Sep 01, 2020 19:00:00

What is the 'Phoenix effect' that the brain returns to the childhood when a hallucinogen such as LSD is administered?

Former Apple CEO

Steve Jobs is known to have said that the LSD experience is one of life's most important experiences. At the time of writing the article, hallucinogens such as LSD are designated as illegal drugs in many countries, but research is progressing as a potential therapeutic drug for diseases, and among them, ' A ' phoenix effect ' has also been reported, in which the brain of a given person becomes a child-like brain.

The Phoenix Effect – qwerky science
https://mad.science.blog/2020/04/26/the-phoenix-effect/

The Phoenix Effect: Reversing Mental Age With Psychedelics – qwerky science
https://mad.science.blog/2020/08/16/the-phoenix-effect-reversing-mental-age-with-psychedelics/

Your Brain On LSD Looks A Lot Like A Baby's :NPR
https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474569125/your-brain-on-lsd-looks-a-lot-like-a-babys

Research using hallucinogens such as LSD has been legally banned for many years, but in 2014, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, 'scientific was approved to administer LSD to humans for the first time in 40 years' Became a hot topic. Harris is a person conducting research on hallucinogens at the Imperial College London Center for Neuropsychopharmacology, investigating the effects of drug-administered brain and developing psychotherapy such as depression using hallucinogens. Contribute to .

In 2016-2017, Harris also announced that magic mushrooms could help treat depression.

Clinical trial finds that magic mushroom removes severe depression-GIGAZINE

It turns out that magic mushroom may have a function to restart the circuit of the brain in the ``depressed'' state-GIGAZINE

Harris presents various findings in a new field called 'The effect of hallucinogens on the brain.' One of them is that ' the brain of a person given a hallucinogen is similar to the brain of a child .'

The brain of a child in the developmental stage is different from that of a mature adult in various points such as 'more serotonin is secreted'. Experiments using fMRI to scan the brains of children and adults have shown that there are differences between the brain networks associated with ' theory of mind ' and those associated with pain. The adult brain has less activity in these networks than the child's brain. However, in adults given LSD, the connections of the whole brain increased, and the connections of the parts that were not normally connected were also confirmed . Researchers report that the brain during LSD's effects resembles brain activity in infants.

We also know that children's brains have less '

default mode network (DMN)' activity than adults' brains. And the decrease in DMN is also seen in people who have been given hallucinogens.

The hypothesis that the hallucinogens bring back an important period in childhood is called the 'phoenix effect.' Due to the phoenix effect of hallucinogens, it is believed that a person can no longer be an 'adult' and return to a pure childhood to experience 'reborn'.

What does this 'children's brain condition' mean? Mr. Harris said, 'If you feel laughing or happy when everything feels strange for a minute, you may be suddenly shifting and crying for the next minute. Such emotional subtlety and incredible imagination occur in hallucinogens.' When I hear that I can return to my childhood, I think of a happy image, but the fact that the sense of an adult is dull compared to a child is due to the accumulation of knowledge to protect myself, and when I return to a child, it is easy to be hurt. It will be.

Harris also said that the experience with hallucinogens is treated as 'mysterious' by saying, 'Writers like William Wordsworth describe the infant's condition as a 'heavenly condition,' that is, when a person is a god. It's very close to what is called, and it's very interesting.'

The Phoenix effect is still scientifically controversial and not proven. Various studies have been conducted to demonstrate the Phoenix effect even at the time of article creation, and psilocybin was administered to subjects actually recruited by Google advertisement, brain scan was performed with fMRI, and separately from that of children under 7 years old An experiment is also planned to compare the brain with a scanned image.