Psychedelic brew ayahuasca's profound impact revealed in brain scans

Study gives most advanced picture yet of DMT compound’s effect on advanced functions such as imagination

Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Mon 20 Mar 2023 18.34 EDT

The brew is so potent that practitioners report not only powerful hallucinations, but near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities. Often before throwing up, or having trouble at the other end.

Now, scientists have gleaned deep insights of their own by monitoring the brain on DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, the psychedelic compound found in Psychotria viridis, the flowering shrub that is mashed up and boiled in the Amazonian drink, ayahuasca.

The recordings reveal a profound impact across the brain, particularly in areas that are highly evolved in humans and instrumental in planning, language, memory, complex decision-making and imagination. The regions from which we conjure reality become hyperconnected, with communication more chaotic, fluid and flexible.

“At the dose we use, it is incredibly potent,” said Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. “People describe leaving this world and breaking through into another that is incredibly immersive and richly complex, sometimes being populated by other beings that they feel might hold special power over them, like gods.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/20/psychedelic-brew-ayahuasca-profound-impact-brain-scans-dmt