Brain activities during a trip

[forteanajones]

I may be suffering from a neurological disorder which results in diminished connections in the right hemisphere. This possibility has led me to take up a more active interest in the "neuroscientific" aspects of altered states of consciousness - in other words what, mechanically, chemically, electrically, etc. is happening up there during these trips.

Some of the particular areas I am wondering about right now include the activities of neuroglial cells, the interaction between left and right hemispheres of the brain and most importantly intermodal integration.

In addition to any "documented" or "official" research (speculative or otherwise) I'd be very interested to hear more about what Halfglass, and other explorers like you, have brought back from your neurological travels. For example, I seem to recall one time where you actually witnessed what you perceived to be the activity of neurons, dentrites and the like doing their thing.

[ October 12, 2004, 06:37 PM: Message edited by: forteanajones ]

[Charlie]

F-J:

You're asking a fairly involved technical question.

You might get lucky and receive an indepth, scientific answer, if you query at:

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/index.htm

http://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.cgi?Action=AskQuestion

You should also look through the MAPS forum archive:

http://www.maps.org/forum/2004/maillist.html

You can also subcribe to the MAPS forum for free, and ask your question there.

In response to your second question: on both ayahuasca and psilocybe trips, I saw and travelled into a honeycomb shape that had red fronds which glowed on and off. The idea that I was seeing some sort of internal neuronal activity did cross my mind...I've read that the appearance of honeycombs, criss-crossing grids and other lattice-shapes are fairly common during the drug experience.

Charlie

[forteanajones]

Thanks, Charlie, I should have worded my question a little more specifically. Your anecdotal observations are exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for on this forum, as well as any loose speculation. I'll admit that I'm kind of "fishing" too for the heavier material, and as I think you're saying, this might not be the most eficient way to go about it.

Thanks very much for the links, I think I'll expand my fishing now. :D

[nanouk]

may i ask if anyone knows and have used azarius's products?
http//:www.azarius.net?

with respect,

nanouk

[Halfglass]

Forteana; My current feelings are: What happens in the brain during a trip is the actual umaking of the self in varied ways by the "unpluging" of areas along the awareness's "spin" along the neuron's highways. Consciousness isn't any one place, instead awareness zips along at the speed of light occupying every part at once. Under the psychedelic consciousness seems to loosen and converge into a point or paradoxically expands by way of loosening from the field of atoms that make up the brain, which is mostly space (an atom's nucleus if it were scaled up to the size of the head of a pin, would see the elctron's orbit to be thirty feet out--all that space between is empty! (Electromagnetic forces act as a "curtain" or grid holding things into shapes...like cups, and pizzas and human flesh)). The brain is IN THE MIND of the It which is US/GOD.

There is no division between awareness and mud in the end. How the "I" is tethered to the field/brain who can say? But it is a loose connection. At peak egolessness, I have come out of the trip/trance and looked around my bedroom, rationally understanding that this was where I lived and that there was my desk, my books the t.v., etc.. But at the same time, creepily unconvinced that it was what my world or my body...that I had been placed here in some game. This is due to disconnections in the pathways to say, the emotional center where I used to get a warm "fuzzy" feeling when I looked at my belongings or my cat or a picture of my girlfriend, now only a detached wonderment that I didn' believe in anything as important or meaningfull. (Try V.S. Ramachandrans' "Phantoms in the Brain" for a mind blowing and eerie trip into brain injury patient's stories--the woman who died laughing, the man who could see but couldn't tell you what anything was, the guy who thought his parents were impostors after the pathway to his emotional centers--from the eye back was broken after a car crash.)

Also: in my book I sent you there is the description of the Plasma Flowers, chech the chapter "The Dream Chamber" (I think it's there where I described the "...mechanisms for imagination" that I witnessed. In the longer version of "The Explorer" (Now called "Psychedelic Passageways", that is sitting at Inner Tradiotions publishing house as we speak, there is much more about the molecular view one can onbtain in closed-eye trips (I fairly confident you will eventually be able to pick it up at Barnes and Noble!).

