We each have a unique particular individual experience of life. Each person is born at a unique time and location, and occupies an individual perspective throughout life.
One person might like rock 'n roll, while someone else prefers country. Different things affect us differently for various reasons, depending on our particular individual experiences in life that influenced and shaped us to become who we are, as well as genetic factors that influence us in an automatic bio-nature way. We each apply meaning, importance, value and salience towards various things.
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A new study published in Current Biology on Jan. 26 studied how the perception of meaning changes when people take LSD, the psychedelic drug. Showing how we can be influenced by a substance that alters our electrochemical functionality will help us understand more about the human experience.
LSD alters how we attribute meaning and relevance to what is in our environment. The distinction between ourselves and the world outside becomes more blurred. How LSD affected what parts of the brain and which neurochemicals were responsible, was something not known prior to this study.
Katrin Preller of the Zürich University Hospital for Psychiatry and colleagues have confirmed the usual effects on someone's state of consciousness, mood and anxiety. There were also able to block LSD from acting on serotonin receptors (5-HT2A), which erased the psychedelic effects.
fMRI Data
If only people understood more of biology, they could understand that electrochemical and neuronal stimulation is what is inducing a hallucinatory and psychedelic effect, but also alters their states of consciousness, mood and perception of reality and themselves. No one is actually going into another dimension, or seeing hidden parts of reality. All that is happening is that your specific bio-natural neurochemical processing and functionality is being altered.
As I have mentioned before, this can also be self-induced through intention to alter our states of consciousness, such as through meditation. And it can also happen through food poisoning. Your experience of yourself and the world will be altered when your neuro-electro-chemical makeup changes.
To test how the attribution of meaning was influenced by LSD, participants were divided into three groups.
- taking a placebo
- taking LSD
- taking LSD and ketanserin
Participants were then asked to rank the meaning they attached to various songs. There were three categories to attribute to the songs:
- Particularly meaningful
- Neutral
- Without meaning
Meaningfulness Ratings
Participants who previously had a meaningless response to some music now found that the song took on a special meaning when they were high on LSD. This increase in relevance of the song faded when they were given ketanserin to counteract the effect on serotonin receptors.
Using brain imaging along with this behavioral assessment of people applying relevance and meaning to music, the researchers were able to show neurobiological correlates in brain processes for personal relevance attribution.
"We found that personal meaning attribution and its modulation by LSD is mediated by the 5-HT2A receptors and cortical midline structures that are also crucially involved in enabling the experience of a sense of self."
When you take a substance, get food poisoning, or meditate yourself into an altered state of consciousness, you are altering the neurobiological and electrochemical processing within your own brain which alters the way you experience things.
Subjective Drug Effects
The researchers hope to extend their work to see if the same observations occur with visual or tactile stimulus. They are also hoping that these findings can help those with psychiatric disorders that have trouble attributing meaning.
Schizophrenia has been recently renamed 'salience syndrome' in the DSM-V, as an inability to correctly attribute salience, importance, significance, meaning or relevance to what is happening in the world or in themselves. A special personal meaning is given which distorts their perception of reality. This could potentially help understand or combat this in sufferers.
"Excessive stimulation of 5-HT2A receptors seems to underlay the experience of loosening of self/ego boundaries, disrupted self-referential processing and thus the related impairment of making meaning and attributing personal relevance to percepts and experiences seen in various psychiatric disorders."
Targeting this receptor could be a way to treat psychological illnesses where personal relevance attribution is not working properly.
The study also found that there was not a significant increase in so-called "spiritual experiences" while under LSD compared to previous studies. It is known that the setting we're in, the environmental stimulus, will affect how we feel about things, whether we are intoxicated or not. On LSD, since we attribute heightened significance, relevance and meaning to things in our environment as well as ourselves, it makes sense that a clinical atmosphere inside of a MRI machine does not provide the setting to induce a so-called "spiritual experience" through different meaning, relevance and significance being attributed.
In conclusion, the study found that the subjective effects of LSD can be fully blocked by a 5-HT2AR antagonist like ketanserin, and that LSD increases personal relevance and attachments to what was previously non-meaningful stimulus. This was correlated with 5-HT2AR stimulation and activation of associated brain areas related to self-relevant processing.
References:
- Answers to how our brains make meaning, with the help of a little LSD
- The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation
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2017-02-01, 10am