neuroscience

Lining Up for Flight: “Sound Effect Infinity” About to Lift Off

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

My new novel, Sound Effect Infinity, will be released on January 23, 2024 (fingers crossed, because you never know about this world we all live in now). It’s a science fiction story about a near-future world where the mysteries of music and sound and human connection are front and center, along with mind control experiments of the CIA, and questions about the power of psychedelic drugs and paranormal phenomena. I’d say it’s worth the read just to see if the author can carry all that off.

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Small Molecules in Chemical Space: we don’t know the half of it…

~ David Biddle ~ 1 Comment
 www.catenane.net/home/naturepaper2009december.html

Growing up in the 1960s, I watched my mother take handfuls of Thorazine, phenobarbital, and God knows what else, every morning after her first cup of coffee. She’d already been through electro-shock treatment and spent time in psychiatric facilities. Later in life they got her on the old psycho-salt diet treating her mental illness with lithium. The funny thing here is that near her death several years ago we talked about how they’d never diagnosed what was wrong with her definitively. Was she schizophrenic? Bi-Polar? Manic? Dissociative? Something else? She said sometimes it seemed like the drugs were what caused her illness after her first breakdown in the early ’60s.

The medicines my mom took kept her functional more or less for most of her adult life. She was once a brilliant sociologist with feisty political energy and a penchant for picking fights with people about women’s rights and taking care of the poor. By the time she was in her late 60s, though, the drugs she’d been taking pretty much destroyed her ability to interact with others. She spent the last decade of her life shut in a studio apartment in Section 8 housing watching NBC television shows and smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.

I wish there’d been a better way. I wish the pharmacological world of the near future could have been there for her in the early 1960s when the shit hit the fan in her world. She was a great and funny woman. But she had to deal with psychological and emotional imbalances that at times were devastating and other times just stultifying and limiting.

fMRI
We now have the ability to move with purpose on so many fronts of the human mind. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows neuroscientists and psychologists to map the human mind by tracking blood oxygen flows in the brain. Developments continue in this field allowing scientists to refine imaging in both time and space so that they can understand how the brain reacts to various drugs — both current and experimental.

In essence, as fMRI technology progresses, it appears that we have for the first time in history diagnostic and research tools that allow scientists to map the mind in all sorts of different states. In theory, as technology continues to develop, this mapping capacity should refine to highly defined levels of both time and space.

As noted in a post earlier this week, research is already being done using fMRI as a tool to understand religious and psychedelic drug effects on the brain.

What’s a novemdecillion?
David Jay Brown published an interesting report on advances in psycho-pharmaceutical drugs a few weeks ago that I found very encouraging. His article is called “Psychedelic Medicines of the Future,” with the sub-title “more undiscovered drugs than stars in the sky.” The link to this piece by Brown can be found at the end of this entry. As always, he provides important insights on the interface between science and mind.

Brown references a paper written by chemists for the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) journal Chemical Neuroscience reporting that “scientists have synthesized barely one tenth of 1 percent of the potential drugs that could be made.” The emphasis by the authors of the paper is on “small molecule” medicines that can essentially cross cell walls. These small molecules can now be engineered by advanced computer applications. Our ability to manipulate chemical structures is diving deeper and deeper into the microscopic world of chemistry and the combinatorial capacity to literally manufacture new molecules.

According to a press release from the ACS journal, the paper estimates that the actual number of these so-called “small molecules” could be “1 novemdecillion (that’s 1 with 60 zeroes), 1 million billion billion billion billion billion billion, which is more than some estimates of the number of stars in the universe.” That’s a very big number — more than some estimates of the number of stars in the universe!

The paper’s authors, Jean-Louis Reymond and Mahendra Awale, write in their abstract that “Small molecule drugs exert their action by binding to specific molecular constituents of the cell such as to modulate biochemical processes in a disease modifying manner. The magnitude and specificity of binding depends on the complementarity between the drug molecule and its target in terms of shape, polarity, and chemical functionality.” Small molecules aren’t that new. They are, in fact, typical of most medicines. What’s new, though, is the vista of opportunity. We like to think that science has a handle on pretty much everything (us non-scientists think this, anyway). However, a novemdecillion is kind of a big number. We have barely begun to scratch the surface.

When you couple the research advances that fMRI technologies offer with these future “small molecules,” it’s clear that psychologists and psychiatrists should now be thinking very big in solving the problem of mental illness. Perhaps they would have been able to use computerized imaging to clearly characterize my mother’s illness, while a pharmaceutical company could have engineered the correct recipe to truly compensate for that illness.

