The Secret Life of the Mind

by Mariano Sigman

  What happens is that as we daydream we read with a different focus, with a wide-angle lens that allows us to ignore small details and observe the text from afar. We focus on the forest and not the tree. Which is why when we daydream while reading and then go back to the same text, we understand it better than when merely skimming the text with full concentration. In other words, daydreaming is not that wasted time Marcel Proust so yearned after.

  However, there are reasons to believe that daydreaming has a cost (that has nothing to do with the time it consumes). Dreams can easily turn into nightmares, hallucinations lead to bad trips and imaginary friends into monsters, bogeymen, witches and ghosts. Almost all of the situations in which the mind wanders and unhitches from reality can easily degenerate into states of suffering. This is an observation for which I do not have–and for which I do not yet believe there is–a good explanation. I can only share my hypothesis: the executive system, which controls the natural and spontaneous flow of thought, develops–in each of our personal cultural and evolutionary histories–to avoid this flow degenerating into suffering.

  An American psychologist, Dan Gilbert, gave this idea physical substance with a cell phone app that every once in a while asks users: ‘What are you doing?’; ‘What are you thinking about?’; ‘How are you feeling?’ The answers, gathered from people throughout the world, comprise a sort of chronology and demographics of happiness. In general, the states of greatest happiness correspond to having sex, talking with friends, sports, and playing and listening to music, in that order. Those of least happiness are work, being at home at the computer or on public transportation in the city.

  Obviously, these are averages and do not imply that working makes everyone unhappy. And, naturally, these results depend on social and cultural idiosyncrasies. But the most interesting part of this experiment is how happiness changes according to what we are thinking about. During a daydream, almost all of us feel worse than when our brain isn’t wandering freely. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have daydreams but rather just that we should understand that they entail–like so many other trips–a complicated mix of discoveries and emotional ups and downs.

  Lucid dreaming

  Nocturnal dreams also often travel through painful and uncomfortable places. Unlike our imagination, dreams go where they want to, without our control. The other big difference between dreams and imagination is their visual intensity. Awake, we are scarcely able to reconstruct the tattered ruins of a vivid, intensely colourful dream.

  So, dreams and imagination are distinguished by their degree of vividness and control. Dreams have no control but are vivid. Imagination, on the other hand, is controllable but much less vibrant. Lucid dreaming is a combination of both, it has the vividness and realism of dreams and the control of the imagination; in other words, it is a state in which we are both the director and scriptwriter of our dream. Given the chance to choose, most lucid dreamers want to fly, perhaps expressing an ancestral frustration of our species.

  During lucid dreaming: the dreamers understand that they are dreaming; control what they dream; and can disassociate the object and the subject of the dream, as if they were watching themselves in the third person. And lucid dreaming also has its own cerebral signature. Brain activity during REM sleep has less high-frequency activity in the frontal cortex as compared to wakefulness. And it is precisely that high-frequency activity that is imperative in controlling lucid dreaming. In fact, the more lucid the dream, the greater the high-frequency activity in the prefrontal cortex. We could even flip that around. If the brains of normal dreamers are stimulated in high frequency, their dreams will become lucid. The dreamers will disassociate from their dreams, begin to control them deliberately, and will understand that they are just dreams.

  A future in which we control our dreams is not far off. It won’t even require that much technological fanfare. We have known for some time that the ability to have lucid dreams can be trained and that, with work, almost anyone can experience them. A way of approaching them is through nightmares, which we feel a natural desire to control. The capacity that many people have to direct the course of their nightmares–including the executive control to wake up–is a prelude to lucid dreaming. And vice versa: training lucid dreaming is a way of improving the quality of dreams. So another of its distinctive traits is a higher density of positive emotions.

  As part of the training process, lucid dreamers use a waking world as an anchor, allowing them to know that they are in a dream, and that on the other side is the reality of wakefulness. This functions as an orienting reference point to understand where they are. Like Theseus, Hansel or Tom Thumb, or like Leonardo di Caprio in Inception, lucid dreamers leave trails through their wakefulness that serve to guide them back when the path through their dreams becomes too winding.

