Why Psychedelics Produce Some of the Most Meaningful Experiences in People’s Lives

December 5, 2023

Sunset over a field of grass

(Vox) – Despite the past two decades of research documenting the tight relationship between psychedelics and meaningful experiences, we still know surprisingly little about what’s actually going on in the brain when psychedelic-assisted meaning sets in. In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, psychologists Patric Plesa and Rotem Petranker pointed out that even “the best minds in psychedelic research … consistently report that psychedelics enhance a subjective sense of meaning without an explicit theory of meaning.” It’s strange that we lack a mechanical understanding of something so central to a life well lived. If we understood more about the neural mechanics of these bursts of revelation, could we learn anything about how to coax them into our sober lives more often? (Read More)