The effect of psychedelics on the brain's 'consciousness conductor'?

From what I've skimmed through, this is a bit of a clickbait title and doesn't really support materialism, but it's interesting nonetheless I suppose: https://newatlas.com/science/psychedelic...cybin-ego/

A new Johns Hopkins study, looking at how psilocybin influences a mysterious brain region called the claustrum, is just one of several compelling recent articles shining a light on how our brains generate our experience of consciousness.

I am pretty sure that's not what the research suggests but ok then. Also, what other 'compelling recent articles' are they referring to, because they don't link any here...

The last paper Crick ever penned homed in on a small and still relatively mysterious brain region called the claustrum. Co-authored with Christof Koch, Crick was reportedly still editing the manuscript in hospital the day he died. [color=var(--primaryColor1)]Subsequently published in 2005[/color], the paper presented a novel hypothesis - [color=var(--primaryColor1)]the claustrum may be key to our experience[/color] of consciousness, unifying and co-ordinating disparate brain areas to help generate our singular experience...

...While some researchers had previously suggested the claustrum could potentially be the brain’s epicenter of consciousness, Crick and Koch presented a different analogy to describe the role of this mysterious brain region. “We think that a more appropriate analogy for the claustrum is that of a conductor coordinating a group of players in the orchestra, the various cortical regions,” the pair wrote. “Without the conductor, the players can still play but they fall increasingly out of synchrony with each other. The result is a cacophony of sounds.”

I'm still not seeing how this 'shines a light' on materialism when a 'conductor' can be interpreted in many ways, and other analogies can also be applied.

The research discovered slow-wave activity across a number of brain regions increased in tandem with neural firing in the claustrum. Slow-wave brain activity is most often linked to a key period of sleep associated with memory consolidation and synaptic homeostasis.

So...this isn't exactly explaining 'self' consciousness then? This study supports the idea that this feature of the brain helps coordinate activity, so I don't know why they're suddenly saying: 

“The claustrum is a coordinator of global slow-wave activity, and it is so exciting that we are getting closer to linking specific brain connections and actions with the ultimate puzzle of consciousness.”

So apparently they then conducted an experiment to analyse the effect of psilocybin on the claustrum:

The study found psilocybin reduced claustrum neural activity between 15 and 30 percent. The overall reductions in claustrum activity also directly correlated with the subjective psychedelic effects of the drug...

For example, under the influence of psilocybin, functional connectivity between the right claustrum and the auditory and default mode networks significantly decreased, while right claustrum connectivity with the fronto-parietal task control network increased...

“Our findings move us one step closer to understanding mechanisms underlying how psilocybin works in the brain,” says Frederick Barrett, one of the authors on the new study. “This will hopefully enable us to better understand why it’s an effective therapy for certain psychiatric disorders, which might help us tailor therapies to help people more.”...

Further research is certainly necessary to verify this hypothesis, and the next step for the Johns Hopkins team will be to use this new claustrum imaging technique to investigate the brain region in subjects with a variety of psychiatric disorders. Fifteen years on from Francis Crick’s passing his final work is still inspiring new research. The new wave of psychedelic science, in tandem with novel neuroimaging techniques, brings us closer and closer to understanding how our brains create consciousness.

I do not understand how at all that research strengthens materialism. The statement in bold appears to be yet another shoddy jump to a conclusion that isn't really supported by these studies. Fortunately, they link to the original paper, which can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1920304663


Guess what? The term 'consciousness' (to my knowledge) is not mentioned, and nothing relating to the 'self/soul' either. It doesn't mention the hypothesis of the claustrum, and simply says that the drug effects cognition, not consciousness. 

Now what does the paper of the Japanese study on the claustrum have to say? https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/resear...index.html

New research from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) shows that slow-wave brain activity, a characteristic of sleep and resting states, is controlled by the claustrum. The synchronization of silent and active states across large parts of the brain by these slow waves could contribute to consciousness.

I am failing to see how this research supports materialism if the consciousness is referring to 'sleep and resting states'.

