What goes on in the brain during a trip remains one of the great unanswered questions of neuroscience, even though we know a lot more than we did 15 years ago. British neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt sheds light on this question in the excerpt we publish from his book Psychedelics.
Sapo, June 2024
Text: J.M.A.
Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist and professor of medicine at Imperial College London, has been studying the effects of the use of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health problems for 15 years, from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder. His research also covers addiction and chronic pain.
In 2018, David Nutt co-founded the first academic research center on psychedelics, which has revived interest in understanding and using these drugs in their various forms, including MDMA, ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, LSD or ketamine. The results of this work were seen as revolutionary.
The book Psychedelics (Nascente edition) by David Nutt summarizes the researcher's work. The book introduces the reader to "drugs that are about to become mainstream and integrate therapies with proven effects on improving health", we read in the book's introduction.
"Psychedelics are the new revolution in neuroscience and psychiatry. In recent years, the world of psychedelics has changed dramatically. Fifty years ago, the global War on Drugs, initiated in the United States by President Nixon in the 1960s, banned these compounds in the most draconian way (...) now, President Biden has stated that psilocybin and MDMA will become medicines in the United States within two years," writes David Nutt in the introduction to his book.
Some excerpts from the book chapter published in the news:
A first look at the brain under the influence of psychedelics
As expected, it took several years before we obtained ethical approval and funding for our first study, to capture images of the brain under the effect of psilocybin. The study finally began in 2008. We chose psilocybin for several reasons. It's very safe - there are no proven deaths, despite the fact that millions of people have been using it for thousands of years in much of the world. In the UK, teenagers and young people in their twenties often make infusions with magic mushrooms during the season when they grow, in the fall. [...]
The personal reports were pretty much as expected. But then came the imaging results. And it was one of the most surprising sets of results I've ever seen in a lifetime dedicated to science. Only once before had I had results from experiments that were exactly the opposite of what had been predicted. The first time, I had created a scientific maxim: If your results are the opposite of what you predicted, they are probably true.
We had anticipated that we would see an increase in cerebral circulation, especially in the brain's visual system. However, the activity of the visual regions remained unchanged. In fact, we didn't find any increases in activity in any brain area.
However, all the subjects had hallucinations, so what was causing them? What we found was that there was a profound decrease in activity in three areas of the brain. And the stronger the psychedelic experiences people reported, the more these three zones shut down. "Turn on, turn on and get out!" became "Turn off, turn on and get out!".
This first unexpected discovery began a fascinating journey into the brain under the influence of psychedelics. At Imperial College, we are their world leaders. We have completed three imaging studies on psilocybin. We published the first paper to define the brain circuits of LSD.100 And more recently, we have conducted brain imaging for DMT101 and are currently conducting studies with 5-MeO.
In collaboration with Cardiff University, we have been able to use targeted technology to reveal brain activity in a more detailed and nuanced way, in terms of quality and quantity. The BOLD effect, a functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, measures brain activity more directly through changes in the level of oxygen in the blood. And MEG, a special type of EEG, gives a more precise measurement of electrical activity in the brain. In the LSD study, because it lasts longer than psilocybin, we had time to do BOLD and MEG on each subject on the same day. This had a great advantage; the two different but complementary imaging techniques were able to validate each other's results.
Each of the studies we've done has brought us closer to understanding how psychedelics affect the brain. However, we are probably only at the beginning of what this means for understanding consciousness. This chapter explains what we've learned so far.
