How Magic Mushrooms Expand Your Mind
Source: www.the-open-mind.com | Original Post Date: August 23, 2014 –
How do shrooms work?
The chemicals in “shrooms” that produce the high are called psilocybin and psilocin (and some trace similar compounds). When you eat mushrooms, psilocybin is converted into a chemical called psilocin. Psilocin is then absorbed into the blood stream where it is taken to the brain.
Psilocin has a chemical structure very similar to the naturally occurring neurotransmitter serotonin. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that cells in the brain (neurons) use to communicate with each other. Varying levels of serotonin will affect sleep, appetite, sensory perception, temperature regulation, pain suppression and mood.
Serotonin is taken up or absorbed by neurons at receptor sites known as the 5-HT receptors. There are various types of 5-HT receptors, but for our purpose we’ll generalize. Because psilocin’s chemical structure is very similar to serotonin, it is taken up by the 5-HT2 receptor site (one of several 5-HT receptor types) as are many other common hallucinogens including LSD and mescaline.
After the psilocin molecules bind with the 5-HT2 receptor sites, little is known about what happens. Psilo(cybin)cin is considered a serotonin agonist and possibly may have reuptake inhibitory effects also(SSRI) .There is still not enough data to explain clinically exactly the effect of the active ingredients in psychedelic fungi. What we do know is that psilocin is NOT physically harmful to the body or brain. Psychological conditions can rarely arise from a very profound experience, but no physical harm is done by psilocin even in higher dosages.
Your brain on psychedelic drugs looks similar to your brain when you’re dreaming, suggests a new study that may also explain why people on psychedelics feel they are expanding their mind.
In the study, the researchers scanned the brains of 15 people before and after they received an injection of psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms.
Under psilocybin, the activity of primitive brain areas thought to be involved in emotion and memory — including the hippocampus and the anterior cingulate cortex — become more synchronized, suggesting these areas were working together, the researchers said.
This pattern of brain activity is similar to that seen in people who are dreaming, the researchers said.
“I was fascinated to see similarities between the pattern of brain activity in a psychedelic state and the pattern of brain activity during dream sleep,” study researcher Robin Carhart-Harris, of Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “People often describe taking psilocybin as producing a dreamlike state and our findings have, for the first time, provided a physical representation for the experience in the brain.”
In contrast, the activity in brain areas involved in “high-level” thinking (such as self-consciousness) were less coordinated under psilocybin, the study found.
Finally, using a new technique to analyze the brain data, the researchers found that there were more possible patterns of brain activity when participants were under the influence of psilocybin, compared with when they were not taking the drug. This may be one reason why people who use psychedelic drugs feel that their mind has expanded — their brain has more possible states of activity to explore, the researchers said.
Sources:
http://www.livescience.com/46642-magic-mushrooms-brain-dreaming.html
http://www.shroomery.org/8754/How-do-shrooms-work
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