An eighteen years old female patient of the Caucasian ethnicity from New Zealand, she presented with a persistently dilated pupil causing her discomfort and occasional burning sensation when outdoor due to an oversensitivity to sunlight. However, her pupillary reaction to light (pupillary light reflex) was intact. The patient is a known user of psychedelic substances (entheogens) including LSD,...
This chapter introduces some of the central concepts, themes, and issues addressed in the book. First of all, it discusses the concept of ‘minimal self’ and its recent application to schizophrenia and auditory verbal hallucination (AVH). Then it raises the question of whether minimal self includes only the sense of having some kind of experience or, in addition, a more specific sense of the...
This chapter widens the scope of the discussion, to include types of hallucination not so far considered. It begins by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on hallucination in Phenomenology of Perception, in order to identify a type of experience that differs both from orthodox hallucination and from the kinds of experience described in earlier chapters. The chapter goes on to consider auditory...
Abstract Classic psychedelic drugs (serotonin 2A, or 5HT2A, receptor agonists) have notable effects on music listening. In the current report, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal was collected during music listening in 25 healthy adults after administration of placebo, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and LSD pretreated with the 5HT2A antagonist ketanserin, to investigate the role of...
Strange-face illusions are produced when two individuals gaze at each other in the eyes in low illumination for more than a few minutes. Usually, the members of the dyad perceive numinous apparitions, like the other's face deformations and perception of a stranger or a monster in place of the other, and feel a short lasting dissociation. In the present experiment, the influence of the...
Addiction BiologySeptember 2017Nancy Stanslowsky, Kirsten Jahn, Anna Venneri et al.
Among adolescents cannabis is one of the most widely used illicit drugs. In adolescence brain development continues, characterized by neuronal maturation and synaptic plasticity. The endocannabinoid system plays an important role during brain development by modulating neuronal function and neurogenesis. Changes in endocannabinoid signaling by Δ9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive...
Cannabis (also known as marijuana) is the most frequently used illicit psychoactive substance in the world. Though it was long considered to be a “soft” drug, studies have proven the harmful psychiatric and addictive effects associated with its use. A number of elements are responsible for the increased complications of cannabis use, including the increase in the potency of cannabis and an...
PsychopharmacologySeptember 2017Sanders A McDougall, Andrea E Moran, Timothy J Baum et al.
Ketamine is used by preadolescent and adolescent humans for licit and illicit purposes. The goal of the present study was to determine the effects of acute and repeated ketamine treatment on the unconditioned behaviors and conditioned locomotor activity of preadolescent and adolescent rats. To assess unconditioned behaviors, female and male rats were injected with ketamine (5-40 mg/kg), and...
The Concept of Spiritual Emergency T here exists increasing evidence that many individuals experiencing episodes of nonordinary states of consciousness accompanied by various emotional, perceptual, and psychosomatic manifestations are undergoing an evolutionary crisis rather than suffering from a mental disease (Grof, 1985).The recognition of this fact has important practical and theoretical...
Exploring differences in visual disturbances and triggers between Hallucinogen-Persisting-Perceptual-Disorder (HPPD) Type I ("positive/benign") and II ("negative/distressing"). Forty individuals with HPPD and prior LSD use completed clinical questionnaires. The most common type of visual disturbances among individuals with HPPD I and II was slow movement of still objects and trailing phenomena,...