While both the "mystical" (Huxley) and "clinical' (recent trials re Depression/PTSD) aspect of psilocybin are much talked about, the underlying 'time" sense alteration is, in my mind, key. This comes from my own experience a long time ago...plus the interesting use of psilocybin in micro doses nowadays by competitive athletes DURING competitions to enhance performance.
The "time sense" experience was characterized by a stunning dis-junction between language/based frontal cortex events and the other demands of real life responses to events. Time not only "moved" more slowly... BUT, intriguingly, the "gap" between conscious decision/articulation and action to immediate events was extended to allow what seemed like incredibly valuable "opportunity" to make judgments prior to actions.
The central striatum role of course leads to a need to confront the 'philosophical/thematic" unraveling of the relation between 'time sense" and the vast undefined terrain of 'reward" (a notion of far greater import than mere "specific" satisfactions....but which might be based defined more broadly in terms of "self-organizational" aspects (harmonies between the different brain areas) only contingently related to standard "external elements" that observers considered "rewarding" to an organism.
As you might surmise, my original interest in these issues of 'time" is philosophical/epistemological/mathematical in nature....and indeed....there is a need for neuroscience, I believe, to look at the foundations of mathematics..and the key notions of "ordering" and "recursion"..to better pursue the 'meaning" of time.
I was truly thrilled to find your recent work...and am only now starting to read the various articles I found about an hour ago.
Regards,
Castalia
Ken Kesey got into followup research on psilocybin by holding his hands in his lap when asked to estimate a minute. He had his thumb on his opposite wrist and counted to 72.
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