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LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

biorxiv.org

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Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#101

Post by tracedddd »

edgyquant wrote: post #92
______- wrote: post #88

I never hallucinated after trying shrooms, even at high doses. I found this odd, since I have read about countless people saying they saw stuff that wasn't there or saw colorful fractal geometry. So my conclusion is that shrooms simply increased my perception and allowed in more information, and that all this fractal geometry is already there , just waiting to be discovered. It's just like tuning into a higher freque…

I don’t think either LSD or Shrooms causes hallucinations (like seeing a creature that isn’t there.) Mushrooms make me feel strange and see a bit blurry but it’s mostly an internal thing and makes my wind wander. LSD is a bit more intense, visually, like colors become more vibrant and my mind creates detail in even the simplest of items (peeing in the toilet damn near gives me a panic attack.) I’ve only ever heard of…

Typically “movie” hallucinations like seeing elephants in the room or having strange people visit you or seeing bugs all over you are more typical of deleriants like diphenhydramine or datura, although high dose tryptamines can be so strong that there is no connection to the reality around you - overwhelmingly psychedelic. In that state hallucinations of a different type are possible (talking to entities, being somewhere else entirely, etc.) Movies are a very bad representation of psychedelics generally, though.

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#102

Post by anm89 »

warent wrote: post #98
okareaman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get lucky and someone will bend your ear about Terence McKenna and Machine Elves

Dismissing someone with a mind full of unique and creative ideas is generally a bad idea. It's okay to disagree but it's completely unnecessary for us to stand on an ivory tower staring down on people we don't understand

Nothing in there says that he's dismissing McKenna in any way.

Also you could make this claim about literally any person in any situation. Not all people are worth listening just because what they have to say is "unique". People who think vaccines are being used to implant microchips have quite the "unique" and creative perspective. That doesn't mean they deserve to be taken seriously.

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#103

Post by vkomega »

nabla9 wrote: post #96
vkomega wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, thanks for the objective response. My inquiry was substantially downvoted. How can one determine if they are at risk of psychosis prior to consuming LSD? I've heard many stories of people who were "never the same" (in a bad life-outcome sense) after having bad LSD trips. It wasn't clear from family history or medical history that they were at-risk for such a reaction. At least based on these outcomes, it might…

> I've heard many stories of people who were "never the same" (in a bad life-outcome sense) after having bad LSD trips. This seems to be weird legend with very little fact behind it. > claim LSD is safe. Obliviously nothing is perfectly safe, but pharmacologicallly LSD is the safest drug there is. Safer than Aspirin. It's virtually impossible to overdose it, it's not toxic and LD50 is way 10^5 - 10^6 times of what is…

People who I knew long ago took LSD and wound up going crazy. They weren't the same. It's not weird legend.

Safety in terms of physical overdose isn't the only metric.

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#104

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

okareaman wrote: post #83
anm89 wrote: post #77

Totally separate from whatever this paper is claiming, I'm already dreading a conversation at some future party in which some person rambles on regarding a very unscientific understanding of this paper and something about burning man.

You might get lucky and someone will bend your ear about Terence McKenna and Machine Elves

Terence McKenna would often say all sorts of crazy-sounding things but he never struck me as someone who took himself too seriously. Here's a short clip [0] which I believe perfectly captures his essence; at the end you can hear him laugh at himself and his story.

Edit: I've enjoyed listening to many hours of Terence McKenna speaking, but I wouldn't recommend swallowing all of his pills.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHFC1BB2gOU

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#105

Post by josephcsible »

type0 wrote: post #97
bronzeage wrote: post #3

Why is it even legal to conduct LSD experiments? There was some animal testing post earlier, but giving people illegal consciousness altering drugs seems so much worse.

I find the concept of "illegal consciousness" fascinating

You misparsed the sentence. "illegal" and "consciousness altering" both modify "drugs". "illegal" doesn't modify "consciousness".

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#106

Post by [deleted] »

______- wrote: post #88

I never hallucinated after trying shrooms, even at high doses. I found this odd, since I have read about countless people saying they saw stuff that wasn't there or saw colorful fractal geometry. So my conclusion is that shrooms simply increased my perception and allowed in more information, and that all this fractal geometry is already there , just waiting to be discovered. It's just like tuning into a higher freque…

[deleted]

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#107

Post by UbrtrbNchDneRle »

sammalloy wrote: post #41
thebas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this description quite unsettling because it is so common. I experienced it myself after trying magic mushroom: We are all one being(we call it the universe), it's consciousness subdivided between us all in order to escape it's solitude. It was scary at the time believing this sad possibility. I'm not so sure but the thought remains. Also follows: whatever you do to me you will be experiencing it.

> I find this description quite unsettling because it is so common. More importantly, the description isn't just found in trip reports. It's found throughout history, in reports of people who have had what are called peak experiences, sometimes involving trauma. There are many stories of prisoners in the literature, for example, who come to the realization that both the jailer and the jailed are the same. Jack Kornfi…

The relationship aspect is also an important feature of psychosis in paranoid schizophrenia.

I think it’s possible we, as a social species, just have an elaborate model of other people and things in our brain which gets mixed up with the experience of self under certain conditions and the brain is coming up with unifying explanations trying to achieve homeostasis under the influence.

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#108

Post by cmrdporcupine »

motohagiography wrote: post #39
Animats wrote: post #4

Well, yes, adding noise increases the fractal dimension of a signal. "Shannon entropy" is noise. "Lempel-Ziv complexity" is "how long is the zip file".

This is an important description, as when you think of a chemical creating impairment, it is essentially adding noise to signals in your brain, and a lot of the geometric and fractal artifacts we see resemble noise artifacts you would get from interfering with other analogue signals. Given your brain takes sensory signal input and coheres it, impairing that ability is going to create signals-based feedback that is de…

I remember being 15 or 16 and an older adult friend in my computer club describing LSD to me: "You know when you turn on your computer and the cartridge isn't in right or you have some fault on the PCB bridging some lines on the data or address bus to the video chip? Something like that... LSD is like opening the case of your Commodore 64 and dropping in some loose metal screws..."

I feel like the analogy holds, at least for simple computers like that where the machine still runs, but with weird alterations. You can look at the patterns that the chip is generating and ... see something [for me never particularly visual, more philosophical]. But it's really just throwing things... off. There's something to learn there, I guess, but I never thought it was terribly metaphysical.

More just evidence that our experience is always mediated, and a sensory change [internal senses as well], a change in texture of mood and thought, and not a very functional one.

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#109

Post by brailsafe »

warent wrote: post #98
okareaman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get lucky and someone will bend your ear about Terence McKenna and Machine Elves

Dismissing someone with a mind full of unique and creative ideas is generally a bad idea. It's okay to disagree but it's completely unnecessary for us to stand on an ivory tower staring down on people we don't understand

I don't know how unique the ideas that people put out in these conversations end up being

Re: LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

#110

Post by mistermann »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #104
okareaman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get lucky and someone will bend your ear about Terence McKenna and Machine Elves

Terence McKenna would often say all sorts of crazy-sounding things but he never struck me as someone who took himself too seriously. Here's a short clip [0] which I believe perfectly captures his essence; at the end you can hear him laugh at himself and his story. Edit: I've enjoyed listening to many hours of Terence McKenna speaking, but I wouldn't recommend swallowing all of his pills. [0] https://www.youtube.com/w…

And also beautiful things:

https://youtu.be/Q-J09gk0mJk

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