Saturday, January 23, 2010
The Amazing Brain
(2)
That should keep you busy for a while, giving me time to construct the next post. Lessee... Last week I rashly promised to do a blurb about 'entheogens.' No way. Read the book. I remembered it as a 'promise' to do a description of an Acid trip - another formidable task. (But I've done that already. If you're really interested, do a search of LSD on my blogs.)
But I have been wondering about how LSD produces its effects. My experience indicates that the drug affects the brain's Inhibitory System, essentially disabling much of it, over several hours. If I am correct, the IS is an important substrate of Survival Mode (called, 'economic mode' in my blogs). In effect, the IS supresses all neural activity which is antithetical to day-to-day survival, the impairment of which results in a blossoming of very interesting (but economically useless) neural activity. It is this 'blossoming' of neural activity which so astonishes our lean survivalist selves. It is temporary - a necessary quality. We like to do it for a change. We are blown away by it. We are terrified by it. It is an ordeal. But we want to do it again - not too often. It is obviously not addictive. Our Right Brain loves it. Our Left Brain hates it.
This theory suggests that the CNS is specialized but not terminally so: we are more adaptable than we think.
That should keep you busy for a while, giving me time to construct the next post. Lessee... Last week I rashly promised to do a blurb about 'entheogens.' No way. Read the book. I remembered it as a 'promise' to do a description of an Acid trip - another formidable task. (But I've done that already. If you're really interested, do a search of LSD on my blogs.)
But I have been wondering about how LSD produces its effects. My experience indicates that the drug affects the brain's Inhibitory System, essentially disabling much of it, over several hours. If I am correct, the IS is an important substrate of Survival Mode (called, 'economic mode' in my blogs). In effect, the IS supresses all neural activity which is antithetical to day-to-day survival, the impairment of which results in a blossoming of very interesting (but economically useless) neural activity. It is this 'blossoming' of neural activity which so astonishes our lean survivalist selves. It is temporary - a necessary quality. We like to do it for a change. We are blown away by it. We are terrified by it. It is an ordeal. But we want to do it again - not too often. It is obviously not addictive. Our Right Brain loves it. Our Left Brain hates it.
This theory suggests that the CNS is specialized but not terminally so: we are more adaptable than we think.