  Lucid dreaming is a fascinating mental state because it combines the best of both worlds, the visual and creative intensity of dreams with the control of wakefulness. And it is also a gold mine for science. Gerald Edelman, a Nobel laureate, divides* consciousness into two states. There is a primary one, which constitutes a vivid story of the present, with very restricted access to the past and the future. It is the Truman Show’s consciousness, that of a passive spectator who sees the plot of his reality live and directly. This is, according to Edelman, the consciousness of many animals and also that of REM sleep. A consciousness without a pilot. A second form of consciousness, richer and perhaps more personal to humans, introduces the necessary ingredients for the pilot to function as such; it is abstract and creates a representation of one’s self, of one’s being. Perhaps lucid dreaming is an ideal model for studying the transition between these primary and secondary states of consciousness. We are now in the first stages of sketching out this fascinating world that has only recently appeared in the history of science.

  Voyages of consciousness

  Another age-old path to social and personal exploration of our consciousness is the ingestion of medicines, plants, herbs, coffee, chocolate, tea, alcohol, cocaine, opium, marijuana… Substances that can be stimulating, psychoactive, hallucinogenic, soporific, hypnotic. Psychopharmacological exploration that seeks to link the effect of plants, their compounds, derivatives and synthetic versions with specific mental states has been an exercise common to every culture. Here we will explore the universe of the science of two types of drugs that alter the content and flow of consciousness: cannabis and hallucinogenic drugs.

  The factory of beatitude

  Cannabis is a plant native to South Asia that has been used to make clothes, sails, riggings and paper since at least 5,000 years ago. The use of cannabis as a drug* is also a practice that dates back millennia: this may explain why a shaman from the Xinjiang region of China was mummified alongside a basket containing cannabis leaves and seeds. There are also records of the use of cannabis in Ancient Egyptian mummies and icons.

  In the 1970s laws prohibiting the recreational and medicinal use of cannabis burgeoned and, approximately forty years later, the wave began to recede. In effect, the legality of a drug changes abruptly from one place and time to the next, and in general this decision ignores the mechanisms and details of its biological functioning. In order to be able to make an informed decision, whether public or private, one needs to know how different drugs affect the brain and the mind. This is currently particularly relevant in the case of marijuana, when its legalization is being extensively debated.

  In the seventies, the three most widely used illegal recreational drugs were marijuana, opium–as morphine and heroin–and cocaine. The psychoactive compounds in opium and cocaine, as well as their primary mechanisms of action, had already been identified. Practically nothing was known about marijuana. After earning his doctorate at the Weizmann Institute and doing a post-doc at Rockefeller University, a young Bulgarian chemist, Raphael Mechoulam, returned to Israel to remedy this ignorance. Establishing the bridge between the chemical molecules in cannabis and its action on the bo
dy and mind was already a significant statement:

  I believe that the separation of scientific disciplines is just an admission of our limited ability to learn and understand several scientific areas. In nature, the border does not exist.

  This impressive declaration of intent defined Mechoulam’s research style. This book is, to a certain extent, an heir to that legacy.

  His road was not–and is not–an easy one, largely because of the illegality of the substance he wanted to study. In order to work he had to employ tricks unimaginable to most researchers. First of all, he had to get the cannabis. Taking advantage of his military experience, Mechoulam convinced the Israeli police to let him acquire five kilos of Lebanese hashish to begin his long project. His task next was to chemically isolate the almost one hundred compounds that make up cannabis and then give them to monkeys to identify which were responsible for the psychoactive effects. Since it is not easy to tell when a monkey is stoned, he used the sedative effect as a marker to determine the potential of each compound. And thus, in 1964, he managed to identify Δ1-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ1-THC, now known as Δ9-THC) as the primary compound responsible for cannabis’s psychoactive effects. Other compounds that are much more frequently found in marijuana, such as cannabidiol, have no psychoactive effect. However, they have physiological effects as anti-inflammatories and vasodilators and are, in fact, the primary focus of its medicinal uses.

  Discovering the active compound of a plant is just the first step to being able to investigate its mechanism of action. What happens in the brain that sets off the explosion of appetite and laughter and changes in perception? Mechoulam’s second big discovery was identifying a receptor in the brain that specifically reacts to Δ9-THC. A receptor is a molecular sensor on the surface of a neuron. The active compound of the drug is like a key for which the receptor is the lock. Of all the locks in the brain, Δ9-THC only opens a few, which are called the cannabinoid receptors. We now know of two types: the CB1, distributed in neurons in a wide range of cerebral regions, and CB2, which regulates the immune system.*

  When a molecule fits into a receptor on the surface of a neuron it can produce different changes in that neuron: activate it, deactivate it, make it more sensitive or change the way it communicates with its neighbouring neurons. This happens simultaneously in the millions of neurons that have this type of receptor. On the other hand, this molecule does nothing to the neurons that do not have a receptor that reacts to Δ9-THC.

