Lund University researchers have come up with a technique that allows them to simultaneously measure electrical signals from 128 different areas of a rat’s brain. Using this groundbreaking technique, the researchers studied different regions of rats’ brains after they took psychedelics to analyze how hallucinogenic drugs affected their neurons.
Interestingly, the team found that psychedelics caused brain waves in different regions of the brain to form simultaneously and in sync in rats that were awake. This study was working off the findings of prior research on the impact of electrical oscillations within the brain on rats with Parkinson’s disease.
Led by Polish researcher Pär Halje, the research team discovered an 80-hertz tone that occurred in the brains of rats that had Parkinson’s. These rats had issues with involuntary movements. The researchers discovered a connection between the wave and the involuntary movement after dosing the rats with anesthetic ketamine.
The waves occurred in the regions of the brains associated with cognition, Halje said, positing that too much wave activity in cognitive brain regions may result in cognitive symptoms. Likewise, excessive brain wave activity in motor regions may also cause motor symptoms, he said.
Halje’s team developed the technique for measuring oscillations in more than 100 different areas of the brain simultaneously and used it to successfully isolate electrical signals from individual neurons in awake rats, a feat never achieved in scientific research before. Halje says that this technique allowed the researchers to be the first research team to show how psychedelics such as LSD affect individual neurons in animals that are awake.
According to the study, team members “clearly registered” waves in the individual neurons of awake rats after giving them psychedelics such as ketamine and LSD. Furthermore, the team found that LSD and ketamine caused the same wave patterns to occur even though they interact with disparate receptors in the brain. LSD inhibited neurons and their signaling in every part of the brain while ketamine only inhibited the signaling of larger neurons called pyramidal cells while also increasing the signaling of smaller neurons called interneurons.
This difference in how LSD and ketamine affect individual neurons led Halje to theorize that the two hallucinogens may induce psychedelic experience via the “distinct wave phenomenon” rather than by affecting neurons in the brain. He explained that this wave phenomenon seems to cause simultaneously synchronized neuron activity across the brain, indicating that there may be more ways to communicate the waves aside from chemical synapses.
While the researchers could not determine whether the waves were the cause of hallucinations or merely an indication of an ongoing psychedelic experience, Halje said the team’s findings open the door to potentially using the wave phenomenon as a research model to study psychoses.
The world is likely to gain additional insights from other psychedelics startups such as Delic Holdings Corp. (CSE: DELC) (OTCQB: DELCF) regarding the specific ways through which these hallucinogenic substances exert their influence on human health, especially mental health.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Delic Holdings Corp. (CSE: DELC) (OTCQB: DELCF) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/DELCF
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