Psychedelics influence the brain’s neurotransmitters and receptors, change its patterns, affect the default mode network and can even alter the brain’s DNA for the better. Since the brain is linked to our sense of sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing, our senses are affected by psychedelics. But an analytical approach only goes so far. People will microdose psychedelics for their numerous health benefits. But you don’t take a large dose for a general sense of wellbeing. You take a hefty amount of psychedelics to affect the five senses. You take a large dose of psychedelics so your mind can experience a trip.
Your mind is an emergent property of your five senses. No surprise for experienced trippers with intimate knowledge of “ego death.” Or for any neuroscientist who studies the phenomenon of consciousness. Or for the Buddhist whose meditative practices confirm that, indeed, the self is an illusion. The self, or mind, is more than just our five senses. But it is an emergent property of our five senses. Some call the mind the “ghost in the machine.” So what then emerges when psychedelics transform the five senses? Science can tell us how psychedelics affect the five senses. But what about an altered state of consciousness?
This is How Psychedelics Affect the Brain
Psychedelics are generally assumed to work with the neurotransmitter serotonin. In the brain, this works by having the psychedelic bind to the 2A receptor. Other receptors and neurotransmitters are likely involved as well. These include dopamine, norepinephrine, GABA, and glutamate.
Psychedelics like LSD work by interfering with the brain’s “default mode network” or DMN. The DMN is the likely source of our ego. It’s the part of the brain that filters our perceptions and is responsible for our sense of control.
Our brains split between left and right hemispheres, with each side taking responsibility for its specific functions. With psychedelics, separated brain regions become integrated. This integration also changes brain waves, creating different patterns across both hemispheres.
This is How Psychedelics Affect the Five Senses
Typically, when one hasn’t taken any psychedelics, the brain will receive signals from parts of the body. The brain interprets these signals and gives us our five senses: hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting. However, when one does take psychedelics, this signalling is either changed, or the brain interprets it differently.
Here’s how psychedelics affect each of the five senses.
Hearing
Hearing is a complex process where little hairs in your ear vibrate, relaying signals to the brain. In the case of a 70-year-old blind man known as “Mr. Blue Pentagon,” psychedelics affect hearing by allowing him to hear colours he couldn’t see. At least, that’s what he reported. The researchers involved proposed that the brain regions were overlapping. Mr. Blue Pentagon’s visual cortex, which had not developed normally, was still able to contribute to the psychedelic fun.
Seeing
What we see in front of us is the result of photoreceptors travelling along nerve fibres to the brain’s visual cortex. This “vision centre” located at the back of the brain is responsible for decoding electrical information coming from your retina. Psychedelics affect seeing by weakening the signalling to the visual cortex. This is why people report hallucinations and sensory stimuli. The eye still sends signals, but the visual cortex processes them differently.
This is how psychedelics affect sight:
- Seeing geometric shapes
- Seeing colours more vividly
- Everything looks more “cartoonish” or more rounded.
- Walls, floors or ceilings appear to “breath” or ripple like a wave
- Inanimate objects move
- You may see things or people who aren’t there in higher doses.
Smelling
Smelling is essentially the awareness of airborne molecules. Our noses have cells called olfactory receptors. Substances that are volatile expel molecules called odorants. The most obvious example of this is gasoline or diesel. Substances with less volatility either don’t expel these molecules or do so at a much lower rate. Consider the smell of steel or a cloth towel. When you go outside and smell the fresh air, your nose is receiving (and your brain is interpreting) the molecular volatility of the weather. It’s rare for psychedelics to affect your sense of smell drastically. Like visual and auditory enhancements, psychedelics can increase your perception of certain scents. But an entirely hallucinated smell is rare, if even possible.
Touching
Touch is part of the body’s sensory system. When touch information reaches the brain, the sensory cortex processes it. Research on psychedelics is still in its early stages, so the jury is out on the nuts and bolts of a full-body hallucinatory experience. That said, psychedelics likely affect your sense of touch by weakening or interfering with the body’s electrical signals passing through the sensory cortex.
Tasting
Tasting is a multi-phase process involving our mouth, throat, and nose. The smell of food triggers us to produce more saliva and digestive acids in our stomach. Our sense of taste is inexorably linked to our sense of smell. Our taste buds work in tandem with our olfactory receptors. Psychedelics affect our sense of taste by affecting our sense of smell. These are usually positive enhancements, but one’s perception can turn the experience negative in larger doses.
This is How Psychedelics Affect the Mind
Suppose the mind is an emergent property of the five senses. What is the consciousness that emerges when one transforms the five senses through psychedelics?
First, we can relax. Although “ego death” is a real thing, we don’t lose our sense of individuality. A momentary lapse of self isn’t permanent. Psychedelics won’t cause you to “lose your mind.”
We know that from people who’ve gone on psychedelics trips and returned safely. But we also know ego death isn’t permanent because of our “sixth” sense. Some would argue our most acute sense. There are our five ordinary senses: hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching. But then there’s the sense of self. We not only think, but we’re aware of our thinking.
Our thinking isn’t transformed by psychedelics like the other senses are. Psychedelics affect the five senses, affecting how we perceive the world. But the mind, our thoughts, are entirely metaphysical. In smaller doses, this is apparent. Our senses transform, but our sense of self is still there. Probably thinking something like, “oh, wow, that looks sooo trippy.”
And in higher doses, or when we experience “ego death?” It’s a transcendental state like the one mystics achieve through years of meditation.
Our sense of self isn’t an actual physical sense like our olfactory receptors. But psychedelics will transform it as it does with the other senses. We’re a little less clear about how this happens, just as we’re unclear about how ordinary, everyday consciousness happens.
In Summary
Scientists aren’t sure how consciousness originates. So it is no surprise that we can’t answer how psychedelics affect the most important sense of all – the sense of self. Only that, given a large enough dose, the illusion of self breaks down.
But then it recompiles as the substance excretes from your body. And when your mind returns, it will undoubtedly have some insight it hadn’t considered before. This ability to provide genuine understanding makes psychedelics promising in the fields of mental health, depression, and anxiety research.
While more published research would be excellent, we at least have some practical knowledge of how psychedelics affect the five senses. But even then, the overall picture is one with low resolution. We still have a long way to go in answering how psychedelics affect the five senses and our sense of self.
