Psychedelics and consciousness: Could drugs help quantify our waking state?

In a recent study, volunteers were given psychedelic drugs and had their brains scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The scientists conducting the research wanted to gain a better understanding of consciousness and find out what the brain is actually doing when it experiences consciousness.

By disrupting the way the brain perceives and models the world while we’re awake with psychedelic drugs such as DMT, researchers can try to understand how the conscious brain works.

Studying the effects of psychedelics might be key not only to understand how consciousness works, but also to treat some of the problems that can affect our waking lives, with psychedelics being proposed as treatments for depression, anxiety and addiction.