Luigi Anzivino speaks at the 2011 Technology Horizons Fall Research Exchange. Anzivino is a scientific content developer at the Exploratorium.

Other topics that took place at this conference included the idea of invisibility cloaks, quantum consciousness, designers lifeforms, etc. Anzivino’s presentation fit right in. Check out his presentation below.

Click here for the video.

http://www.vimeo.com/35534082

Luigi Anzivino: Science of Magic – Boingboing.net

In 2007, Albert Hofmann, the creator of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), wrote a letter to Steve Jobs on behalf of his friend Rick Doblin, who was the founder of the nonprofit organization Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).  Hofmann was with hopes, at the age of 101, that Jobs might want to make a donation to support Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Peter Gasser’s proposed study of LSD-assisted psychotherapy.  The main mission of MAPS is to develop psychedelics and marijuana into prescription drugs that could be made available to treat people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), pain, drug dependence, anxiety, and depression.  Hofmann, a large supporter of the organization, pushed the idea that his creation has helped others and could provide crucial benefits in future health treatments and so asked Jobs for “help in the transformation of [his] problem child into a wonder child.” Many others who have had the opportunity to experiment with this psychedelic drug brought on an entirely different perspective of what LSD provides: an awakening of the Self and for many innovative thinkers an eye-opening journey in expanding their creativity.

An artistic portrait of a young Steve Jobs (source unknown). Could LSD have played a role in the creation of Apple computers?

In an interview with Jobs for John Markoff’s book, “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry”, Jobs called his LSD experiences as “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.”  As a dropout from Reed College in Portland, Jobs did in fact pursue a counterculture lifestyle experimenting with drugs before and after co-founding Apple.  Jobs who recently passed away early October will always be remembered as someone who changed the high-tech world and someone to have always “maintained close emotional ties to the era in which he grew up”, which were the late 60′s-early 70′s.  Could LSD have played a role in the creative thought that lead to the creation of Apple computers? Does the use of LSD even make one more creative?

As I have learned from my Drugs and Behavior course, LSD has been noted to cause hallucinations, synesthesia, altered temporal perception and certain side-effects that include paranoid psychoses, depression, “flashbacks”, or intoxication-induced anxiety (otherwise known as a “bad-trip”).  The action of LSD is on the 5-HT-2A receptor where it works as a partial agonist just like many other hallucinogens. It is also extremely potent requiring as little as 20 micrograms to elicit an effect.  LSD is ingested orally, typically as a liquid drop, on absorbant blotter paper or a sugar cube, and the effects generally are normally reported beginning around 30 minutes later. Tolerance has been found to be profound and there have been no reported cases of LSD negatively affecting the brain after use.

Through the course of an LSD experiment, an artist compiled nine drawings.

In previous studies, LSD has been administered to subjects, particularly artists who were told to create a piece of artwork during the course of the experiment. Their artworks were then compared before, during, and after the intake of a tablet. Many studies have used similar methods. One art historian has observed these acid-influenced pieces to be “more abstract, symbolic, brighter, more emotional and aesthetically adventuresome, and non-representational, and they tended to use all available space on the canvas.”  Markoff describes in his book that people in the 1960′s “tried LSD neither for kicks nor therapy, but to gain glimpses of new and rich worlds of consciousness.” Perhaps it was these “new and rich worlds” which later inspired many of today’s massive success stories like Steve Jobs. LSD also seemed to be an inspirational favorite of Chemists: Sir Francis Crick claimed in an interviewer that he first imagined the structure of DNA under the influence of LSD, and Kary Mullis believed LSD helped him to develop the polymerase chain reaction, which later won him the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Steve Jobs recently passed away, but left behind a legacy.

Think

Did Dropping Acid Make Steve Jobs More Creative? – Slate.com

Nine Drawings – Cowboy Books

“What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry” By: John Markoff

Dr. LSD to Steve Jobs: How was your trip? – CNN Money

Read the Never-Before-Published Letter From LSD-Inventor Albert Hofmann to Apple CEO Steve Jobs – Huffington Post

The Pharmacology of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: A Review – MAPS.org

Ayahuasca is found to produce life-changing visions but can it also produce life-changing cures?

