Research Projects

Investigating Blood Flow and CSF Movement Following
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Ingestion

Amanda Feilding in collaboration with an institution not yet to be disclosed

Summary

Building on our EEG research, this study will use advanced neuroimaging technologies and techniques, arterial spin labelling with functional magnetic resonance imaging, to examine in great detail the effect of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on local and regional blood and CSF movement. It will further develop our understanding of the psychological effects of this substance as well as their physiological basis, by using a variety of psychological tests to formalise our scientific understanding of the range of LSD's effects on consciousness within a standard cognitive science and psychology of religion framework .

The results of these tests will help us to understand better exactly which LSD effects are attributable to neurochemical changes brought about by the drug, which effects to changes in the pattern of blood flow and how these two factors, neurochemistry and blood flow, interact. In so doing it will clarify some of the contradictory findings currently found in the research literature on LSD.

This study will also be the first to look at how a psychoactive substance influences CSF movement. Monitoring CSF movement has been largely overlooked in previous research in preference to monitoring blood movements. However, as our research with Prof. Moskalenko on cranial compliance has revealed, striking changes in cognition are correlated with changes in the pattern of CSF movements, and indeed, the pattern of cerebral blood flow both determines and is determined by cerebral CSF movement.

This research should therefore yield numerous advances both in the study of psychedelics and in consciousness. Clarifying which changes in consciousness are attributable to which physiological changes will enable better informed future research into this important substance and will strengthen the conclusions such research can draw. This understanding will also represent a great leap forward in our appreciation of the physiological conditions that underpin certain conscious states. Finally, it will be the first test of how CSF movement are involved in determining our conscious states and should further improve our understanding of how blood and CSF movements interact.