Psychedelic agents are substances—most of them naturally derived from plants—that change people’s mental states by temporarily altering their perception of reality. As a result, the substances can lastingly induce changes in thoughts and feelings.
How Psychedelics Work
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) is proving to work for so many conditions, researchers believe, because the substances target the brain region central to so many brain operations and involved in so many disorders—the prefrontal cortex—and revamp its structure.
Drugs that induce the psychedelic experience share a molecular mechanism of action—they activate a specific serotonin receptor (5-HT2A) on a specific subset of neurons in the cerebral cortex, cells that are essential for integrating incoming information to create our experience of reality. They cause the neurons to fire in a very disorganized way , messing up all the inputs. They also vastly expand the formation of synapses, intensifying neural plasticity , which many consider key to their therapeutic action. Neural plasticity is the portal to possibility and change.
Significantly, as psychedelics stimulate hyperconnectivity between sensory brain regions, they relax connectivity in the so-called default mode network , the interconnected brain areas responsible for self-referential thought and the “me” aspect of self. The experience is felt as ego dissolution, a significant part of the psychedelic experience..
Psychedelics pharmacologically return the brain to what can be considered neural childhood . The effects mimic conditions during neurodevelopment, creating the optimal brain state for environmental input to have enduring effects. Experientially, this translates into a renewed, often very positive, sense of possibility.
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