Rats help explain humans’ psychedelic trip – 07/06/2023 – Virada Psychedelica

Under the influence of classic psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin from mushrooms or dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from ayahuasca, the experience takes on paradoxical aspects, such as the sensation of daydreaming. That’s even though, in practice, psychedelics often keep psychonauts awake at night, be they men or rats.

A Brazilian study with rodents subjected to another of these consciousness-altering substances, 5-MeO-DMT, suggests that they seem to experience something similar. It is not the case to speak of murid dreams, of course, as there is no way of knowing what content is going through the minds of animals.

However, it is possible to unravel something of what is going on there by monitoring the brain waves of the traveling rats. A team from the Brain Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (ICe-UFRN), one of the most active centers in psychedelic science in Brazil, did so.

Annie da Costa Souza and Bryan da Costa Souza conducted much of the experiment designed and put into practice by Sidarta Ribeiro and Vítor Lopes-dos-Santos. They injected the synthetic version of 5-MeO-DMT, a compound originally obtained from the venom of the Colorado River Toad (incilius alvarius), in rats with sensors implanted in the brain to sample electrical activity.

The microelectrodes were implanted in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex, important structures in memory management. In humans, for example, dreams (REM sleep) promote intense exchange of signals between hippocampus and cortex, a bit like a computer transfers items from RAM to hard disk.

Without dreams there is no perennial learning. This is a topic dear to neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro, who wrote the best seller “Oráculo da Noite” about them. The biologist has published several scientific articles on the role of sleep in fixing memories.

The study in question was published by the authors in the bioRxiv repository, in English, and will be presented by Ribeiro at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, in two weeks’ time, in Denver, Colorado (USA). The title, translated, would be “5-MeO-DMT induces LFP spectral signatures [potenciais de campo locais] similar to sleep in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex of awake rats”.

A differential of the research was to monitor the awake animals, as it is more common to study them under anesthesia. The experimenters also controlled the rodents’ behavior by measuring their speed, as movement can exhibit brain wave frequencies that are mistaken for REM sleep.

Leaving the details aside (and there are many), the group found that, although the animals in a psychedelic state were even more active, their brain waves in those two areas showed, from time to time, similarity to different stages of sleep.

The patterns obtained indicated the alternation between waves characteristic of wakefulness with slow wave (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The first type characterizes deep, restorative sleep, while the second corresponds to dreams in people.

“It is the first empirical evidence that the psychedelic experience merges waking behaviors with brain waves whose spectral characteristics are similar to those that occur in slow-wave sleep and REM sleep”, explains Ribeiro. “It suggests a hybrid state, with traces of both wakefulness and slow-wave sleep.”

The animal, after 5-MeO-DMT, becomes agitated, moves a lot, that is, does not sleep at all at the behavioral level. But on the brain plane, from the point of view of brain wave characteristics, it keeps alternating between wakefulness, slow wave sleep and REM sleep.

“Our results suggest that the sleep-wake cycle continues, which perhaps explains the ‘ripple’ effects of psychedelics.”

In fact, it’s not uncommon for a psychonaut to think he’s coming out of the “force”, as someone who takes ayahuasca would say, and, just like that, find himself thrown back into the vortex. Re-entry into the vortex can be accompanied by music, food, memories, something seen in the mind or surroundings.

Or none of that, as suggested by the ICe-UFRN experiment with rodents. In other words, the comings and goings of the psychedelic experience would be triggered more by factors intrinsic to the chemical and electrical dynamics of the brain than by the subject’s mental state or environmental factors, the consecrated pair of conditioning factors that, in the jargon of psychedelic science, are know how set It is setting.

The waves experienced on the trip would then be nothing more than the effect of the tides of neurotransmitters and psychedelic substances, their sister molecules, advancing and moving away from the neuronal edge, dragging the psychonaut to and fro from the surf that separates the beach of consciousness from the deep ocean of the psyche.

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NOTICE TO NAVIGATORS – Psychedelics are still experimental therapies and certainly do not constitute a panacea for all psychic disorders, nor should they be the object of self-medication. Speak with your therapist or doctor before venturing into the area.

On the tendency to legalize the therapeutic and adult use of psychedelics in the US, see the article “Cogumelos Livres” in the December 2022 issue of Piauí magazine.

To learn more about the history and new developments of science in this area, including in Brazil, look for my book “Psiconautas – Viagens com a Ciência Psychedelica Brasileira”.