LSD for the NHS?

LSD for the NHS?
This recent article from The Financial Times reports on the scientific progress the Beckley Foundation has been making in the last few years. A British charity is stepping up efforts to rehabilitate LSD, one of the world’s best-known “recreational” drugs, for medicinal use. The Beckley Foundation,...
February 16th, 2010 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Quining Qualia

Quining Qualia
Dan Dennett’s seminal argument about the properties conscious experience is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of whether the mind/conscious experience is reducible to purely physical/scientific terms. You may not think he’s right, but he’s certainly worth a read… 1....
January 26th, 2010 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Does Cocaine make you Smarter?

Does Cocaine make you Smarter?
Hey. Did any of you read this paper on the role of G9a in cocaine-induced dendritic spine plasticity? No? OK, well did you at least read this summary of the findings in Time? Still no? Fine. The gist is that repeated coke use suppresses a protein called G9a, which slows the growth of dendritic spines...
January 15th, 2010 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Rat Made Supersmart — Similar Boost Unsafe in Humans?

Rat Made Supersmart — Similar Boost Unsafe in Humans?
By modifying a single gene, scientists have made Hobbie-J the smartest rat in the world, a new study says. A similar gene tweak might boost human brainpower too, but scientists warn that there is such a thing as being too smart for your own good. Matt Kaplan for National Geographic News For years...
December 16th, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Feeling Go(o)d: The Physics of Emotion

Feeling Go(o)d: The Physics of Emotion
Even before she was chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, Candace Pert made a breakthrough discovery that changed the way scientists understand the mind-body connection. She found the opiate receptor, the mechanism by which a class of chemicals (peptides) alters the mind and...
December 8th, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Left in the Dark

Left in the Dark
While a student at Edinburgh Botanic Gardens and preparing a short dissertation entitled ‘The Genetic Manipulation of Plants’ the subconscious seeds of a revolutionary new theory were sown in Tony Wright’s mind. Over the next 20 years a mixture of scientific curiosity and radical self-experimentation...
November 17th, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More

God in the Brain

God in the Brain
Jack Hitt, from Wired Magazine, describes a scientist’s attempts to translate the mystery of religious experience into a materialistic theory of brain activity. Michael Persinger has a vision – the Almighty isn’t dead, he’s an energy field. And your mind is an electromagnetic map...
October 1st, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More

The Conscious Heart

The Conscious Heart
Rollin McCraty reveals the discovery that neural activity within the heart appears to influence our conscious perception, cognition, and emotional processing, which suggests that the traditional role attributed to the heart as the seat of our deepest emotions may be true after all.
September 29th, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Popping pills – Cognitive enhancement

Popping pills – Cognitive enhancement
This article considers the controversial subject of cognitive enhancing dietary supplements and the potentially unjustified prejudices surrounding them in today’s society.
September 28th, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Investigating Changes in Cerebral Blood Flow and CSF Movement Following Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Investigating Changes in Cerebral Blood Flow and CSF Movement Following Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
Building on our EEG research, this study will use advanced neuroimaging technologies and techniques, arterial spin labelling with functional magnetic resonance imaging, to examine in great detail the effect of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on local and regional blood and CSF movement.
August 7th, 2009 | Science of the Mind | Read More
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