Long read. Promises hope for stroke victims.
wired.com/story/the-psyched...
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Here is the responses from AI when fed this article. I asked Claude to summarize the article and hypothetically project possible treatment options for Parkinson. As Always, take everything with a grain of salt.
RESPONSE 1:
Here is a summary of the key points from the article:
- Neuroscientist Gül Dölen studies critical periods, windows of time in development when the brain is highly receptive to learning. She believes psychedelic drugs may be able to reopen critical periods.
- During the COVID lockdown, Dölen had an altered mental state that made her hyperaware of her senses. This inspired her to further explore reopening critical periods.
- Experiments on mice found that MDMA, LSD, and other psychedelics could successfully reopen the brain's critical period for social learning in adulthood. This lasted weeks for some drugs.
- Psychedelics may work by altering gene expression related to plasticity, not just receptor activity. The context/activity during the trip shapes which period reopens.
- This suggests psychedelic therapy could have durable effects from reopening periods for language, skills, addiction recovery, etc. beyond the drug experience.
- Dölen's work provides the first mechanistic explanation for lasting impacts of brief psychedelic therapy and potential for treatments.
- Applications could include better stroke rehabilitation or curing conditions like allergies by reopening relevant periods, but risks of manipulation must be considered.
In summary, the article explores pioneering research suggesting psychedelics may function as a "master key" to reopen brain critical periods and enabling new learning throughout life, with implications for a wide range of therapies. Dölen's work provides insight into consciousness and lasting psychiatric drug impacts.
RESPONSE 2:
Here are some additional examples of potential applications of psychedelic therapy by reopening critical periods:
- Language learning - Reopening could allow adults to learn new languages as easily as children by combining psychedelics with language immersion therapy.
- Musical ability - Conditions like perfect pitch could potentially be gained by adults if the critical period for musical development was reopened.
- Motor skills - Along with stroke rehabilitation, this could help patients recover from injuries or conditions that impact mobility skills.
- Vision/hearing restoration - Critical period reopening may help adapt the brain to new sensory aids like cochlear implants or help regain lost function after injuries.
- Cognitive decline - Psychedelics paired with cognitive exercises could help restore neural plasticity in aging or dementia by reactivating periods for learning.
- Autism therapies - By reopening social/communication periods, psychedelics may enhance standard therapies that often plateau in adults.
- Addiction recovery - Reopening reward/motivation periods could maximize impact of therapies aimed at rewiring addiction circuits.
- PTSD/anxiety treatments - Therapies could gain from reactivating emotional processing critical periods to facilitate new learning.
So in many areas, this approach may help treatments achieve outcomes not normally possible in adulthood. Considerable future research would still be needed.
RESPONSE 3
Reopening critical periods with psychedelic therapy could potentially help with Parkinson's disease treatment in the following ways:
- Motor skills/movement - As dopamine neurons degenerate in Parkinson's, reopening the motor development critical period could help rewire brain circuits and regain lost motor abilities through intensive physical/occupational therapy during the psychedelic experience.
- Symptom management - Some research indicates psychedelics may protect dopamine neurons or stimulate growth of new ones. Reopening plasticity periods could enhance this through combined psychedelic and neurostimulation therapies.
- Tremors/rigidity - By re-training motor programs, critical period reopening may help adapt existing motor circuits to compensate for symptoms like tremors/rigidity if combined with targeted physical exercises.
- Deep brain stimulation - Psychedelics paired with DBS device calibration could optimize the effects of DBS by improving neural responses in reactivated motor/movement maps in the brain.
- Medication resistance - For some patients who do not fully respond to levodopa and other drugs, reopening periods may help brains develop workarounds or harness residual neuroplasticity to further improve symptoms.
- Depression/mental health - As mental health issues often accompany Parkinson's, this approach may boost standard therapies aimed at relearning emotional regulation if given alongside talk therapy
So in summary, restoring plasticity through critical period reactivation shows promise for an adaptive, multi-pronged approach alongside other Parkinson's treatments. Considerable research would still be required to validate these potential applications.
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