Synaptogenesis, stress, and psychodelics.

[GregAndrsn]

A post about my experience with learning and unlearning, I think it would be of some good for all to read;

My current situation is a battery of assignments, reports, research, commitments, talks, meetings, lectures, reading... you get the picture. It is academia at its best (worst?).

I have been long pondering what natural and what synthesized pathways lead to the clearer thoughts. We've all had those days where you wake up and its been like a new day, a new life, a new beginning. As if you are seeing your life from yet another angle - a breeze of fresh air on your mind. I know you've all had it, and we all want to go back there, whether it be via natural systems, psychedelics, or by the more negatively-labeled prescriptions and synthetics. Well, here is what I have come up with (it is a bit long):

Neurogenesis is a very complex system. Our genes are very much biased to creating the brain at a young age, and then leaving it alone. Tweaking the "naturality" of our genes in our favor is somewhat hard - we love sugar and fat, we love watching tv (actually most of us don't), we have addictions etc... all these are predisposed to us by our genes, yet they are counter intuitive to our most healthy selves. To tweak the neurogenesis of our brain is a bit of like wanting fats and sugars - some may go to great lengths (and damaging ends!) to try to get some sort of nootropic improvement of the mind, to reach that clarity once again.

To put myself into perspective I have long been trying to be "the smartest kid in the class" which worked for a while, but now due to my laziness in my earlier years, I am finding it harder and harder to pull answers from what seemed to be learning from osmosis. I used to be quite good at learning, perhaps because of the elementary nature of my younger years, but then I received the false illusion that I was becoming stupider - a reflection that everyone else was becoming smarter. So here I am, soon to graduate college, with a looming stress of failure hanging above my head. That is when it struck me (around midnight last night) as to what I need to do.

I have collected a lot of old memory relics in order to piece together the story of neurogenisis, synaptogensis and clairvoyance. This is what I have come up with, and most of it may seem obvious, but it must be said!

A long time ago, on a mushroom trips in the dreaded cold of a pine green forest clustered with snow and frozen earth, a pair of my friends and I trekked around. As I walked on the trails, I felt immense knowledge (as with every mushroom trip) streaming through my mind. It was an insane amount, and I felt as if I would explode had I encountered anymore! But of course it kept coming, and I kept learning, eventually to a negative end, which was unfortunate. However, throughout the entire event I kept explaining to my friends that I need stimuli. I needed to get out of this black abyssal winter night and I need to experience. My friends shrugged and grumbled, and we ended up agreeing to stay for a while, but then I would drive home. I drove the car home, and the car and I were one. I felt as if I understood the car - I was learning how to be a car. I felt an immense amount of control in my position. It was synaptogenesis - I was learning at a record speed, due to my accompanied neurotransmitters.

An anecdote at the least, but an important story. Many times have I experienced the same feeling - of 'one' with someone or something while ontop of the influence of psychodelics. I want to make the statement that psychodelics, coupled with a range of change and stimulus promote immense amounts of synaptogenesis - and immense amount of learning. And much like the muscles of the body, the neurons of the brain need this for healthy living. There are of course other uses of psychodelics, which are on a much different plane of reality - high doses most certainly cause synaptogenesis, but more often than not they are introverted. I will not speculate at this time, due to limited experience in high doses, the benefit of such states!

It is without a doubt in my mind that psychodelics (especially psilocybin) has the great advantage to stimulating the brain to a great extent, and when paired with new learning experiences itself - perhaps the greatest ability to stimulate synaptogenesis, and perhaps neurogenesis. However, there looms within the western (and eastern...) world a great amount of restrictions, regulations, and time limits to all actions in which one must do things. We often get called into work and must finish a project by this time, or write a report without this, or in general, expectations are placed upon our thoughts with a great weight. These thoughts constrict our flow, and narrow our view point to only one idea - not only stagnating parts of the brain, but eventually killing connections that were once new and exciting. The brain is plastic, and that means it can grow new connections, but unused ones can also die off. Thus we encounter the negativity of stress - induced by the expectations of someone else.

To overcome this type of stagnant mind, there is a very simple solution, and it is not psychodelics! The practice of meditation and yoga has, for as long as man has seen himself, benefited our balance. Stress makes us walk a fine line, with little leeway, and little free time. We are consistently thinking of our destination, with little introspection or learning, other than what is forced. Here we can break free from our linearity, and approach an open path, or at least a fork in the road with meditation. All thoughts are canceled, all loops are severed, and we float. This is a necessity to keep the mind from freezing up, which is often seen in old age. Even with great experience, we become intertwined in repetition and symmetry. We are organic beasts and cannot live to our best in such conditions, so we must break away, let the mind relax, much like the arm carrying a full load. We do this until we have our next god (government) given opportunity to indulge. To learn. To see and think.

That is all!

 

[dirk.bruere]

The best way to actually create new neurons in the brain is exercise.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 053719.htm

A study published today in the journal Neuroscience, journal of the International Brain Research Organization, confirmed that exercise increases the chemical BDNF – brain-derived neurotrophic factor – in the hippocampus, a curved, elongated ridge in the brain that controls learning and memory. BDNF is involved in protecting and producing neurons in the hippocampus.

