sometimes quite dramatically – and produce a feeling of insight and understanding. Typically people report that they feel as though some true and deep meaning is being revealed.
The brain mechanisms that lead to this alteration in experience are not known because, along with the 40-year ban on the use of hallucinogenics their use in scientific research was also restricted.
In 2005 the Beckley Foundation initiated a study in association with Dr. Matt Baggott at the University of California, Berkeley that aimed to investigate both the safety of using LSD in scientific research using human subjects, and to measure, using Electroencephalography (EEG), how changes in consciousness brought about by LSD alter the way in which brain areas communicate with each other.
In April 2007, we were the first to gain ethical approval to use LSD with human participants since prohibition ended all such research decades ago. It is also the first neuroscientific research on LSD in the modern era. In 2008 Amanda Feilding, with the help of Albert Hoffman, obtained the LSD that would be used in this study.
Research to date has proceeded slowly due to unforeseen circumstances of the principal investigator.
Some preliminary results have been obtained and will be posted shortly.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello. As someone who took LSD off and on over a 36 year period I would just like to comment on the idea that LSD affects consciousness. From my own observation over the time period I took LSD it was not consciousness that changed but different activity in the brain/mind. Consciousness, that is awareness, simply observed this different activity taking place. It is my understanding that we can only recall those things we are conscious of and if consciousness itself were to change somehow we would not be able to recall what had taken place.
If you are interested in hearing about my experiences with LSD and how I have come to understand them please feel free to email me.
Regards
Martyn
Martyn
I think you make a very good point and an important and intriguing distinction. If true, this raises the question of how consciousness/awareness interacts with the mindbrain, and how this point of awareness – the witness, shall we say – happens to be pre-reflective and yet anchored to a sense of self located in the body during unaltered brain functioning.
What is clear is that LSD can dissolve the sense of self completely, leaving only this awareness, but no longer delimited by time and space. Maybe Bergson was right – the brain is the main limiting factor of awareness purely for the purposes of survival once tied to biological organism.
Much to ponder!
Tim
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for your comment.
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Many thanks
BF