Neural firing in the claustrum closely correlated with the slow-wave activity in many brain regions that receive input from the claustrum. When they artificially activated the claustrum by optogenetic light stimulation, it silenced brain activity across the cortex—a phenomenon known as a “Down state”, which can be seen when mice are asleep or at rest. Up and Down states are known to be synchronized across the cortex by slow waves of activity that travel from the front of the brain to the back. “The slow wave is especially important during sleep because it promotes homeostasis of synapses across the brain and consolidates memories from the preceding awake period,” comments Yoshihara...

“We think the claustrum plays a pivotal role in triggering the down states during slow-wave activity, through its widespread inputs to many cortical areas,” says Yoshihara. When these areas subsequently enter an up state and fire synchronously, this serves to ‘replay’ memories, transfer information between areas, and consolidate long-term memories, “all functions that may contribute indirectly to a conscious state,” Yoshihara observes. “The claustrum is a coordinator of global slow-wave activity, and it is so exciting that we are getting closer to linking specific brain connections and actions with the ultimate puzzle of consciousness.”

It seems the author is trying to connect to studies together in a rather misleading and biased manner. I personally haven't seen any reactions to this that haven't accused the article of being clickbait and misleading either. What do you guys think? Does at least the first study suggest materialism is somehow closer to being 'proven'?

Disclaimer:
As noted here there's a good reason to reject this is proof materialism/physicalism is true, given these skeptical parties that continue to doubt the physicalist/materialist faith.


Additionally, whatever is shown by parapsychology or neuroscience, here are four good reasons to reject the religion of physicalism/materialism.

I'm not sure what you are looking for....do you think psychedelics should not have direct effects on the brain?

Or that psychedelics should disprove materialism because we should see decreases in activity associated with richer experiences?

edit: Or are seeking to disprove Mind == Brain? I don't know the degree to which psychedelics can do that, perhaps if they boost Psi results but even still you have proponents for Psi like Braude who are not quite convinced of survival...he does lean toward that conclusion in Immortal Remains though...

I'm not sure what you are looking for....do you think psychedelics should not have direct effects on the brain?

Or that psychedelics should disprove materialism because we should see decreases in activity associated with richer experiences?

edit: Or are seeking to disprove Mind == Brain? I don't know the degree to which psychedelics can do that, perhaps if they boost Psi results but even still you have proponents for Psi like Braude who are not quite convinced of survival...he does lean toward that conclusion in Immortal Remains though...

I'm trying to suggest that the author is jumping to conclusions, such as those who say 'psychedelics prove there's no soul' and stuff. The psychedelic study is almost irrelevant, it's the second study I quote that is most damning to me.


The research that suggests the claustrum is apparently 'responsible for a conscious state'. Is that research supportive of materialism/physicalism, or am I getting confused by their terms?

The research that suggests the claustrum is apparently 'responsible for a conscious state'. Is that research supportive of materialism/physicalism, or am I getting confused by their terms?

Regardless of metaphysical position, there has to be some minimum set of structures in the brain responsible for conscious state.

A bullet to the head is all the evidence we need of that.

Now the brain's relation to mind, that is another question...

The point I was trying to make is that this article was being touted as 'proof that we are one step further towards naturalism' by that Sora Redditor guy and it immediately had me, and other commenters, suspicious. 

'his serves to ‘replay’ memories, transfer information between areas, and consolidate long-term memories, “all functions that may contribute indirectly to a conscious state'
This is the part that has me dubious of jumping to such a conclusion. Consciousness is not exactly the same thing as a conscious state, IIRC. This doesn't invalidate any other theories of consciousness, right?

I don't know, I just don't understand how one can interpret this study to be yet another 'proof' of naturalism. 

Yeah, it's correlation.

The issue regarding Consciousness - by which I mean Subjective Feeling, Use of Reason, and Thoughts About Stuff - [is] not something that will be resolved with studies like this.

That said, we will find more and more correlations. These will be more fine-grained, with specific parts of the brain (and rest of the body) correlated with specific brain states.

But the problem for materialism is specifically that you are starting with something that has no mentality - the physical world - and trying to get consciousness. It's a Something from Nothing issue.

This is separate from whether the mind survives the death of the body.

This is separate from whether the mind survives the death of the body.

You know me too well Sciborg, too well