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LSD and psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of brain activity

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

#41

Post by sammalloy »

thebas wrote: post #33
throwaway64389 wrote: post #24

Anecdata: I once took LSD and went on a bad trip. I "discovered" that everything in the universe is fractal: space, time and causality. Every microsecond of existence contains within itself the whole existence of the universe and at the same time each one of those 'temporal universes' contains other temporal universes, every micrometer contains the whole space, and every moment there are millions of decisions that ta…

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 Kornfield is one of many who is famous for relating the story about how the person being tortured suddenly observes that the person torturing them is the same entity. I believe there are also many reports from concentration camps coming to the same conclusion. It's difficult for us to admit this, because normal waking consciousness would have us sort things into us and them, but there is a level of perception that one can reach, where the interconnectedness of all things is seen.

Many people tend to toss these things into religion or spirituality, but there's nothing supernatural about it at all, it's a biological and ecological reality. The question, however, that doesn't go away, is why are these peak experiences trying to communicate the same or similar ultimate truths to us, truths that seem to contradict and oppose the conditioning and programming of our dominant culture, which tells us we are separate from each other and should be fearful, aggressive, and violent.

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

#42

Post by fogof »

virtualritz wrote: post #35
nabla9 wrote: post #5

Here is interesting study lecture and article, maybe somewhat related. The Geometry and objects of things you see in typical to DMT experiences are hyperbolic. Lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loCBvaj4eSg The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/12/12/the-hyperbolic-geomet...

Very interesting indeed. Thank you for sharing. Why on Earth is this being downvoted?

Well, I'm not a downvoter, but I would disagree with the idea that this is related to the OP. OP is looking at mathematical properties of informational structure of brain scans, whereas this is just describing what people see when they trip. There's no reason the geometry of what you hallucinate should be related to the geometry of cortical activity while you see it.

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

#43

Post by vkomega »

nabla9 wrote: post #32
vkomega wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sources for benefits (plural) vs. downsides? Source for politically-motivated criminalization?

Will psychedelics be ‘a revolution in psychiatry’? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00087-7 The Yale Manual for Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy of Depression (using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a Therapeutic Frame) https://psyarxiv.com/u6v9y “Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression“, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994 Effects of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy on Major Depres…

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 be a bit inaccurate to claim LSD is safe. I suspect it was outlawed in part due to observed risks decades ago, but am still curious about political motivations. (e.g. "they want to deny us access to knowledge, man." or racial reasons, etc)

Perhaps there will be technology advancements in support of ascertaining propensity for adverse reactions to psychedelics. I suspect there's a strong component related to dosage. Maybe this is related to the microdosing movement?

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

#45

Post by marosgrego »

thebas wrote: post #33
throwaway64389 wrote: post #24

Anecdata: I once took LSD and went on a bad trip. I "discovered" that everything in the universe is fractal: space, time and causality. Every microsecond of existence contains within itself the whole existence of the universe and at the same time each one of those 'temporal universes' contains other temporal universes, every micrometer contains the whole space, and every moment there are millions of decisions that ta…

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.

What is sad about it? It seems liberating to me.

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

#46

Post by roywiggins »

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 boring possibility is that humans have to self-generate an ego- babies don't really know the difference between themselves and other people, it's one of the recognized developmental stages. So in unusual situations it's maybe not surprising that that particular ability could get disrupted, it might actually be quite fragile.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

vkomega wrote: post #43
nabla9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will psychedelics be ‘a revolution in psychiatry’? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00087-7 The Yale Manual for Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy of Depression (using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a Therapeutic Frame) https://psyarxiv.com/u6v9y “Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression“, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994 Effects of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy on Major Depres…

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…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by Animats »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #34
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".

I thought Shannon entropy described the amount of information content in a message; its uncertainty or surprise. Why would it be noise?

See Shannon's original paper, "Communication in the presence of noise".[1] In that view, where the goal is to reproduce the original signal, noise and information are not distinguished, because they look the same on the channel. Both "increase the fractal dimension". Adding noise will make a lossless compression of something much larger. Go add some noise to a simple picture in Photoshop, then export in some lossless compressed format, like .png.

Now, lossy compression algorithms, such as JPEG, MP3, and almost all video compressors, are different. They have some model of what the content is "supposed to be like", and fit to that model. This works badly for content that does not fit the model, such as the mess JPEG makes of hard edges.

The original author referenced Shannon. The tests he's running use signals from which he cannot extract meaning, so he can only extract the statistics you can compute from a signal you do not understand. There are other tests for "is it signal or is it noise" - looking at the spectrum, autocorrelation to look for repetition (they did some of that), correlation with other signals, and such - but "fractal dimension" isn't one of them.

[1] https://course.ccs.neu.edu/csg250/ShannonNoise.pdf

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

#50

Post by AnthonBerg »

vkomega wrote: post #16
unparagoned wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is lots of potential benefits that far outweigh any downsides,so it's worth investigating. They were made illegal for political reasons rather than for scientific or evidence based reasons

Sources for benefits (plural) vs. downsides? Source for politically-motivated criminalization?

https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2015.00358

Szabo A. (2015). “Psychedelics and Immunomodulation: Novel Approaches and Therapeutic Opportunities”. Frontiers in immunology, 6, 358.

Abstract:

Classical psychedelics are psychoactive substances, which, besides their psychopharmacological activity, have also been shown to exert significant modulatory effects on immune responses by altering signaling pathways involved in inflammation, cellular proliferation, and cell survival via activating NF-κB and mitogen-activated protein kinases. Recently, several neurotransmitter receptors involved in the pharmacology of psychedelics, such as serotonin and sigma-1 receptors, have also been shown to play crucial roles in numerous immunological processes. This emerging field also offers promising treatment modalities in the therapy of various diseases including autoimmune and chronic inflammatory conditions, infections, and cancer. However, the scarcity of available review literature renders the topic unclear and obscure, mostly posing psychedelics as illicit drugs of abuse and not as physiologically relevant molecules or as possible agents of future pharmacotherapies. In this paper, the immunomodulatory potential of classical serotonergic psychedelics, including N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine will be discussed from a perspective of molecular immunology and pharmacology. Special attention will be given to the functional interaction of serotonin and sigma-1 receptors and their cross-talk with toll-like and RIG-I-like pattern-recognition receptor-mediated signaling. Furthermore, novel approaches will be suggested feasible for the treatment of diseases with chronic inflammatory etiology and pathology, such as atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, depression, and Alzheimer's disease.

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