EYES WIDE OPEN
26th September 2012, 14:07
I think this will be very interesting.
Its about time there was un-hysterical discussion about the benefits of these drugs.
As the psilocybin trial showed, these drugs can help greatly with depression and have also helped many terminal Cancer patients come to terms with their lives ending. Should be interesting.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/drugs-live-the-ecstasy-trial/episode-guide/series-1
Nearly half a million people are believed to take the Class A drug ecstasy every year in Britain and the country was dubbed the 'drug-taking capital of Europe' in a recent EU Drugs Agency report.
Now, in a UK television first, two live programmes will follow volunteers as they take MDMA, the pure form of ecstasy, as part of a ground-breaking scientific study.
Presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen, the programmes aim to cut through the emotional debate surrounding the issue and accurately inform the public about the effects and potential risks of MDMA.
The six-month long neuroscience study - designed by two of the world's leading experts on MDMA, psychopharmacologists Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London and Professor Val Curran of University College London - is using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how MDMA affects the resting brain in healthy volunteers for the first time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/26/mdma-depression-ptsd-channel-4-study
The three of them were participants in a brain imaging study into the effects of MDMA ("ecstasy") on brain function, parts of which will be televised on Channel 4's Drugs Live documentary on Wednesday and Thursday night.
Harris, who is also a doctor, said the trial could "pave the way to further research into potential therapeutic uses of MDMA, such as in the treatment of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]". But others have raised doubts. Urquhart quoted a Home Office spokesman as saying that "televising the use of illegal drugs risks trivialising a serious issue".
Surely, though, developing improved treatments for severe health problems is also a serious issue?
Readers may remember my article earlier this year about a similar brain-imaging study on psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The research formed part of the Beckley Foundation/Imperial College Psychopharmacological Research Programme, a collaboration between the Beckley Foundation, which I founded and direct, and Professor David Nutt's group at Imperial College. The MDMA study featured in Channel 4's Drugs Live is a continuation of that programme.
Contrary to expectations, psilocybin decreased cerebral blood flow, particularly to brain regions that act as "connector hubs" responsible for filtering and co-ordinating the flow of information through the brain. These hubs impose a top-down control on our awareness, integrating sensory inputs and prior expectations into a coherent, organised and censored experience of the world. By reducing blood supply to the hubs, and thereby decreasing their activity, psilocybin allows a freer, less constrained state of awareness to emerge.
This finding provides a neuroscientific underpinning for the metaphor of the brain as a "reducing valve" whose censoring activity is turned down by psychedelics – an idea popularised by the novelist Aldous Huxley in his 1954 essay The Doors of Perception.
Besides providing insights into consciousness and brain function, the results from our psilocybin studies highlight important new therapeutic possibilities. One of the hubs throttled back by psilocybin is known to be chronically overactive in depression. By lowering the activity of this region, psilocybin may allow the unremitting ruminative thought patterns that underlie depression to be reset. On the back of this finding, the Medical Research Council has awarded a major grant for a study of psilocybin in the treatment of severely depressed patients, which has just begun.
Its about time there was un-hysterical discussion about the benefits of these drugs.
As the psilocybin trial showed, these drugs can help greatly with depression and have also helped many terminal Cancer patients come to terms with their lives ending. Should be interesting.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/drugs-live-the-ecstasy-trial/episode-guide/series-1
Nearly half a million people are believed to take the Class A drug ecstasy every year in Britain and the country was dubbed the 'drug-taking capital of Europe' in a recent EU Drugs Agency report.
Now, in a UK television first, two live programmes will follow volunteers as they take MDMA, the pure form of ecstasy, as part of a ground-breaking scientific study.
Presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen, the programmes aim to cut through the emotional debate surrounding the issue and accurately inform the public about the effects and potential risks of MDMA.
The six-month long neuroscience study - designed by two of the world's leading experts on MDMA, psychopharmacologists Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London and Professor Val Curran of University College London - is using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how MDMA affects the resting brain in healthy volunteers for the first time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/26/mdma-depression-ptsd-channel-4-study
The three of them were participants in a brain imaging study into the effects of MDMA ("ecstasy") on brain function, parts of which will be televised on Channel 4's Drugs Live documentary on Wednesday and Thursday night.
Harris, who is also a doctor, said the trial could "pave the way to further research into potential therapeutic uses of MDMA, such as in the treatment of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]". But others have raised doubts. Urquhart quoted a Home Office spokesman as saying that "televising the use of illegal drugs risks trivialising a serious issue".
Surely, though, developing improved treatments for severe health problems is also a serious issue?
Readers may remember my article earlier this year about a similar brain-imaging study on psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The research formed part of the Beckley Foundation/Imperial College Psychopharmacological Research Programme, a collaboration between the Beckley Foundation, which I founded and direct, and Professor David Nutt's group at Imperial College. The MDMA study featured in Channel 4's Drugs Live is a continuation of that programme.
Contrary to expectations, psilocybin decreased cerebral blood flow, particularly to brain regions that act as "connector hubs" responsible for filtering and co-ordinating the flow of information through the brain. These hubs impose a top-down control on our awareness, integrating sensory inputs and prior expectations into a coherent, organised and censored experience of the world. By reducing blood supply to the hubs, and thereby decreasing their activity, psilocybin allows a freer, less constrained state of awareness to emerge.
This finding provides a neuroscientific underpinning for the metaphor of the brain as a "reducing valve" whose censoring activity is turned down by psychedelics – an idea popularised by the novelist Aldous Huxley in his 1954 essay The Doors of Perception.
Besides providing insights into consciousness and brain function, the results from our psilocybin studies highlight important new therapeutic possibilities. One of the hubs throttled back by psilocybin is known to be chronically overactive in depression. By lowering the activity of this region, psilocybin may allow the unremitting ruminative thought patterns that underlie depression to be reset. On the back of this finding, the Medical Research Council has awarded a major grant for a study of psilocybin in the treatment of severely depressed patients, which has just begun.