Take this all one step further. As a culture we have an extreme prejudice against performance enhancing drugs in today’s sports world. But over the next 50 years it’s very likely chemists are going to invent nano-tech type amplifiers that increase, for example, auditory perception for musicians. Or, perhaps, we’ll have special memory retention drugs for learning situations.

As Brown writes in his piece: “Perhaps even drugs that improve extrasensory perception, psychic abilities, or facilitate mystical experiences or spiritual transformations, could all be developed with more specificity and efficacy over time.” Do we draw a line with this stuff? Do we put on our “old-school” blinders and say if it’s not natural then it’s not good? Curing cancer and mental illness are one thing, but what about turning up the notch of human potential? What if we could engineer ESP drugs or boost precognitive perception?

R&D, Baby!
All of these developments point to the need for increased investment in psycho-pharmaceutical research and development. New technologies and computer applications will certainly come out of the private sector. But public R&D is also going to be essential if we’re really going to boost the potential of the human mind. Reymond and Awale point to a novemdecillion new drugs to deal with all human health. What portion of that new chemistry actually involves the domain of the mind is anyone’s guess. After a century of emphasis by the medical establishment on keeping people alive, the benefits of more focus on the mind is all too obvious.

Just as scientists and psychologists need to have vision, it is time for the rest of us to have vision as well and to pay attention to the full potential of human beings. The implications are profound. If we shut ourselves off from this, if we limit our full understanding of the power of science to enhance the mind and the nervous system, don’t we defeat the purpose of being human?

My biggest challenge growing up was watching my mom struggle. But the challenge wasn’t just her struggle with mental illness, it was her inability to envision getting better. It’s understandable. In those days medical science was all about telling her she had to cope with her illness, that it was inevitable. But they couldn’t even really tell her what her illness was.

Things are changing now. We’ve cracked DNA codes, we understand the Genome. We’re learning how to chart the mind, and we can synthesize drugs and chemicals like never before. It’s no longer about coping, it seems to me. It’s about using our creativity, and thinking into the future — envisioning and evolving out of our limits. If only they had a drug for that kind of thinking! I don’t think I need it, but without doubt there’s some folks in Washington who do.

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My thanks to David Jay Brown for inspring this commentary piece. His Catch the Buzz article, “Psychedelic Medicines of the Future,” may be found HERE. Follow the links in his article for original source material from the Chemical Neuroscience paper. 

A New Lift: Re-Opening the Investigation of Consciousness

~ David Biddle ~ 3 Comments

Can you feel it? There’s some lift going on again. The doors are open. So are the windows. And we’re starting to move. We’re not flying yet, but we’re certainly not tethered to asphalt anymore, either.

The potential of the human mind is now a big deal again, and it’s getting to be a bigger and bigger deal if you’re paying attention. That lift you should have noticed by now is a surge in rising awareness about the powers of the human mind. I find it interesting that my novel, Beyond the Will of God, so much about the validity and mystery of these powers, was ready for publication in 2000 but didn’t make it to the light of day until this summer…makes total sense, though. Twelve years ago few people wouldn’t have gotten it at all.

Let me explain as briefly as I can. A whole bunch of stuff is coalescing out there causing this lift.

First, over the past several decades diagnostic tools for mapping the chemistry of the human mind have advanced dramatically. Something called “functional magnetic resonance imaging”(fMRI) basically gives neuroscientists the ability to track blood flow on a fairly detailed level in the human brain and spinal column. And other computer-based diagnostic tools are on the horizon as well.

These tools mean scientists are now able to see how the brain reacts to anything from reading a book, to laughing at a joke, saying something nice to someone, meditating, or taking any number of psychoactive drugs. Two of the more “famous” neuroscientists to report back on their research are Andrew Newberg and David Eagleman. These guys, and so many more, are looking at what happens to the brain during meditation, near death experiences, religious ecstasy, psychedelic excursions, and memory and perception events. 

This isn’t just science in a bubble or test tube. Neuroscientists and psychologists are now able for the first time to get a read on thoughts and emotions. There are people attempting to connect minds to computer graphics programs that can draw images from dreams and visions. If you pay attention to the details of newspaper accounts and magazine stories about the mind you will bump into fMRI research more and more. Scientists don’t know what a lot of the mapping means yet, but they’ve only just begun to get a real handle on consciousness. 
The world of mind altering drugs, then, is partly being opened up by fMRI research. At the same time, over the past decade or so the “moratorium” on study and clinical use of psychedelic compounds has finally been lifted. While most Americans were “re-educated” about the question of psychedelic drugs beginning in the late 1960s, prior to that the psychiatric and psychology community did ground-breaking research on how to use these drugs to treat everything from mental illness and alcoholism to PTSD and other forms of psychological trauma. 
As David Jay Brown reports in “LSD & ESP: Scientists Study Psychic Phenomena and Psychedelic Drugs”, LSD research is now back in a big way and it’s providing scientists at quite prestigious universities with truly exciting discoveries about the open-ended powers of human consciousness. Brown has a new book coming out in the spring of 2013 called The New Science of Psychedelics. That will create more lift for sure.
Perhaps the biggest and most profound cultural awakening of the past decade, though, is in the expansion of interest — for scientists, artists, and knowledgable citizens alike — in dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Long considered one of the ultimate mind altering substances, smoking DMT creates what apparently amounts to a 15-minute interplanetary adventure that usually changes peoples’ lives forever. Check this out if you think I’m full of shit.

