This is a short note from my Roam Research second brain. Here’s a free guide where I introduce you to Roam & Building A Second Brain.
Metadata of Note
Type: 🍃 Leaf [Nomenclature present here.]
Source: [[Bryan Johnson]]’s newsletter and [[Bloomberg]] article
Tags: #ketamine #psychedelics #Kernel #neuroscience #future
Date: May 9th, 2022
[[Bryan Johnson]] wore the [[Kernel]] Flow device (the world’s first highly-scalable neuroimaging system) while consuming #ketamine to test its effects on his brain.
He says, “Not all my life’s experiences have created indelible memories, but wearing Flow while in a ketamine-induced altered state of consciousness was definitely one. As part of a Cybin x Kernel study, I volunteered as a pilot participant. This morning, the results were written up by Ashlee Vance in Bloomberg.”
He took daily, 7-minute snapshots of his brain’s activity patterns for 11 days: 5 days before taking K, the day of taking K, and 5 days after taking it.
Results
- “The images produced by the Kernel helmet depicted something akin to the map of major highways with varying amounts of traffic flowing across these roads. But after about 20 minutes on ketamine, many of those pathways began to dissolve. Johnson’s brain appeared to quiet itself down and approach something of a meditative state.”
- It’s clear from the image above how the “functional connectivity” of his brain decreases when K starts to take effect. And also how the paths are different from before it takes effect.
- “Subject’s functional connectivity was stable for days 1-5 prior to ketamine. Their brain showed large changes during the ketamine session. Post Ketamine, Subject’s functional connectivity decreases for days and then begins trending to normalize back to his baseline.”
- He also says that K’s effect lingers even after the day of taking it, evidenced by the purple/blue lines in the “After Administration” set of images.
It’s kinda awesome to see the effect of K displayed with data — and confirms what I’ve experienced myself (a sense of dissociation) while taking it.
