Caracterización de los psiquedélicos clásicos Summary: Classic psychedelics are defined as compounds that act as agonists at the serotonin 2A receptor, demonstrating a specific pharmacological interaction that is crucial for their psychedelic effects. However, this biological perspective must be complemented by an understanding of the psychological and subjective experiences they evoke. The term ‘psychedelic’ itself, meaning ‘soul revealing,’ highlights the importance of these subjective dimensions. Key aspects that differentiate classic psychedelics from similar compounds, such as ketamine or MDMA, include the distinct visual quality of experiences induced, characterized by geometric patterns and complex scenes, often more pronounced with eyes closed. Additionally, classic psychedelics facilitate profound psychological insights, enabling users to gain clarity about their environment and deeper understanding of the human psyche. While compounds like MDMA and ketamine may evoke other experiential dimensions, such as dissociation or love, they do not provide the same visual and insight-rich experiences found with classic psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT. Transcript: Speaker 1 And I would be inclined to define classic psychedelics as compounds that have some appreciable activity as agonists at the serotonin 2A receptor. So very, very technical there, but it’s quite a crisp and precise definition of what many people would call the classic psychedelics or serotonergic psychedelics. And it points to the pharmacology and a specific serotonin receptor subtype, and that these drugs will stimulate that receptor. But that’s not enough because as a colleague said to me once Pedro Mediano, the brain is only as interesting as the mind and he’s absolutely right. And so just pointing to the brain and such specific pharmacology isn’t going to tell you why Humphrey Osman came up with the term psychadelic, which means psyche revealing or making Manifest or visible the psyche or soul. People say mind but soul is the most literal translation of psyche. So what’s going on there? Well, it’s referring to something psychological, something subjective. And I think that needs to be another component or barrel to our definition. So how do we index that? And we’re in the realm of subjectivity. So I think with the subjective rating and so what would, what kind of items would we have in our subjective rating scale to sample a dimension that is pointing to psyche revealing or making Manifest the psyche. And what I’ve been learning, because I have put this question to empiricism, to developing an operational definition of psychedelic, what I’ve been learning is that the classic psychedelics Seem to be differentiable from near-neighbor compounds, like for example ketamine or MDMA, by two dimensions principally. One is the visual quality of the classic psychedelic experience. And more specifically, for example, the induction of geometric patterns, most vividly seen with eyes closed. They can also sort of color perception with eyes open, distort, you know, things that you’re looking at, but with eyes closed, very clear, very crisp, very elaborate, very complex, Often have a fractal quality but geometric visions, but also more complex forms, more complex visions of scenes of people, landscapes. So there’s a visual component, that’s one dimension, and the other one is insight, psychological insight. So a sense of being able to see aspects of the mind, the psyche, it ordinarily aren’t so visible, and we can have items like, I’ll name one from my scale in development. I experienced insight into the nature of my environment. Now, that one surprised me. But two of others I could see deeply into the human mind. And the other one I could see especially deeply into my own mind or psyche. So yeah, I have found that those items will pass between the classic psychedelics, where a good example might be psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and near-neighbor psychoactive compounds like MDMA and ketamine. They seem to load on to other dimensions, which are also very interesting. But they’re, they’re loading more reliably onto those other dimensions, things like, you know, a sense of being dissociated from one’s body, ketamine, a sense of all embracing love, MDMA, they load onto their more reliably, significantly more reliably than they’ll load onto these classic psychedelic dimensions. (Time 0:05:09)
Explicación de conectividad funcional Summary: Functional connectivity refers to the temporal synchrony of activity in spatially separate regions or networks of the brain. It assesses whether regions, such as the frontal cortex and the visual cortex, exhibit fluctuations in activity that occur in sync over time. Even if these regions are anatomically distinct and lack direct synaptic connections, they can still be regarded as functionally connected if their activity patterns rise and fall together. The examination of functional connectivity can vary based on how the brain is divided into individual spatial segments, leading to different methods of sampling this connectivity. Transcript: Speaker 1 Functional connectivity would be, in a sense, the temporal synchrony of activity cross time in spatially separate regions or networks. So, you know, take a region at the front in the frontal cortex and another one in the back of the brain in the visual cortex, if you’re looking at that activity across time, is it fluctuating Or oscillating in temporal synchrony going up and down together? And if it is, those regions are functionally connected. They might anatomically somewhat separate. They might not even have a clear one-to synaptic connection, but if their activity is going up and down in sync, then we say they’re functionally connected. And that’s functional connectivity. And there’s many different flavors and ways to, to sample functional connectivity. It comes in, in sort of various forms or flavors, depending in a sense on how we parcellate up the brain into bits, spatially separate bits. (Time 0:16:45)
conectividad explicación neurociencia
Explicación de Entropía en el contexto de las neurociencias cognitivas Summary: Entropy, in information theory, relates to the potential information represented in a signal, such as brain activity. A predictable signal exhibits low entropy, indicating redundancy with no new information over time. This predictability reflects order and low uncertainty for observers. This concept parallels thermodynamics, where entropy initially described the degree of disorder in molecular arrangements as systems increase in temperature and degrade over time, illustrating the second law of thermodynamics. Essentially, in information theory, entropy embodies uncertainty; higher entropy signifies greater uncertainty and complexity in sampled information. Transcript: Speaker 1 Entropy or complexity is used in an information theory sense where it’s referring to, in a sense, the amount of potential information carried in a signal. So, for example, if that signal, brain activity signal, is going up and down in a very predictable, that’s important, predictable way, the information held within that signal across Time is somewhat redundant, there’s nothing new, it’s going up and down in this very predictable way. That would be an example of very low entropy signal. Nothing surprising. No uncertainty from us as we come in and sample that. Speaker 2 So the signal is very ordered. It’s very predictable. It has low entropy. Speaker 1 That’s right. And people like that translation to disorder, and it sort of works. It’s related to the translation into thermodynamics, where entropy kind of has its origin. At least when it was first brought up, it was applied in that sort of applied way to thermodynamics and systems being heated up and how the molecular arrangement of, say, molecules within A system or space might become more disordered with, say, increasing temperature. If the system’s just left to itself, it will degrade over time. And that’s the second law of thermodynamics or entropy increases in closed systems over time. So the things are those things are kind of related, but actually the information theory definition of entropy, which in a sense, even though it’s a bit anthropomorphic, in a sense is Uncertainty. It’s our uncertainty as we come in and sample something. And if the system is more entropic, we’re more uncertain. (Time 0:18:02)
definición entropía neurociencia
Explicación de Entropía en el contexto de la neurociencia Summary: Brain activity can be characterized by its level of order and predictability, which correlates with entropy. When brain activity is highly ordered and predictable, it reflects low entropy, allowing for accurate predictions of future activity based on current observations. Conversely, as brain activity becomes more disordered and less predictable, it signifies higher entropy, resulting in reduced ability to forecast subsequent activity from earlier samples. This relationship between order, predictability, and entropy provides insight into the dynamics of brain functions and their varying states. Transcript: Speaker 2 So if you sample some brain activity in any given time point, if that brain activity is very ordered and predictable, you know, you can sample it at time zero, and you can predict what’s Going to happen at time one, that would be a state of high order or low entropy. And if all that activity became more disordered, you wouldn’t be able to predict what’s going to come next from what you just sampled so well, and that would be a state of higher entropy. (Time 0:20:24)