You may have heard of ayahuasca ceremonies in South America. Ayahuasca is a plant-based infusion that was ceremonially consumed by some South American tribes for thousands of years. Since the mid-20th century when people like William Burroughs and, later, Terence McKenna sought out these tribes, there has been a steady growth in interest in these ceremonies. Competing “tour” groups now make it possible for anyone to experience this deep altered state.

The DMT experience is said to be profound. One of the important things about this new lift I’m talking about is that, for the most part, participants and practitioners are not being so reckless and recreational in their approach to transforming their minds. Most people recognize that psychedelics were never about “getting fucked up.” Back in the ’60s and ’70s we were rather stupid and innocent at the same time. We understood what we were dealing with, but we still made huge mistakes — mostly because this stuff went underground and became part of a rebellious counterculture.

I did my mental adventures partly as a way to separate myself from everyone I knew in high school, but also because I knew there was something I needed to figure out. There was no supervision. No understanding of the idea of the right time and place. My friends and I were on our own. I wish we’d had even just a small amount of guidance. I might not have rolled up to the edge of insanity for five years…(that’s another story altogether).

Perhaps the most interesting cultural artifact out there right now that is openly talking about the possibilities of DMT, and psychedelic experience in general, is the dual book and documentary film, DMT: The Spirit Molecule. The book, with the subtitle “A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research Into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences” was written by Dr. Richard Strassman. It is a detailed account of DMT research he performed on 400 subjects from 1990 to 1995. The film, inspired by the book and directed by Mitch Schultz, was released in 2010. I purchased it for my iPad. It’s rather amazing and well worth the investment. As I understand it, Mr. Schultz is touring the country on invitation presenting his film and discussing the implications of DMT here in the 21st Century. The book and movie combined are probably the biggest source of lift out there right now.

The implications of this lift I’m talking about are pretty incredible. They will be the topic of conversation at a conference called Psychedemia for four days in Philadelphia this fall (September 27 -30) at the University of Pennsylvania.

But this is a meeting of the minds that is only the latest element of lift going on. For the past decade research has quietly been implemented seeking to understand the relationship between religious/spiritual consciousness and psychedelic consciousness. There are quite interesting parallels. In addition, psilocybin (an active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) has been used to treat anxiety and depression for terminally ill people. Read here and here to find out what this is all about. It’s pretty important.

A lot of us (I’m 54) are getting close to the end of our biological potency. You can’t stay on earth if you aren’t biologically potent. It’s not practical. Are you scared of dying? Are you, maybe — even if you think you’re religious and spiritual — just a little bit concerned about the end of things?

It’s truly criminal that we abandoned research into this area back in the early 1970s. It’s also sad that our culture got so confused by the potential of mind expansion. There were “forces” at work, of course. We all know that. But the truth is that somehow mind experimentation got linked to intoxication problems. We lost about 40 years of time. But its not too late. The human race has at least another thousand years before it starts to wipe itself out (my rough estimate). There’s still time to make me wrong.

So pay attention to this lift I’m talking about. It’s real. We’re all in this together. This really ain’t no hippie thing. It never was. It’s just that the hippies were the only ones really hip back in the good old days.

Now we’re all hip. Trust me. I’ve been watching. We all have creative intelligence and we’re all connected now (although I’m the only person in my family who doesn’t have an iPhone). I wrote Beyond the Will of God as a piece of fiction — a mystery, if you will. But I also knew the whole time I was concocting my weird little story that I was creating an allegory and using the mythology of that amazing time that began about 50 years ago to help open the doors and windows again…and to make a small contribution to lightening the load of being alive in a seemingly mundane world.

Now we got lift! It’s very real, and very soon it’s going to become a movement (or at least a trend). Just watch. Pay attention. Don’t hang up. Just breathe. We’re all here, together, now. There’s no telling how far we’re going, but we’re going.

What is it Jimi Hendrix advised? “Just float your little mind around…”. He knew a thing or two about lift. So do you I bet.