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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

#131

Post by int_19h »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #128
int_19h wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very skeptical of this interpretation, if only because LSD doesn't just (or even mostly) cause "noise" hallucinations. It makes you actually notice the tiny details and patterns in everyday things. Not a different reality so much so as a deeper awareness and appreciation of the reality normally perceived.

I'm very nodding-along with this interpretation, but only because when I closed my eyes I realized that what I saw looked like the normal after image of staring at a lightbulb but shoved through some form of Fourier space filter. I came to this revelation that the entire experience, the sense of time, the visual distortions, the losing trains of thought, all of it could be explained if brain waves are representations…

There's plenty of accidental patterns in purely random stuff. So the thing that the pattern corresponds to, according to your brain, isn't really there - but the pattern itself can very well be.

You know how trees sometimes look like they have faces, for example? They objectively do, according to our pattern recognition algorithm for faces, in a sense that people will find the same tree more or less anthropomorphic. But it doesn't mean that they actually have faces, of course! If you have a still photo of the forest, and stare at it long enough, you might notice more such than you would if you just glanced at it briefly. Same thing here.

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

#132

Post by netizen-936824 »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #127
dorkmind wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the Tao-drug connection? I feel like this is a case of Orientalism where Western drug culture is getting in the way of popular perception of Taoism, especially Chuang Tzu. Why aren't intellectual snobs trading in-jokes about Taoism and Zen and Mahayana Buddhism and the Diamond Sutra? It's like they ceded a huge swath of territory to the stoners, and for no good reason, I might add. Why is there no popular Tao…

Hippies are marginalized? I thought all of that movement has been more or less mainstreamed over the past forty years. This isn’t exactly Crowley’s England.

Drug using hippies are marginalized.

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

#133

Post by singingfish »

gryn wrote: post #93
singingfish wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating noise in the brain that the nervous system then makes sense of. Interesting theory. Now if I put my mystical hippie hat on I'm going to ask you what you think noise is? Personally I think it's some fundamental property of the universe.

noise is whatever you're not interested in studying/analyzing at the moment. it's more a property of a thinking agent than it is of the universe. if you see it everywhere it's because we are the same type of observers, maybe other kinds of hypothetical agents can segments the universe in different ways.

Your retina does quite a lot of noise filtering at the beginning of visual processing.

Background radiation is also a noise property of the universe, as is the background microwave radiation from the start of the universe. Is this just noise because it's an artefact of the measurement aparatus?

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

#134

Post by singingfish »

edgyquant wrote: post #94
singingfish wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating noise in the brain that the nervous system then makes sense of. Interesting theory. Now if I put my mystical hippie hat on I'm going to ask you what you think noise is? Personally I think it's some fundamental property of the universe.

I think it’s just the normal noise/lighting/etc that is always there. You just have no reason to actually notice it (it provides no benefit to e.g. a hunter gatherer) so the brain normally disregards it. It’s a fundamental property of the universe but then again so is everything else.

I was thinking of noise - or randomness. It crops up in many places. When I was studying visual perception a long time ago (back during the second wave of neural networks) it amazed me what a hostile mechanism light is for actually getting a coherent signal that looks well put together (like what our brain does)

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

#135

Post by LocalH »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #115
saiya-jin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the (rather strong) trips from mushrooms showed me how some part of the brain (not sure which one though) is very good at interpolating bits and pieces of reality when there is no longer strong coming in via our senses. Its a blurry picture of reality, but the blur isn't the loss of detail but rather its fractalization (which in the end is the opposite of it). The harder the trip the less real-world signal and…

The nature of brains is largely a prediciting machine. Most of our sight is actually predicted, not interpreted, especially anywhere we deem familiar.

Indeed. Not only that, but our brain lies to us with regards to temporal placement of objects. Hence the old thing where when you first look at a ticking clock, the first second feels like it takes longer to lapse, because your brain filled in part of your vision with where it thought the second hand was, because when you shifted your focus towards the second hand, your eyes performed a microsaccade and thus in that precise moment, you were technically blind. This is why I think the effects of psychedelics have such a strong temporal factor.

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

#136

Post by 52-6F-62 »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #132
52-6F-62 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hippies are marginalized? I thought all of that movement has been more or less mainstreamed over the past forty years. This isn’t exactly Crowley’s England.

Drug using hippies are marginalized.

Are they?

Everywhere I look cannabis use has virtually normalized outside of outdated and contrived legal frameworks, and 1%er business tycoons are micro-dosing on the job for presumed spiritual and/or perceptual advantages.

I'm not sure how that counts as marginalized.

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

#137

Post by atatatat »

int_19h wrote: post #91
motohagiography wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm very skeptical of this interpretation, if only because LSD doesn't just (or even mostly) cause "noise" hallucinations. It makes you actually notice the tiny details and patterns in everyday things. Not a different reality so much so as a deeper awareness and appreciation of the reality normally perceived.

It's both.

Sensory exploration & new neural connections are both well documented.

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

#138

Post by atatatat »

bts327 wrote: post #82
motohagiography wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just an amazing comment. As someone who has experienced profound states of psychedelia, and having consumed vast amounts of data pertaining to such experiences, yours may be the most unique and original commentary regarding the topic that I’ve seen yet. Bravo, and I’ll certainly be returning to this comment at a later time and date.

I fully concur.

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

#139

Post by netizen-936824 »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #136
netizen-936824 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug using hippies are marginalized.

Are they? Everywhere I look cannabis use has virtually normalized outside of outdated and contrived legal frameworks, and 1%er business tycoons are micro-dosing on the job for presumed spiritual and/or perceptual advantages. I'm not sure how that counts as marginalized.

You need to consider your informational sphere, considering you are on HN its probably vastly different than 95% of the US. Most of the US still views drug use as a criminal issue, including psychedelics. Psychedelics are still central to large pieces of the counter culture.

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

#140

Post by atatatat »

dorkmind wrote: post #18
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".

Does listening to white noise increase the fractal dimension the same way as drugs?

Sensory deprivation chambers may.
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