Learn about why scientists study “mystical experiences” in psychedelics; and precisely measuring a neutron’s lifetime. Mystical experiences might be key to the power of psychedelic therapy -- but they're really hard to study by Grant Currin Natan Ponieman. (2021, October 12). How Science Is Making Sense Of The Mystical Experience In Psychedelic Medicine. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/natanponieman/2021/10/01/how-is-science-making-sense-of-the-mystical-experience-in-psychedelic-medicine/?sh=6e0166623b7b Natan Ponieman. (2021, October 12). Is Mysticism Becoming A Problem For Psychedelic Medicine? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/natanponieman/2021/10/12/is-mysticism-becoming-a-problem-for-psychedelic-medicine/?sh=6c502c6448a4 Wighton, K. (2016, April 11). The brain on LSD revealed: first scans show how the drug affects the brain. Imperial College London. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/171699/the-brain-lsd-revealed-first-scans/ Barrett, F. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2015). Validation of the revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire in experimental sessions with psilocybin. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 29(11), 1182–1190. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881115609019 Scientists made the most precise measurement of a neutron's lifetime by Briana Brownell Physicists lead world’s most precise measurement of neutron lifetime. (2021, October 13). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/931482 Gonzalez, F. M., Fries, E. M., Cude-Woods, C., Bailey, T., Blatnik, M., Broussard, L. J., Callahan, N. B., Choi, J. H., Clayton, S. M., Currie, S. A., Dawid, M., Dees, E. B., Filippone, B. W., Fox, W., Geltenbort, P., George, E., Hayen, L., Hickerson, K. P., Hoffbauer, M. A., & Hoffman, K. (2021). Improved Neutron Lifetime Measurement with UCNτ. Physical Review Letters, 127(16). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.127.162501 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy. (2021). Ultracold Neutrons. Lanl.gov. https://lansce.lanl.gov/facilities/ultracold-neutrons/index.php The Mystery of the Neutron Lifetime. (2020). Energy.gov. https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/mystery-neutron-lifetime Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about why scientists study “mystical experiences” in psychedelics; and precisely measuring a neutron’s lifetime.
Mystical experiences might be key to the power of psychedelic therapy -- but they're really hard to study by Grant Currin
Scientists made the most precise measurement of a neutron's lifetime by Briana Brownell
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/medical-value-of-mystical-experiences-and-the-neutrons-lifetime
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how scientists study “mystical experiences” — and why they want to do it in the first place; and how researchers made the most precise measurement of a neutron’s lifetime.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
We’ve talked before about how psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin can really help people who suffer from conditions like PTSD, severe depression, and alcoholism. When they use the drugs, these people often have mystical experiences that seem to treat unhealable wounds. That poses a bit of a problem for researchers because the mystical is — by its definition — inaccessible to science. But they’re doing their best to examine it through a scientific lens. Let’s talk about how.
And for the record, researchers have made a lot of progress in figuring out what psychedelics do to the brain. For example, people often experience dream-like hallucinations while on LSD. A 2016 study with 20 participants explains why. Usually, a person can see because information from the eyes is processed in the visual cortex. Brain scans taken during the 2016 study show that when a person is taking LSD, their visual cortex is getting information from all over the brain, not just the eyes. That probably explains visual hallucinations.
But it’s not always so easy to draw connections between what’s happening in a person’s brain and what that person is experiencing in their mind. People on psychedelics often feel like they’ve transcended ordinary reality and made contact with something greater and more powerful than themselves. This is especially important because this feeling of transcendence is the mystical part of a psychedelic trip that seems to help people.
Brain scans of people on psychedelics show unusual brain activity that seems to correspond with mystical experience, but the picture is far from clear. One study found that psychedelics seem to decrease blood flow to a network of brain regions that maintains boundaries between other parts of the brain. Those interconnected regions are called the default mode network. An overactive default mode network has been seen in mental health conditions like anxiety and OCD, and researchers think reducing the activity in this network could create a meditative state and even temporarily shut down a person’s sense of self.
Another problem with understanding mystical experiences scientifically is that everyone has their own definition of the mystical. For example, researchers have developed a survey called the Mystical Experience Questionnaire that they give to patients and study participants who’ve just finished a psychedelic experience. By having participants indicate things like whether they lost their sense of time or felt that “all is one,” researchers claim to be able to put their mystical experience to a real measurement. But others say the questionnaire is biased toward a Judeo-Christian view of reality and that it won’t offer useful insights for future researchers to build on.
These researchers call for new theories around psychedelics that are grounded purely in science, not in mysticism. The other side says mysticism is key to the psychedelic experience. Who’s right? More research may be the only way to know.
You can’t make bread without knowing about flour, and you can’t understand the universe without knowing about neutrons. Which is why scientists have been working for decades to nail down exactly how long neutrons survive. Knowing that would teach us more about everything that makes up our universe — and even how our universe came to be. And recently, scientists announced that they’d achieved the most precise measurement of a neutron’s lifetime ever.
And they did it by putting 40 million naked neutrons in a supercold magnetic bathtub.
You see, usually neutrons buddy up with protons to form stable atomic nuclei. But when a neutron is on its own, it’s a lot more fragile. It takes about 15 minutes for the average neutron to decay into a collection of other particles in a process called beta decay. The neutron turns into a proton, an electron, and a near-massless antineutrino.
Neutrons decay spontaneously according to a statistical distribution — that is, there’s a range of time they take to die. So to figure out the range, the scientists needed to look not just at a single neutron, but at a whole bunch of them at once. That’s where the bathtub comes in.
It’s hard to keep the neutrons together for very long so measurements could be taken. That’s why the researchers turned to the Ultracold Neutron-Tau, or UCN equipment at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, or LANSCE [“LANSK” like “ants”]. Unlike the high-energy colliders like at the famed CERN [SERN] in Switzerland, the LANSCE UCN is decidedly more chill. Particles move slowly, at speeds on the order of a few meters per second... a far cry from CERN’s breakneck paces that approach the speed of light.
Neutrons created from the UCN source were cooled using solid deuterium, a hydrogen atom with an extra neutron. This slowed them down so the research team could capture the particles in a quote-unquote “bathtub” using 4,000 magnets. Every hour or so, the scientists took a measurement of the number of neutrons that remained in the tub. They kept going for about 11 days.
Then, rinse and repeat. The team conducted the same experiment multiple times in order to gather a large sample of data. Using this method they came up with the most accurate measurements of beta decay so far, accurate to about one tenth of one percent.
So what’s the number? On average, a neutron decays in 14 minutes and 37.75 seconds, plus or minus 0.28 seconds. But I think I’d want to get out of the cold bath before then, wouldn’t you?
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Grant Currin and Briana Brownell.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!