"Drug hallucinations look real in the brain"

[Researchers] asked the volunteers to look at images of people or animals while their brains were scanned using functional MRI, then asked the volunteers to close their eyes and imagine they were still viewing the image. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that neural activity in the primary visual cortex dropped off when volunteers imagined seeing the image rather than actually viewing it.

But when the team then gave the volunteers a dose of ayahuasca and repeated the experiment, they found that the level of activity in the primary visual cortex was virtually indistinguishable when the volunteers were really viewing an image and when they were imagining it. This means visions seen have a real, neurological basis, says de Araujo – they are not made up or imagined. (Via)

Thus explains the 90’s. Nah, just kiddin’. Um, anyhoo, if you think this is interesting (AND IT IS) then please jump over here and give my long time friend below, Jerónimo M.M., a little consideration. Check out the video, it’s important work and he only has a few days to fund this project to make it happen. So if all you guys gave a dollar you’d sorta be co-producers, right? How’d you get so awesome!?

Ayahuasca may also find its way into the psychiatrist’s drug kit. The pharmacology of its ingredients tallies with the way some conventional drugs work; because of this, researchers are interested in ayahuasca’s potential for treating addiction, depression or conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the brew’s two ingredients is the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which contains chemicals that act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors – a major class of antidepressant drugs. The other ingredient is the shrub Psychotria viridis: it contains the powerful hallucinogen DMT (dimethyltryptamine), which acts on the mood-altering serotonergic system, the target of antidepressants such as Prozac. (Via)