Research Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

[C C]

Kind of mind-boggling that there are psychotropic substances that can produce specific types of hallucinations. Also a window into how people first came to believe in magical creatures, countryside spirits, and deities.
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Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/experts-e...ucinations

EXCERPTS: Picture this: You're enjoying a delicious bowl of mushroom soup, when suddenly you notice hundreds of tiny people dressed in cartoonish clothing marching across your tablecloth, jumping into your bowl, swimming around, and clinging to your spoon as you lift it for another taste. You're not dreaming — you've just experienced the effects of a mushroom known scientifically as Lanmaoa asiatica. It belongs to an entirely different class of Fungi than the more commonly known “magic mushrooms” and remains far more mysterious.

When outsiders first embarked into the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea in 1934, they encountered a perplexing sight: after consuming a type of wild mushroom which they called “nonda,” the local people would appear to go temporarily insane, exhibiting a sudden and striking change in mood and behavior. Subsequent accounts of the “mushroom madness” phenomenon, as it was termed, provided more details into the mushroom's strange psychological effects.

Conversing with sellers to find and purchase samples for scientific study of the psychoactive mushroom known as Jian shou qing. There are many potentially confusing look-alikes, but after asking the seller if this is the one that will make us see little people, their amused response, often accompanied with a personal anecdote, served as our confirmation of its identity.

Specifically, it was reported that those affected would experience lilliputian hallucinations — a rare, clinically defined psychiatric syndrome (named after the tiny people in Gulliver's Travels) characterized by the perception of numerous little people autonomously moving about and interacting in the real-world environment. One elder tribesman in Papua New Guinea describes this effect, explaining how “he saw tiny people with mushrooms around their faces. They were teasing him, and he was trying to chase them away.”

By the 1960s, scientists were working to identify the species of mushrooms involved and what chemicals within them might be responsible for such bizarre effects. However, both questions have remained unanswered to this day. As a Ph.D. student at the Natural History Museum of Utah, I've been working to solve this puzzle: What exactly is the identity of this mushroom, how widespread is the cultural knowledge of its effects, and why does it produce such fantastical visions?

[...] As recently as 2014, the taxonomic identity of the psychoactive Jian shou qing mushroom remained unknown. It wasn’t until mycologists in Yunnan purchased and sequenced the mushrooms being sold in an open-air street market (where it had been sold for decades) that the species was officially described and recognized as being new to science. Its formal Latin name is Lanmaoa asiatica, and, interestingly, it’s more closely related to the common porcini (Utah’s official state mushroom) than to any other currently known hallucinogenic mushroom species.

Although Lanmaoa asiatica is a recent scientific discovery, the knowledge and use of this psychoactive mushroom may have much deeper ancient roots in Chinese culture. A prominent Daoist text from the 3rd century CE refers to a “flesh spirit mushroom,” which, according to the text, if consumed raw, allows one to “see a little person” and “attain transcendence immediately.”

[...] That the same peculiar hallucinations are independently reported across such distant cultures indicates that these bizarre psychological effects are not cultural fabrications or coincidences, but manifestations of a shared underlying chemical and neurological basis.

Chemical and genomic analyses performed on Lanmaoa asiatica at the Natural History Museum of Utah have revealed no traces of any known psychoactive compounds, suggesting that something entirely new is waiting to be discovered. In other words, Lanmaoa asiatica appears to harbor a chemical compound capable of reliably evoking this unusual experience of lilliputian hallucinations. The discovery of that chemical may, in fact, hold the key to understanding one of the most mysterious dimensions of the human psyche.

[...] Our efforts to identify this compound are ongoing, and the progress so far has been exciting! When mice are given chemical extracts of Lanmaoa asiatica, their behavior shifts noticeably compared to controls. By continuing to fractionate these extracts and testing each in turn, we’ve been steadily narrowing in on isolating the specific bioactive molecules involved.

[...] I’m fascinated by how far the knowledge of these mushrooms extends, across both space and time. Are there additional cultural traditions and groups surrounding this psychoactive species that have yet to be documented? Does humanity’s knowledge of this mushroom and its most bizarre effects stretch further into history, and deeper into folkloric beliefs, that we currently appreciate? Given the remarkable findings we’ve made in just the past few years, I believe the answer to both these questions is yes.