Try a low dose closed-eye trip on DXM (say four ounces (about 350mg) of Robotussin "extra strength cough" formula--should say in the "active ingredient" box on the lable "Dextromathorphan HBr" ONLY--no other ingredient!) It's a little embarassing to have to chug the stuff but it beats ordering a batch (50.00$ 25 grams is as low as they'll go) if you just want to try it.

At that amount you will probably get a glimps of the green electric lines--millions of cables of light that are probably connection in the eye. Higher doses you might get lucky and see The Ladder" (DNA) and the RNA messengers and proteins in action (Mckennas's machine elvs)--but you may at these doses go anywhere! To the Paths of The Dead--straight into the spirit world beyond brain and near the death state--though not litterally ready to snuff it--but the unmaking which is the beginnings of dieing certainly in my estimation. Peace Dan C.

[ October 14, 2004, 01:52 AM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[daniel]

forteana,

i wonder if it would be worth exploring Biofeedback as a way of retraining brain activity?

Also please be suspicious of the contemporary medical culture - they love to overdiagnose borderline conditions as it then allows them to throw their panoply of incredibly expensive drugs and treatments at you.

[gone]

Also please be suspicious of the contemporary medical culture - they love to overdiagnose borderline conditions as it then allows them to throw their panoply of incredibly expensive drugs and treatments at you.Strongly agree with this; I suspect *you* will work this out and/or realise the issue is livable.

[ October 15, 2004, 07:49 PM: Message edited by: gelfer ]

[forteanajones]

Re the altered states or medicinal work vs. EEG Biofeedback (neurofeedback) therapy, I agree that the latter would seem to offer some immediate advantages for retraining and balancing, and might be a wiser avenue. Yet I'm still very interested in learning more about how these different things might overlap.

I totally with you guys about caution. I reject the idea that anything in me is 'broken' and I generally distrust diagnoses and lables. It's amazing how little time and thought some of these bozos need to come up with their recommendations. Aside from neurofeedback I usually avoid so-called professionals who seem to be more interested in regurgitating their myopic hypotheses over using their own senses effectively. I have a childhood friend who is a Freudian psychologist and we have some interesting debates in this area.

Asperger and NLD are just conceptual models which serve to capture certain patterns of perceived dysfunction in some of us. Before last week, I had already come to the conclusion that I fit the pattern, looking especially at the more accute areas of visual-spacial, motoric and social-awareness dysfunctions (i.e. recognizing nonverbal communication) described by these models, as well as many of the less significant symptoms. I have other issues too which don't fall under any of this, some based on personal history, some on spiritual imbalances. All of this is likely to be interconnected, but I assume it helps to understand each problem area on its own merit.

The proponents claim that "under the radar" syndromes such as the above are probably based on verifiable physiological differences in the brain, and I can accept this. But I still think there is a lot more going on here. For me, I am excited because I feel like I am finally getting my hands on one of the bigger pieces of my life puzzle, despite also feeling a little numb from the realization that there are physical elements which might possibly always require some sort of coping in this totally alien world that I live in.

My suspicion is that some of what is actually happening in neurofeedback could theoretically be reproduced during a shamanic healing experience or jouney, for example. Neurofeedback is expensive, even though the principles and technology are relatively simple, and at the moment only licensed professionals can get the equipment legitimately. On the other hand, shamanic journey work, healing and meditation are freely available at low-to-no cost....

[gone]

Just to shove you further into a box (I scored low on being both male *and* female):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/page/0,12983,937443,00.html

How male or female is your brain?

The following tests were developed by Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.

Take the interactive empathy quotient test.

Take the interactive systemising quotient test.

Baron-Cohen's theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. He calls it the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory.

Empathising is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity.

Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems.

[forteanajones]

"Simon Baron-Cohen"?? Is he related to that wonderful chameleon Sacha Baron Cohen, otherwise known as Ali G and Borat? This man takes E and S to their zenith, and he's only rivaled by Peter Sellers in my opinion. Is this specialty (or fixation) a family gift?

The views Simon appears to take in that book feel a little compartmentalized to me though. I like what he's attempting but...multiple question tests...I don't know.