Drug hallucinations look real in the brain (Ayahuasca)

The visions induced by an Amazonian brew used by shamans may be as real as anything the eyes actually see, according to brain scans of frequent users of the drug.

Draulio de Araujo of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, and colleagues recruited 10 frequent users of the brew – called ayahuasca. They asked the volunteers to look at images of people or animals while their brains were scanned using functional MRI, then asked the volunteers to close their eyes and imagine they were still viewing the image. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that neural activity in the primary visual cortex dropped off when volunteers imagined seeing the image rather than actually viewing it.

But when the team then gave the volunteers a dose of ayahuasca and repeated the experiment, they found that the level of activity in the primary visual cortex was virtually indistinguishable when the volunteers were really viewing an image and when they were imagining it. This means visions seen have a real, neurological basis, says de Araujo – they are not made up or imagined.

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slimvictor said:

That is so cool.
So the DMT visions are literally visions.
I had always thought that it was metaphorical.

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Aye I found this very interesting