The Mystery

During the final phase of pregnancy babies spend about 90% of their time asleep, and when they sleep, nothing will wake them. One of the things revealed by the 4D scans is the fact that babies have REM, rapid eye movement sleep, a period of sleep where the eyes flick around behind the eyelids. Later in life we know this is an indication of dreaming. This gentle flicker of an eye could be a sign that the fetus, still with a month to go before even being born, is already dreaming. In adulthood, dreaming plays a vital role in allowing us to make sense of events around us, and to develop strategies to deal with the world.  In a fetus, dreaming, however simple the dreams, may be the crucial process that stimulates the brain to grow and develop. Each minute the fetus makes two and a half million nerve cells and now after eight months his brain is filled with more than a hundred billion neurons with a hundred trillion connections as many as there are stars in our galaxy. Babies begin dreaming

In a wealth of academic papers, videos and interviews spanning more than a decade, respected neuroscience researcher, Donald Hoffman, has proposed a novel solution to the mind-body problem. In the philosophy of mind, the mind-body problem specifically is the challenge of finding out what exists fundamentally; whether it is mind or physical bodies or some combination of both. Whatever we take to be ontologically fundamental, philosophers of mind are also tasked with explaining the nature of the relationship between mind and body. After more than two millennia of philosophers and scientists sweating over this problem, it appears no less intractable. Hoffman’s solution to the problem consists of the following three interconnected theories. 1. Fitness Beats Truth (FBT) Theorem 2. Interface Theory of Perception (ITP) 3. Conscious Realism Working with other researchers, Hoffman’s Fitness Beats Truth (FBT) Theorem posits that during the course of the evolution of species, organisms whose perc

Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT , is a potent psychedelic drug commonly found in nature. DMT is also produced by our brains and contribute to a wide variety of experiences. Scientists have also been intrigued by the possibility that DMT would be involved in, for example, the generation of psychedelic experiences or dreamlike states. This video will briefly examine the physiological function of endogenous DMT from a pharmacological perspective. You can get a chemical version of course, and the resulting trip or hallucination is very profound and many would say life changing. But there's a problem with reading loads of peoples stories about DMT and I think by reading and hearing about peoples stories, you're actually changing what might have happened to you if you'd never heard the stories. The same can be said of lucid dreaming, if you constantly hear things like 'when you lucid dream, you'll be met by the terrifying sleep paralysis demon' then you start to believe it

  Transition State Theory (TST) provides a more accurate alternative to the previously used collision theory. The transition state theory attempts to provide a greater understanding of activation energy, Ea, and the thermodynamic properties involving the transition state. Collision theory of reaction rate, although intuitive, lacks an accurate method to predict the probability factor for the reaction. The theory assumes that reactants are hard spheres rather than molecules with specific structures. In 1935, Henry Eyring helped develop a new theory called the Transition State Theory to provide a more accurate alternative to the previously used collision theory. According to TST, between the state where molecules are reactants and the state where molecules are products, there is the transition state. In the transition state, the reactants are combined in a species called the activated complex. The theory suggests that there are three major factors that determine whether a reaction will

Human brain effects of DMT assessed via EEG-fMRI - Clinical trials of psychedelic therapy for the treatment of a variety of mental health conditions have yielded consistently promising safety and efficacy findings. The signature psychological effects of the so-called classic psychedelics are initiated via agonism at the serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR). A wealth of convergent evidence suggests that 5-HT2A receptor agonism is the trigger event in psychedelics’ therapeutic action, likely initiating processes of cortical plasticity that are exploited via adjunctive psychological support. Most human research with pure DMT has involved an intravenous mode of administration. Given this way, the drug has a rapid action—peaking at ~3 min and subsiding at ~15 min; ideal for examining rapid changes in brain function associated with a rapid transition into, and back from, a highly altered quality of waking consciousness. Accordingly, human functional neuroimaging with DMT offers a unique scientif