Psychedelics are known for inducing altered states of consciousness in humans by fundamentally changing our normal pattern of sensory perception, thought and emotion. Research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has increased significantly in the last decade.
We speculated that, despite these differences, the two classes of
might have similar effects on the activity of brain cells. Indeed, it turned out that both drug classes induced a very similar and distinctive pattern of brain waves in multiple brain regions.were unusually fast, oscillating about 150 times per second. They were also surprisingly synchronized between different brain regions. Short bursts of oscillations at a similar frequency are known to occur occasionally under normal conditions in some brain regions.
First, we assumed that a single brain structure was generating the wave and that it then spread to other locations. But the data was not consistent with that scenario. Instead, we saw that the waves went up and down almost simultaneously in all parts of the brain where we could detect them—a phenomenon called. Such tight phase synchronization over such long distances has to our knowledge never been observed before.
We were also able to measure action potentials from individual neurons during the psychedelic state. Action potentials are electrical pulses, no longer than a thousandth of a second, that are generated by the opening and closing of ion channels in the cell membrane. The action potentials are the primary way that neurons influence each other. Consequently, they are considered to be the main carrier of information in the brain.
However, the action potential activity caused by LSD and ketamine differed significantly. As such, they could not be directly linked to the general psychedelic state. For LSD, neurons were inhibited—meaning they fired fewer
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