Flutterby™! : Psychedelics and social learning

Study shows psychedelic drugs reopen 'critical periods' for social learning

"There is a window of time when the mammalian brain is far more susceptible and open to learning from the environment," says Gül Dölen, associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "This window will close at some point, and then, the brain becomes much less open to new learning."

Nature: How psychedelic drugs achieve their potent health benefits

For their new paper, the researchers gave adult mice either MDMA or one of four psychedelic drugs not known to promote sociability: ibogaine, LSD, ketamine and psilocybin. Mice that received any of the psychedelic drugs were more likely to choose the social room than untreated mice, suggesting that each of the drugs could reopen the critical period.

But mice did not prefer the social room if given enough ketamine to make them unconscious and therefore unaware of their companions. This suggests that the drugs only open the social critical period if they are taken in a social context. Each drug opened the critical period for a different length of time, ranging from one week for ketamine to more than four weeks for ibogaine.

Via the always amazing Tara Calishain