Users of LSD and many psychiatrists who have used the drug in therapy sessions say that these kinds of effects provide a window into the human unconscious. When people let go of the past in an altered state, they can dredge material from the deep within themselves.
Or can they? To Dr. Jack Cowan, a mathematician at the University of Chicago and a number of other scientists who study the architecture of the brain's visual areas, the dancing geometical patterns observed by Dr. Hoffman are not in the least mysterious. Cells in primary visual areas are specialized for detecting edges and contours in normal vision, he said.
When these cells are stimulated by a hallucinogen, they automatically produce visions of spirals, pinwheels, tunnels, funnels, spirals, honeycombs, checkerboards and cobwebs. As the brain struggles to make sense of these images, it may make up a story to explain what it is happening, he said.
People may find the results helpful or insightful, he said, but they flow not from some mysterious netherworld world but from the architecture of their own brains.
Or can they? To Dr. Jack Cowan, a mathematician at the University of Chicago and a number of other scientists who study the architecture of the brain's visual areas, the dancing geometical patterns observed by Dr. Hoffman are not in the least mysterious. Cells in primary visual areas are specialized for detecting edges and contours in normal vision, he said.
When these cells are stimulated by a hallucinogen, they automatically produce visions of spirals, pinwheels, tunnels, funnels, spirals, honeycombs, checkerboards and cobwebs. As the brain struggles to make sense of these images, it may make up a story to explain what it is happening, he said.
People may find the results helpful or insightful, he said, but they flow not from some mysterious netherworld world but from the architecture of their own brains.