“As I closed my eyes, images – if they can be called such – began racing at an ever-increasing speed before me. Swirls of colors, shapes, forms, textures and sounds simply overpowered me to the point where I became immobile. Like many others before me, no doubt, I became somewhat frightened. What had I let myself in for? When I opened my eyes, the phantasmagoria of forms vanished, and I saw myself in the same room with the others”

Donald M. Topping’s description is very similar to the accounts many others have given. He brought up many questions on the vividness of visions produced after his very first ingestion of the hallucinogenic brew Ayahausca.  What underlying brain mechanisms allow potentially healing, uplifting and fearful experiences to occur behind closed eyelids?  That is what Draulio B. de Araujo and others sought out to find.

Ayahausca is a thick, brown potion served orally as a tea decoction made of a bush (Psychotria viridis), which is a rich source of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and a liana (Banisteriopsis caapi) containing beta-carbolines (such as harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine).  The mixture of these two plants allows for the inhibition, by the beta-carbolines, of monoamine oxidase (MAO) ultimately causing DMT to be psychoactive after ingested.  Naturally, when DMT is orally ingested by itself, it is inactivated by MAO.  Soon after ingestion, the levels of 5-HT rise to incredible amounts.  The unnatural changes in brain chemicals as a result of Ayahuasca are believed to cause the powerful visual hallucinations that have been continuously reported.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Arauji et. al., the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte took in ten participates whom were all frequent Ayahuasca users and photographed their brains before and after an ingestion of 120-200 mL of Ayahuasca to see where activation in the brain takes place.  A closed-eyes imagery task was completed for both stages.  The imagery task included three conditions: viewing natural images (people, animals, or trees), mentally generating the previously seen images, and then viewing a scrambled version of the image presented in the first condition.  The scrambled image served as a baseline.  Psychiatric scales were also applied at intervals of 0, 40, 80, and 200 min after ingestion to detect symptoms of psychosis and mania.

Results would demonstrate an overall increase in the psychiatric scales after Ayahuasca intake, with a significant increase at 40 and 80 min.  The mean time for DMT in the Ayahuasca mixture to reach its peak concentration, T_max, is 90-120 minutes.  This would also explain why an Ayahuasca experience can last for several hours.  Results from the fMRI data showed significant activity in the occipital, temporal, and frontal cortical areas which are involved with vision, memory, and intention, respectively.

BOLD responses before and after Ayahuasca intake

Moreover, the activity in the occipital areas (BA17, BA19, and BA7) was significant because the BOLD signal amplitude after intake increased during the imagery condition, but not during the natural image condition. It is also worth mentioning that the increased activity of the BA17 location in the occipital region, which works with the cuneus and lingual gyrus, corresponds to the peripheral visual field.  This area may play a major role in why post-Ayahausca imagery is so intense even behind closed eyelids.  Ayahuasca also induced activity in temporal areas in the parahippocampal cortex (BA30) and the retrosplenial cortex (BA37) during the imagery condition, which are areas that deal with the retrieval of episodic memories and the processing of contextual associations.  In addition, frontopolar cortex (BA10) activity was also increased during the imagery condition perhaps because subjects intentionally create the images in their minds and interestingly enough, was the only area to produce a positive BOLD signal during the imagery condition before the intake and then potentiated after intake.

In the Amazon jungle, Kira Salak, a writer for National Geographic, photographs Shamans during an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru.

While my interest continues to grow about this psychotropic plant tea, I can rest assured that I know how my primary visual cortex activity can be intensified and like others be able to experience another dimension of reality behind closed eyes.  Besides its original use in select South American religious ceremonies, Ayahuasca can be used for therapy. People like Donald M. Topping, after going through several sessions of Ayahuasca ingestion, left his oncologist’s office one day with his cancer activity indicator below normal.  Many more have left with their symptoms of depression and anxiety miraculously gone, which can also be seen in another study by R.G. Santos et. al. where they suggest Ayahuasca can produce beneficial effects on mood and anxiety.  Even after its many centuries of use there is still much to be learned about the neural basis of Ayahuasca’s potent psychological effects. Unraveling the mystery of Ayahuasca could potentially be utilized in the future as a readily available alternative medicine.

Seeing with the eyes shut: Neural basis of enhanced imagery following ayahuasca ingestion
– Human Brain Mapping

Effects of ayahuasca on psychometric measures of anxiety, panic-like and hopelessness in Santo Daime members – Journal of Ethnopharmacology

Human Pharmacology of Ayahuasca: Subjective and
Cardiovascular Effects, Monoamine Metabolite Excretion, and
Pharmacokinetics – JPET

Human Pharmacology of Ayahuasca: Subjective and Cardiovascular Effects, Monoamine Metabolite Excretion, and Pharmacokinetics – National Geographic

Ayahuasca and Cancer: One Man’s Experience – Maps.org