« Greek Antiquities to be Returned | Main | Classic »
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Magical Mushrooms
From EurekAlert and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions:
Hopkins scientists show hallucinogen in mushrooms creates universal 'mystical' experience
Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent in "sacred mushrooms" can induce mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries.
...
Cited as "landmark" in the commentary by former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director, Charles Schuster, the research marks a new systematic approach to studying certain hallucinogenic compounds that, in the 1950s, showed signs of therapeutic potential or value in research into the nature of consciousness and sensory perception. "Human consciousness…is a function of the ebb and flow of neural impulses in various regions of the brain-the very substrate that drugs such as psilocybin act upon," Schuster says. "Understanding what mediates these effects is clearly within the realm of neuroscience and deserves investigation."
At the end of the linked article is an interesting Q&A with the study's lead author.
Posted by Will at July 11, 2006 07:33 AM in General Science