Dr. Frederick Barrett - Steve Brill - Violet Brill
Perhaps no region of the brain is more fittingly named than the claustrum, taken from the Latin word for "hidden or shut away." The claustrum is an extremely thin sheet of neurons deep within the cortex, yet it reaches out to every other region of the brain. Its true purpose remains "hidden away" as well, with researchers speculating about many functions. What is known is that this region contains a large number of receptors targeted by psychedelic drugs such as LSD or psilocybin ¾ the hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms. To see what happens in the claustrum when people are on psychedelics, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers compared the brain scans of people after they took psilocybin with their scans after taking a placebo. PLUS Steve and Violet Brill looks at a forest the same way most people think about a supermarket. Walk through a park or wooded area with them and they can show you a number of wild plants that might make for tasty additions to your dinner plate. They would tell you how yellow wood sorrel tastes just like lemonade or how black birch can be used as a minty flavoring for pudding. With the advent of this pandemic, foraging may be more important than ever. Some are including it in their home-schooling curriculum in hopes of arming their children with this almost-forgotten art. http://wildmanstevebrill.com
Psilocybin acutely alters the functional connectivity of the claustrum with brain networks that support perception, memory, and attention https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32454209/
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Show Notes:
[2:17] Why did this research come about?
- The passion of music and psychology created interest.
- Interested in the long-term effects of psychedelic therapy.
[10:15] the claustrum.
- A thin sheath of gray matter in between the hemispheres of the brain.
- Connects most of the brain in one way or another and is transiently active most of the time.
- Most active during high functioning thinking that requires organization of thoughts.
- Dense in serotonin receptors.
[14:30] Functional MRI’s to actively measure.
[21:30] Dosing.
- Little science has been published on microdosing.
[24:50] Psylocibin to tamp down the ego center.
- Default mode network conductivity is reduced by psychadelics.
[30:52] How does the claustrum affect major disorders, and how can we leverage pyschadelics?
- Disrupting the claustrum could possibly lead to a sort of reset of the brain.
- Very little has been performed on human claustrums.
[38:36] Functional MRI explained.
[42:40] Next steps in the research.
[52:00] There serotonin- 2a receptors are distributed in various parts of the brain.
- Vision
- Thalmus
[54:45] Salvinarin A
- Kappa- opiod receptor agonist.
[1:03:24] Steve Brill comes on the show.
[1:10:00] Foraging interests have increased since covid has hit.
[1:13:50] how to avoid unsanitary plants.
- It is not safe to assume that a plant is edible if another animal is eating it.
- Foraging can be used to put food on the table on a regular basis.
