Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
July 1, 2011
Levente Móró, Katalin Simon, Imre Bárd et al.
138 citations
People use psychoactive drugs in many ways, but most research focuses on problematic use, leaving nonproblematic use poorly understood. Natural psychedelics like mescaline and psilocybin have historically been used in spiritual and self-enhancement contexts. In a survey of 667 psychedelic users, other drug users, and nonusers, those who used psychedelics to gain self-knowledge reported fewer drug-related problems and scored higher on measures of coping and spirituality. Although spirituality is a vague term, a spiritually-oriented approach to drug use may protect against problems. The authors suggest that using psychedelics for self-knowledge could serve as a training ground for personal growth, but more qualitative research is needed to confirm long-term benefits.
Harm Reduction Journal
January 1, 2013
Levente Móró, József Rácz
82 citations
A Hungarian online community called Daath, run by the 'Hungarian Psychedelic Community' since 2001, provides peer-led harm reduction services for users of hallucinogenic and related substances. The website serves about 1200 visitors daily and has over 8000 registered members. Daath offers online services such as a discussion board and an Ecstasy pill database, along with offline activities like field testing of Ecstasy pills and a documentary film about psychedelics. The community operates with a strong commitment to harm reduction without promoting drug use. The review outlines Daath's history, growth, guidelines, and activities over the past decade, and discusses future challenges and trends in harm reduction.
Brain and cognition
December 1, 2011
Valdas Noreika, Leila Jylhänkangas, Levente Móró et al.
62 citations
Subjective experiences can occur even when a person appears unresponsive under sedation. In a nonsurgical setting, participants given dexmedetomidine, propofol, sevoflurane, or xenon recalled having subjective experiences in almost 60% of sessions after regaining responsiveness. During dexmedetomidine sessions, such experiences were linked to shallower sedation depth as measured by an EEG-based monitor. The findings indicate that unresponsiveness does not guarantee absence of consciousness, and studies on phenomenal consciousness under anesthetics should assess subjective states through post-recovery interviews.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2020
William Wong, Valdas Noreika, Levente Móró et al.
35 citations
In a test of whether brain activity alone can reveal when someone is dreaming, researchers used an unsupervised machine learning classifier to distinguish dreamful from dreamless sleep based on EEG spectral power and electrode location. Nine participants contributed 54 one-minute polysomnograms from non-rapid eye movement sleep—27 with dreams and 27 without. A blinded Analysis Team attempted to classify each recording over five iterations with gradually reduced blindness. At no stage did the classifier perform significantly better than chance, indicating that EEG spectral power features could not reliably detect signatures of phenomenal consciousness in this dataset.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 27, 2019
William Wong, Valdas Noreika, Levente Móró et al.
preprint
A test called the Dream Catcher test was conducted for the first time in a simplified form to see if brain activity alone can reveal whether someone is dreaming. Data Team collected brain measurements (polysomnograms) during NREM sleep from 9 participants, producing 54 one-minute recordings—27 from dreamful sleep and 27 from dreamless sleep. A blinded Analysis Team tried to classify each recording as dreamful or dreamless using an unsupervised machine learning classifier based on EEG spectral power and electrode location. Over five iterations with gradually reduced blindness, the team never performed significantly better than chance. The results suggest that EEG spectral power does not carry signatures of phenomenal consciousness, and the study also failed to replicate key findings from earlier reports on dreaming consciousness.