Distortions of Prejudice on Cognitive Functioning
There have also been, of recent, a renewed interest in the study of hallucinogens and their effects on mind and personality, especially with regard to their potential in treating psychiatric disorders.
Emerging evidence has pointed out the potential therapeutic properties of psilocybin and LSD by H U Wittchen "The size and burden of mental disorders and other disorders of the brain in Europe"; H. A. Whiteford "Estimating remission from untreated major depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis"; Daniel V. Vigo “Disease burden and government spending on mental, neurological, and substance use disorders, and self-harm: cross-sectional, ecological study of health system response in the Americas". Psychiatric disorders are a major public health concern affecting nearly 350 million people and imposing socio-economic burdens worldwide. Although there have long been efforts to uncover pathophysiological causes in our understanding of psychiatric diseases, such treatments remain somewhat limited.
A 2018 paper, Sean J. Belouin & Jack E. Henningfield "Psychedelics: Where we are now, why we got here, what we must do" investigates the therapeutic application of these hallucinogens in mental disorders. Generally speaking, since the 1960s, hallucinogenic drugs have been classified into two groups: the “serotonergic classic hallucinogens” (sometimes we referred to as psychedelic hallucinogens) and the “dissociative anesthetics.”
Hallucinogens exhibit pharmacological effects in users primarily through the 5-HT system, acting as agonists of the 5-HT2A receptor (see Franz Vollenweider "The effects of the preferential 5-HT2A agonist psilocybin on prepulse inhibition of startle in healthy human volunteers depend on interstimulus interval").
Ketamine and other dissociative anesthetics however act on the glutamatergic system and not on the 5-HT system. As such, they do not produce the same so-called psychedelic trips (see Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer "The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorder"), even though they are still considered to have the effects of hallucinogens.
Many other recent papers have suggested that ketamine and dissociative anesthetics have potential antidepressant and mood-modulating properties of psilocybin and LSD, respectively, as well as the ability of these compounds to modulate functional brain connectivity. (see Marona-Lewicka et al., 2005; Passie et al., 2008;Rickli et al., 2015; Carhart-Harris et al., 2016; De Gregorio et al., 2016.)
These studies demonstrate correlations between low doses of LSD (up to 30 µg/kg) decrease the firing of 5-HT neurons without affecting the dopaminergic firing rate of VTA neurons, whereas higher doses (40-60 µg/kg) decrease the firing of dopaminergic VTA neurons. The 5-HT receptors, (5-hydroxytryptamine receptors) are a group of G protein-coupled receptors that regulate and ligand-gated ion channels found in the central and peripheral nervous systems by the release of serotonin.
Furthermore, in vitro studies have shown that LSD binds itself to the recombinant human D2 receptor in HEK 293 cells ( epithelial morphological cells isolated from the kidneys of human embryos.)
Two recent neuroimaging papers, one by Felix Muller, et al. "Altered network hub connectivity after acute LSD administration" ; the other by Katrin Peller "Changes in global and thalamic brain connectivity in LSD-induced altered states of consciousness are attributable to the 5-HT2A receptor" confirmed that LSD induces increases in functional connectivity between the thalamus and sensory-somatic motor cortical regions. Additionally, these neuroimagings have recognized an increased connectivity from the thalamus to the posterior cingulate cortex and concurrently decreased connectivity to the temporal cortex which show empirical results that are in conjunction with the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical model; however, they do not support the hypothesis that LSD generates an undifferentiated increase in thalamocortical connectivity and information flow, but rather suggest a strengthening of specific connections between the thalamus and specific cortical areas
Placed together the results suggest potential increases in the processing of sensory information, and yet also result in reduced integration capacity because of diminished associative network.
And while the possibility that the altered integration of sensory perceptions might help to overcome the ruminative thinking patterns that are observed in psychiatric disorders; and what they have long been used in shamanistic experiences; the diminishing ability of associative networking within the brain would be counterproductive to learning.
I was involved (paid volunteer) in early studies before these research programs were shutdown for many years. At that time there was a lesser understanding of overall brain functioning; but much of what the new research is suggesting does not run counter to what those earlier late sixties studies were discovering.
I remember one session in which I was given a magazine article to read, and the trip, which lasted approximately two hours in the laboratory setting enable me to read the opening paragraph and dissect it intensely, that was as far as I could get in two hours.
While the LSD presented a variety of thought on a small portion of the article it was not conducive to recognizing the interconnections of one thought to many others and, as such, much use for formative learning but it could be conducive to eliminating fixated thinking that prior learning has created in presenting the series of neuroses people suffer from by creating alternatives to those fixations.
The danger with these drugs, however, is that of they become self-regulated they could stretch certain neuroses of fixated thoughts beyond the return to the normative learning capacities; what we then called the “bad trip” and have now become associated with doses that end up severing the normative 5HT receptors from producing the necessary cortical connections of associative thought.
Projecting beyond the effects of the chemicals to the effects upon the learning processes of developing personalities what we might be witnessing in the methodology of learning of objectification of selves and others as categories might actually be creating the same disconnect that are necessary for the cortical connections of associative thoughts and what may be occurring is the very neuroses that we see in the process of developing mental illness.
This lack of cognitive expansiveness is a very objective observable reality even beyond those defined as mentally ill. Prejudices or opinions might become beyond biases of experiences and could be emotional resonances that the cognition is unable to associate beyond the learning process that created these emotional fixations that cannot extend into cognitive resonances and that cannot be be formulated beyond a certain level of the emotionally learned prejudices.
If one can recognize a bias, it is less capable of recognizing a prejudice. A prejudice does not have to be just against a race or group. A prejudice can occur by limiting one’s participation in the eco-political sphere and confining personalities to their mentally created acceptances or emotional dissatisfactions with those acceptances that create “stupidities” or limitations of cognitive association.
Thus, as such, people can be dependent on religious salvation; political righteousness; economic rationalizations; or even systems of knowledge.
This can also create dependencies on objects like an automobile, electrical systems of production, et. al. that can create not just mental malformations but physical malformations because even though thoughts can be regulated to find some manner of acceptance the emotional guidance of those thoughts can frequently reject those acceptances that then effect not only the internal personality but sustain the societal maintenance of these disruptive incapacities of internal non-subjectivity; i.e. create the very prejudices that both breakdown the internal and external experiences into formulations of unrecognized biases; i.e. prejudices from this societal/personal malfunctioning of the learning process.