Thread: Psycheledics - what's really going on in the brain?

What if there was a way to control perception through the alteration of brain chemistry. For example... take visible light. Visible light is 400-750nm. Anything outside of this, we pretty much cannot see. Now here's a cool fact... if you were to wear glasses... I forget what kind exactly - you could actually very barely see in infrared. That's right - infrared vision, though not much. This is a different wavelength of visible light... problem is our eyes are not very sensitive to it. What if through taking a controlled drug, it could temporarily alter the brains chemistry to ignore all visible light, and only focus in (and magnify) the infrared spectra, causing a human to be able to see in full blown infrared. Something like this would be extremely hard to accomplish if even possible at all. Humans would be the guinea pigs, but it definitely would not be hard to find volunteers. But *if* this was possible, all of a sudden I don't know if I could look at drug induced hallucinations at "just hallucinations" anymore.

Drug induced hallucinations - like any hallucination - involves perceiving a stimulus that isn't there. You don't enter another reality because the hallucinations are not real. They don't pertain to any real world process or object. You still stay in the same reality, it's just that your perception of it is altered under the influence of the drug.

With regards to the whole alternate universe thing, whilst there are some physical theories about alternate universes, however even the most optimistic of these forbids travel to them. There is no evidence to suggest any kind of other reality that is connected to our own that we could travel to.

Even if it did exist for the sake of argument, our brains construct a model of reality based on input from the 'real world'. Altering brain chemistry isn't going to change anything because the organs that detect a stimulus haven't changed. And if you want to truely enter a different reality, a stimulus has to come from a real object, not a drug.

With the seeing in infra-red, it's impossible without technology. If we use equipment such as thermal goggles we can see infra-red, but it's being converted into a form we can detect (into visible light), though some people can weakly detect lower bands of IR.

Actually seeing it in it's own right is impossible without modifying the receptors in the retina, or removing all non-IR light. Changing the brain chemistry will have no effect, because the brain does not detect information, it acts on it.


EDIT: Altering brain chemistry might allow people to enter different states of consciousness - I've read of devices that can alter brainwaves - it still doesn't change the reality that you're in.

The example above of LSD allowing people to see more clearly that their perception of reality is a simulation would be an altered state of consciousness. It's not a different reality though.