Page 41 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

neurons that are stimulated, the better our ability to learn. LSD has a particularly strong activation effect on serotonin receptors in the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in enabling the brain to process and integrate information from other regions and in making decisions. These findings have been integrated with generally accepted neurodynamic understandings of the
may be a crucial development in our evolution, rather than a flaw. During childhood, the brain streamlines its functions through a process of synaptic pruning, and this is what enables us to learn. Neural connections are formed and those that are repeatedly activated – because they have proven to be useful or rewarding patterns of thought – are physically reinforced, whilst those that are unused are dissolved. Cognitive biases also pervade our thinking on a daily basis, providing a set of heuristics that make our decision-making faster and more effective. In short, there is a reason our brains have developed these constraining mechanisms, and without them a person can become so overwhelmed by the sensory information they receive, that they become dysfunctional. LSD may enhance the number of connections the brain makes, but these are rarely useful and can often lead to long-term psychological damage.
Unaware, or perhaps unconcerned, about the high cost of accessing higher knowledge using LSD, Hof- mann’s “sacred drug” – as he referred to it in his memoir LSD: My Problem Child (1980) – was popularised during the counterculture movement as an aid for accessing “the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality.” During this time, Timothy Leary – a clinical psychologist working at Harvard – famously developed a theory of consciousness expansion through psychedelic substances, after experimenting with their controlled use in the treatment of alcohol addiction and criminal behaviour. He argued that the drug allowed people to gain unprecedented insight into themselves and increased their alertness to the external world, leading to consciousness-expansion and releasing them from the consciousness-narrowing effects that result from the
These studies have largely focused on the drug’s ability
to improve communication between different parts of the brain through increased synaptic
connections.
mind, which suggest that the brain makes use of filtering or constraining mechanisms in our perceptual and cognitive systems to manage the overwhelmingly large amount of information it continuously receives from the external environment. This prevents us from becoming incapacitated by large amounts of information and facilitates efficient information-processing and decision- making in our daily lives. Researchers suggest that drugs such as LSD interfere with this information-processing limiting mechanism, literally expanding our perceptual, emotional, and cognitive capabilities. Neuroimaging studies have also revealed that LSD increases neural communication across synaptic connections between the parts of the brain that are involved in introspection and those responsible for sensory and perceptual processes. This accounts for the loss of boundaries between the self and the world that LSD users often report.
But the long-term effects of LSD use can be devastating, and can result in ongoing hallucinations, paranoia, cognitive disorganisation, and mood distur- bances. Use of the drug can also trigger severe mental illnesses, such as bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. In The Doors of Perception (1954), Aldous Huxley – who took inspiration from William Blake’s famous poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) – describes the brain as a “reducing valve” that limits our ability to access full consciousness. Recent neuroscientific research on the brain’s constraining mechanisms provides uncanny biological proof of Huxley’s suspicion that the brain, in its normal state, limits thought. But what Huxley and so many others have failed to consider is that this
Cognitive biases also pervade
our thinking on a daily basis,
FRANKENSTEIN WAS A HIPPIE
providing a set of heuristics that make our decision-making faster
and more effective.
ritualistic compulsions of addiction. Leary was dismissed from Harvard for failing to give his required lectures, although the fact that he was pressuring students to take psychedelics, and taking the drugs himself with them, were more likely the true causes of his employer’s discontent. But he continued his research off-campus,
39