The notion that we are separate from the world may be an illusion upheld by the brain, while the sense of oneness attained when using psychedelics may be “a glimpse of a bigger picture,” say researchers behind a Nature study.
In a landmark study published Aug. 19 in the journal Nature, Australian scientists have discovered “hidden order” in the brains of individuals having mystical experiences while taking psychedelics. The results have set off a flurry of reviews among science media.
The lead author of the study, Devon Stoliker, a computational neuroscientist at Monash University, made a startling statement to Scientific American about the philosophic implications of the groundbreaking stud: In normal experience, the brain filters out the experience of oneness with the world.
“Rather than psychedelics simply creating an illusion that the self and world are one, they may temporarily reduce the brain processes that normally maintain this separation,” Stolier told the magazine. “Perhaps the illusion is not the sense of oneness but our perceived separation between the self and the world to begin with. Psychedelics may offer a temporary glimpse of a bigger picture.”
This remarkable conclusion is reflected in more technical terms in the paper: “That the felt boundary between self and world reorganizes when these dynamics shift implies that the boundary is not a fixed datum of conscious experience but a construction actively maintained by neural activity.”
The study sheds new light on a previous scientific mystery. To date, research showed psychedelics disrupt normal brain patterns: The everyday world dissolves, even the sense of self, and users often experience a oneness with the universe. Oftentimes, the drug experience results in long-lasting positive impacts, such as reduced depression or anxiety, or even a profoundly altered view of life. Clarity and meaning seemingly emerge from disorganized neural networks — or logic and reason taking a back-seat.
In the Nature article, researchers used AI to analyze scans of individuals on psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms.” They discovered that while the substance disrupted connections for sensory processing, it increased connections for higher-level consciousness, according to the Scientific American review. Brain processes were reorganized rather than simply disrupted.
That hidden order, which had not been scientifically tracked before, was strongest in users with profound experiences, what the researchers called “embednessness.” It also differed depending on individual’s personality and environmental context.
“The good trips produced order. The bad trips did not. And the kind of order that emerged during these good trips differed according to what the person was doing when they were high,” a review in the digital version of Nautilus magazine said about the Nature study.
The new findings reinforce the importance of “set and setting,” the context of where and how a psychedelic is used. The Monash researchers said their study provides a biological basis for psychedelic experiences. While this study showed the brain has a mechanism to filter sensory stimuli, it maintains the materialist paradigm that assumes that consciousness is created by the brain. The researchers claim consciousness is a result of chemistry and electrical activity in the brain, refined through billions of years of evolution. The post-materialist ventures that consciousness is non-local, meaning exists eternally outside the physical brain, and that the brain is much like radio antenna receiving information or a transmission (consciousness).
The research could have profound therapeutic as well as philosophic implications, the researchers said. Using AI and other tools explored in the study, clinics could perhaps match settings (type of music, rest or meditation, etc.) with a user’s mindset.
Christof Koch is a foremost scientist who maintains that consciousness exists outside the brain, as he shared in April at the “Beyond the Brain” conference by Bial Foundation. He says just because you find deeper aspects of brain activity doesn’t mean you can conclude a biological basis for consciousness.
The debate around the brain’s role in consciousness continues.
Written by Tom Zolper
Edited by Anders Bolling
