The capacity for psychedelics to break habitual thought patterns may help adults be able to entertain new ideas
- Children are more willing to entertain new ideas
Babies and children are more reliant on the right hemisphere than the left. As we get older, the left hemisphere and the default mode network develop and consciousness narrows. Adults have congealed in their beliefs and are hard to shift, whereas the right frontal lobes allow for flexibility in thought and behavior and children are more fluid and consequently more willing to entertain new ideas. As Lao Tzu describes: “A newborn is soft and tender, [and] a crone, hard and stiff. Plants and animals, in life, are supple and succulent; In death, withered and dry. So softness and tenderness are attributes of life, and hardness and stiffness, attributes of death.”
For the mentally well, psychedelics, by introducing more noise or entropy into the brain, might shake people out of their habitual patterns of thought—“lubricate cognition,” in Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris’s words—in ways that might enhance well-being, make us more open and boost creativity.
References
- Pollan, Micheal. (2018). How to Change Your Mind Chapter 5. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Psychedelics (Location 4459). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Pharmacology Status:☀️