"When you exercise, it's been shown you release BDNF," said study co-author Justin Rhodes, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Behavioral Neuroscience at OHSU's School of Medicine and at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Portland. "BDNF helps support and strengthen synapses in the brain. We find that exercise increases these good things."

Mice bred for 30 generations to display increased voluntary wheel running behavior – an "exercise addiction" – showed higher amounts of BDNF than normal, sedentary mice. In fact, the BDNF concentration in the active mice increased by as much as 171 percent after seven nights of wheel running.

"These mice are more active than wild mice," Rhodes said, referring to the mice as small and lean, and seemingly "addicted" to exercise. "Wheel running causes a huge amount of activity in the hippocampus. The more running, the more BDNF."

In a study Rhodes also co-authored that extends these findings, to be published in the October edition of the American Psychological Association journal Behavioral Neuroscience, scientists demonstrated that not only do the mice display more of this "good" BDNF chemical in the hippocampus, they grow more neurons there as well.

But those high levels of BDNF and neurogenesis don't necessarily mean an exercise addict learns at a faster rate, Rhodes said. According to the Behavioral Neuroscience study, the running addict, compared with the normal-running, control mice, perform "terribly" when attempting to navigate around a maze.

"These studies are focusing on the effects of exercise itself on chemicals known to protect and strengthen synapses," Rhodes explained. "But too much of it is not necessarily a good thing."

High runners tend to "max out" in the production of the BDNF and neurogenesis, Rhodes said. And that topping-out effect may be what prevents learning.

A high-running mouse's inability to learn as well as a normal mouse could be due to less biological reasons, Rhodes points out. "It is possible that they're so focused on running, they can't think of anything else," he said.

Rhodes and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of California at Riverside and The Salk Institute also emphasize that the functional significance of the exercise-induced increases in BDNF and neurogenesis is not known.

Rhodes suggests that when a high-running mouse exercises, stress is placed on its hippocampus and the development of new neurons becomes a protective response. No one has yet tested whether hyperactive wheel running exercise actually kills or damages neurons in the hippocampus, he said.

"The reason why these good things are happening is they may clean up some of the mess," he said. "Knowing that, you wouldn't expect high runners to get any benefit from it."

One thing is clear: Exercise greatly activates the hippocampus. Rhodes and his colleagues have conducted research that also shows the intensity of exercise is linearly related to the number of neurons that are activated in a subregion of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus.

In addition, they have demonstrated that when mice are kept from their normal running routine, brain regions involved in craving for natural rewards such as food, sex and drugs of abuse become activated. It is allowing Rhodes to study the relationship between natural craving, like hunger, and drug craving due to a pathological addiction.

 

[itsscience]

I drove the car home, and the car and I were one. I felt as if I understood the car - I was learning how to be a car. I felt an immense amount of control in my position. It was synaptogenesis - I was learning at a record speed, due to my accompanied neurotransmitters.

This is a fairly common experience with psychedelics but I think it is wrong to call it learning. Can you now build a car? Can you now, like a good mechanic can, listen to a car and know what is wrong with it just from the sounds it makes? Can you now drive a car like champion race car driver?

I think you're confusing heightened perceptory senses with learning.

Dirk, that's fascinating stuff I'm going to have to do more exercise.

 

[GregAndrsn]

I could have drove like a race car driver.

I've had experiences where I learned how TVs, radios, and simple machinery work while on psilocybin as well. I figured out how electricity works as well - so I was able to make a lamp out of LEDs. I've had alot of insights on psilocybin...

itsscience are you trying to tell me psilocybin doesn't promote learning? :shock: !!!

 

[ophiuchus]

@op
thanks for the read. reminded me of this which i came across yesterday. there's a bunch of different link trails to follow off of this it too

http://lifehacker.com/#!5766703/avoid-i ... meditation

@itsscience
one is always learning... "promoting learning" doesn't mean it's "teaching specific 'things'". or rather i should say, it is not "teaching" one things that one couldn't already know. don't be an ass. it actually does increase hand eye coordination, to the users ability to not get distracted by the beautiful imagery. it creates a higher rate of conductivity in the brain, so you're right as well, it does increase sensory perception, but in the very same sense, this heightened sensory perception allows more information into the brain in less amount of time. (hence it was said "promoting learning")

that's the catch that you've noticed. it doesn't promote learning if one doesn't (think about) want(ing) to learn. it will simply super-conduct information to the brain. it's up to the user what to do with it, and also, what comes in.

 

[itsscience]

Allusion, :finger:

Greg, I didn't say it doesn't promote learning I just said that I didn't think what you had described in the words I quoted were "learning".

 

[ophiuchus]

whatever. the original comment you made was about a nitpicky thing to quote anyhow. all i did was try to make it coherent. it's obvious he wasn't actually learning how to be a car...

This is a fairly common experience with psychedelics but I think it is wrong to call it learning. Can you now build a car? Can you now, like a good mechanic can, listen to a car and know what is wrong with it just from the sounds it makes? Can you now drive a car like champion race car driver?

your examples don't prove, and actually even contradict your point. great job... i wasn't siding with greg just because i liked his post if that's what made you do that..? i don't take sides, there are no sides. i just try to help, i guess that makes me an asshole :roll: