Psychedelics Role In Understanding The Mind

The title of this thread may seem redundant in a sense for those who have explored the fascinating realms that Psychedelic drugs can offer, but the specificity of this topic is meant in regards to scientific research and beyond personal anecdotes. The fascinating thing to those of us who have written trip reports is that this article mentions personal experiences from erowid and suggests that science is listening. The subjective evidence is based on trip reports supplied to erowid, a great resource for information on psychedelics, which features trip reports for most all of the chemicals and plants that are provided on their website.

LSD helped science have a better understanding of neurotransmitters and Crick, one of the pioneers suggesting research in the area of the claustrum, the main focus of this thread, was an LSD user and should be mentioned. The findings from this and future studies is hopefully the next level of understanding of human consciousness, gleaned from the experiences of Salvia Divinorum. From what I have researched, the areas being mentioned here are relatively poorly understood by science currently, although perhaps we may be able to glean some insight from this paper...

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnint.2014.00020/full

This same brain region of the claustrum has apparently been able to shut the consciousness off and on of an epiletic woman in another study.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1525505014002017

I find it fascinating, albeit not surprising that Psychedelics appear to continue to push the understanding and foundations of understanding in regards to our minds. Perhaps it is something that many of us take for granted, but the results and implications from such studies, continually produce fascinating results.

 

Posting the quote again for those who may not be able to change screen brightness...

 

I never got much from salvia and now it's illegal. I only got minor head changes kinda like just waking up. A friend with the same stuff I had, traveled to a place that sounded very nice.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOET9n8wnmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlHsRroCpXI

 

Interesting, I'd never heard of the Claustrum before.

Salvinorin A might be one of the only "useful" kappa-opioid receptor agonist. From what I've understood, at least in relation to pain management therapy, kappa-opioid agonists have more or less been discarded. They seem to produce dysphoric effects in test subjects, and are not useful in the classic opioid sense. It would be interesting to see if Salvinorin or any of the other kappa agonists are more or less specific for certain brain areas, f.ex. the Claustrum.

I've also read some interesting things about the upregulation of kappa receptors in response to opioid use, IIRC mu-opioid agonist use (f.ex. morphine) will upregulate kappa receptors. So I wonder what kind of effects Salvinorin/Salvia might have on opiate withdrawal. Just some thoughts.