It’s been known for quite some time that LSD causes vivid and realistic hallucinations for the users, offering them the notorious experience known as a “trip”. These trips can give the user intense emotions of euphoria and alter their entire experience with the world around them. Psychedelics are known to produce similar symptoms and effects of severe depression, anxiety, mania, and schizophrenia; sharing these effects makes studying the drug important for a better understanding of these mental disorders. But what scientists and experts were unsure of how this sought after festival drug triggered this effect on the human brain and produced the reality-altering effects. So, how does it do this?
The key element affected by the drug is the central part of our brain that filters and adjusts the amount of information content we can receive. The Thalamus controls how much information we can perceive, it prevents the brain from processing unnecessary or irrelevant information. It’s what keeps us from having sensory overload through gated off areas acting as a gatekeeper that only open for important and relevant information that the person may need or use. Things become very different though once the psychedelic drug is ingested into the body, and begins its effects on brain processing and organizing. Once the Thalamus can’t perform its responsibility of filtering information, the brain gets bombarded with tones and tones of sensory stimuli and becomes overloaded with the gates no longer being selective. The massive amount of information flowing into the brain through this bundle of neurons causes an extreme and intense state of mind for the user, this is the trip.
The drug becomes important to the field of psychopathology when it was shown to produce similar effects to those who suffer from schizophrenia and depression. Scientists wanted to see if they could learn from the effects that LSD had on the brain in order to better under these mental disorders and how to treat them. LSD also has well-known effects on a special neurotransmitter called serotonin, that’s used in other drugs and medications to help those with mental disorders. Serotonin is known for having a big effect on the thalamus and how it acts as a gatekeeper while a person is on the drug LSD. So, with this information, a team of scientists devised an experiment to show how the brain would react to something blocking the serotonin receptors while the person was on LSD.
Amazingly, results showed from my article show that out of the 24 healthy adult participants that were given LSD, those that were given the serotonin blocking receptor ketanserin while on the drug had all effects of the strong psychedelic completely blocked. To prove this they used a measuring method called the 5-Dimensions Altered States of Consciousness questionnaire on the participants once the drugs were ingested after a given amount of time. They saw that the information gated pathways were unresponsive and let whatever information in the brain when participants weren’t given ketanserin when on LSD. Those that had the serotonin blocking receptor had their thalamus working in a much better way and their gatekeepers continued to filter the important information in and out. It was shown that LSD has a huge effect by interrupting one massive route of transport, the ketanserin was able to reduce the effect it had on the thalamus and allowed it to be filtered into a specific part of the thalamus known as the PCC, posterior cingulate cortex. With this information being found out, it gives scientists the opportunity to study mental disorders in much different lighting now with the help of the observed effects of LSD.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2019/01/23/1815129116.full.pdf
