The Accidental Claustrum - on the mechanics of Salvia divinorum trips

[sekio]

Here's a cool article I read. Apparently part of why Salvia trips are so disorienting and almost anesthetic is because there's a part of your brain that coordinates conscious action, and it just so happens to have a high density of kappa-opioid receptors there. More mysteries revealed?

https://thepsychedelicscientist.com/2017/01/24/the-accidental-claustrum/

 

[Incunabula]

Fascinating. Thanks for the article

 

[Solipsis]

Thank you.

Does anyone know if you can microdose with Salvia to gain anti-addictive benefits?

Also makes me wonder what it's like to have kappa antagonism going, in terms of consciousness in the context of that article.

 

[Xorkoth]

Interesting, I wish the article would have been more in-depth but thanks for sharing. One thing, while certainly salvia can produce total amnesia and cessation of movement and thought as stimulating the claustrum seems to do, it in fact generally (until dosed too high) produces a shockingly full experience for such a short duration, with great recall, as is evidenced by the multitude of well-described salvia reports. The observer seems to remain while other cognitive processes seem to split off and become separate entities or otherwise external to the user, usually with no memory that consciousness has been altered, like this is how it's always been. People often jump up and move around, or start vocalizing something over and over again. To me that seems pretty drastically different from the experience described in the article, where movements or vocalizations stop and there is no recollection of the experience.

 

[Solipsis]

Possibly also true at very high doses but maybe you just stop being able to record memory of it. But definitely good point, dissociation does leave internal activity isolated, it's not anaesthesia. Would be interesting to know if something salvinorin-like could ever be used as an anaesthetic.

The claustrum stimulating part seems to refer mostly to the dissociation, not so much the hallucinogenic effects, so for that a wider scope of the brain would have to be involved. Maybe it could be studied from a combination of salvinorin with a silent antagonist injected into the claustrum.

 

[JackARoe]

Nice article. Thanks Sekio. I too wish it had went into a little more detail. It would be interesting in see what exact mechanism would have me believe a split off reality is the real reality until it splits off again and I realize I was off in a different reality. What is the conscious point the mind can differentiate and why doesn't it realize seconds earlier?

Salvia is so bizarre I would like to keep seeing neuroscience keep looking for reasons. But sometimes this stuff goes way past the brain, or seems too. Crazy.