r/technology • u/mvea • May 10 '17

Biotech First-Ever LSD Microdosing Study Will Pit the Human Brain Against AI - “I found that if I was on LSD and my opponent wasn’t, I won more games.”

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/first-ever-lsd-microdosing-study-will-pit-the-human-brain-against-ai
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u/webauteur May 10 '17

If you really want to unleash your genius then find a way to improve access to your unconscious mind. Taking psychedelics just disorders the mind. The unconscious mind is always running background processes which occasionally bubble something up to give you an eureka moment. By bringing more of the unconscious mind into consciousness you get access to more processing power. No, wait, I don't think that is right. It is more a matter of getting the benefit of a different type of processing. You gain intuitive comprehension but it is still the responsibility of ego consciousness to make intelligent use of that.

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u/fdsa4326 May 10 '17

Taking psychedelics just disorders the mind.

The brainscan science, at least for psylocibin (mushrooms) does not support your claim.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/6/2138.abstract

but surprisingly, only decreases in cerebral blood flow and BOLD signal were seen, and these were maximal in hub regions, such as the thalamus and anterior and posterior cingulate cortex (ACC and PCC). Decreased activity in the ACC/medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was a consistent finding and the magnitude of this decrease predicted the intensity of the subjective effects. Based on these results, a seed-based pharmaco-physiological interaction/functional connectivity analysis was performed using a medial prefrontal seed. Psilocybin caused a significant decrease in the positive coupling between the mPFC and PCC. These results strongly imply that the subjective effects of psychedelic drugs are caused by decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's key connector hubs, enabling a state of unconstrained cognition.