While many questions remain, one thing is for certain: Lanmaoa asiatica reminds us that the world of mushrooms, even those found in markets and on dinner plates, conceals mysteries and wonders we’ve yet to imagine. Somewhere between traditional folklore and modern biology, between the wild forest floor and the sterile scientific laboratory, lies a story still unfolding, a story that may begin with something as seemingly innocuous as a bowl of mushroom soup... (MORE - missing details, no ads)

[Magical Realist]

One elder tribesman in Papua New Guinea describes this effect, explaining how “he saw tiny people with mushrooms around their faces. They were teasing him, and he was trying to chase them away.”

Synchronistically I just posted this pic on FB yesterday!

[Image: f5D0vQs.jpg]

I find this fascinating especially in the context of DMT user reports about elves and gnomes. The playful or tricksterish aspect is also notable. It raises some profound questions about the difference between objective physicality and collectively shared hallucinations/visions. Beings that appear entirely subjectively to people but have no physically objective manifestation at all. Do we need a new "in between" category for such entities?

"When you smoke a powerful psychedelic drug, you generally expect to see some pretty offbeat stuff, yet one substance in particular has gained a reputation as a gateway to a strange realm populated by mysterious "entities". Known as DMT, this mind-altering molecule regularly provokes realistic encounters with otherworldly beings, including those famously described by ethnobotanist Terrence Mckenna as “self-transforming machine elves”.

Given the strikingly similar DMT entities reported by unconnected people from around the world, scientists are now attempting to understand more about the nature of these psychedelic characters and what causes this weirdly common experience. Among those leading the investigation is Dr David Luke, associate professor of psychology at Greenwich University and author of a new book on DMT entity encounters.

“Encounters are really common,” he tells IFLScience, adding that “you get them more often than not with a high dose of DMT.” Regarding the nature of these entities, Luke explains that “there is a wide degree of diversity but there are also some recurrent themes that tend to pop up more than would seem purely random. Among the most common are 'little people', be they elves, dwarves or pixies.”

That’s not to say that everyone gets to meet these diminutive creatures when they smoke the drug. Also included in the cast of characters summoned by DMT are “giant praying mantises” that are typically experienced “leaning over you and doing some weird operation on your brain”.

“The praying mantises are nearly always devoid of any emotion, and sometimes people feel like they’re being farmed for their emotions by them,” says Luke.

While this might sound like a nightmare scenario, a recent study co-authored by Luke found that people most commonly describe these entities as “benevolent”, with only eight percent perceiving them as “malicious”. A larger study conducted at Johns Hopkins University produced similar findings, revealing that 78 percent encountered “benevolent” entities while 70 percent described these beings as “sacred.”

Of the 2,561 DMT users surveyed by the Johns Hopkins team, 65 percent said their encounter filled them with “joy”, while 63 percent experienced a sense of “trust”, and 59 percent went as far as to describe their experience as “love”. Negative emotions like sadness, disgust, and anger, meanwhile, were reported by a small minority of respondents.

Many claimed to have received messages from these entities about the nature of reality, while others gained more banal insights – including one person who received instruction on the rules of the NFL. “On the whole people generally have meaningful encounters,” says Luke. “Even if there’s not a specific message there’s a sense of profundity.”

“DMT experiences can translate quite strongly into metaphysical and theological shifts,” he continues. Indeed, more than half of respondents to the Johns Hopkins study who identified as atheist before their encounter no longer claimed to be so afterward. As unbelievable as all this may sound, 81 percent of respondents said their encounter felt “more real” than anything they had ever experienced previously, with two-thirds continuing to believe in the existence of these entities even after the effects of the drug had worn off.

So, what’s going on here? Could DMT really be some sort of hotline to a cabaret of entities from another dimension, or are these experiences merely the product of aberrant brain activity?

“One explanation is that DMT stimulates regions of the brain which give rise to both the visual aspect of a being and also the experience of sensed presence,” explains Luke. “However, in my research I’ve come across people who have aphantasia, which means they have no visual mental imagery. When they have DMT experiences they don’t see anything, and yet they have entity encounters, so the visual aspect isn’t even necessary for having these encounter experiences.”

While it goes without saying that these drug-induced encounters are underpinned by neurobiology, Luke says that it’s very difficult to account for certain highly typical experiences such as having one’s emotions harvested by a giant praying mantis. “Is there a specific region of the brain that for some reason is hardwired to produce those types of experiences?” he asks. “I don’t think so. It’s too specific to fit this generic brain activation model.”
"
A host of alternative explanations have been put forward, ranging from the psychological to the mystical. Ultimately, though, Luke says that “none of these explanations are satisfactory for a variety of reasons,” and that it’s best to “keep an open mind” as to the nature and origin of DMT entities."

https://www.iflscience.com/why-do-people...-dmt-62234