  Molecules and their receptors do not fit together perfectly. The key sometimes fails to open the lock. The better the fit, the more effective and powerful the drug response. By studying the chemical structure of cannabis, Mechoulam was able to synthesize a compound a hundred times more effective than Δ9-THC. Five grams of that compound produce an effect equivalent to some twenty-five pounds of marijuana.

  Why do the neurons of the human brain have a specific receptor for a plant that grows in South Asia? It is strange that the human brain has a mechanism to detect a drug that for centuries only really grew in very specific parts of the planet. Does this system have no use for those who do not consume cannabis? Were these receptors, which are so prominent in the brain, just sitting there unused until marijuana became popular?

  The answer is no. The cannabinoid system is a key regulatory piece of the brain for us all, regardless of whether we smoke weed or not. The solution to this enigma is that the body manufactures its own version of cannabis.

  In 1992–almost thirty years after the discovery of THC (science cooks on a slow flame)–Mechoulam (older but no less persistent) made his third big finding: an endogenous compound that the body produces naturally and that has the same effect as cannabis. He called this compound anandamide, because it is an amide (chemical compound) that produces ananda, which in Sanskrit refers to beatitude.

  This means that each and every one of us, in the opaque and intimate silence of our physiology, creates cannabis. The activation of the cannabinoid receptors from marijuana consumption is much greater than what is naturally produced by anandamide. The same is true of almost all drugs. The endorphins (endogenous opioids) that we normally produce in our bodies–for example, when running–activate our opioid receptors much, much less than morphine or heroin.

  This distinction is key. In many instances, the fundamental difference between two compounds is not found in their mechanism of action but rather in their dosage. For example, Ritalin and cocaine act by exactly the same mechanism. The first is legal and is used to treat attention deficit disorder in children. Leaving aside the discussion of its possible medical abuse, it is clear that Ritalin does not have nearly the addiction potential of cocaine. The reason behind this fundamental difference is entirely due to its concentration.*

  The cannabic frontier

  The CB1 cannabis receptor is found throughout the entire brain. This distinguishes it from dopamine receptors (for cocaine) that are only in specific parts of the brain. This means that many neurons in different cerebral regions change their function following marijuana consumption. Today we have detailed information on some aspects of cannabis’s biochemistry. For example, some neurons known as POMC, which are found in the hypothalamus, produce a hormone that regulates satiety and suppresses appetite. But when the CB1 receptor is active it opens up a structural change in the neuron that makes it manufacture a different hormone with the opposite effect, stimulating the appetite. A close-up biochemical look at the brain’s hormone factory explains this effect known to all pot smokers: the munchies, a voracious hunger that doesn’t wane however much they eat.

  While the relationship between marijuana and appetite is known in exquisite detail, the bridge between the biochemistry, physiology and psychology of the drug’s cognitive effects remains a mystery. Those who smoke or ingest marijuana have the sensation that their consciousness changes. How can science investigate such a subjective aspect of perception? I am not referring to how much we remember or how fast we can add after smoking, but rather to a much more introspective question. The reorganization of thought after consuming cannabis is a mystery that science has barely scratched the surface of.

  The lack of scientific information on the cognitive effects of cannabis is due, first of all, to marijuana’s illicit status. Mechoulam’s road was an exception in this abyss of ignorance. And finding consensus in the relatively scant scientific literature is not an easy task either. A search rapidly reveals contradictory results: that marijuana affects memory and that it doesn’t. That it radically changes one’s ability to concentrate and that it doesn’t alter it in the slightest.

  We are not accustomed to such dissent in scientific literature, but actually it is not limited to this field. To give a non-pharmacological analogy, is it good or bad for a kid to spend hours playing on the computer? Parents who want to find information and duly regulate access to screens will find a hot mess. One work will recognize the benefits of games on cognitive development, attention and memory; another will warn of its detrimental effects to social development, and so on.

  This dissonance has several explanations. The first is that there is not just one marijuana–there are many different kinds. The concentration and the ingredients vary (more or less THC), but also the ways of consuming it, the quantities and the user’s metabolism. To give a much more straightforward example, it’s like trying to resolve across the board whether eating sweets is good or bad. It depends on how much sugar they have in them, what kinds of sugars they contain, and who is eating them, i.e. whether they are obese or diabetic or very skinny and hypoglycemic.

  The fact that there are studies with such varied conclusions suggests that the possible risks of marijuana are not universal. On the other hand, if we take all the scientific literature as a whole, we see that there is a consistent finding that marijuana poses the risk of inducing psychosis in teenagers or people with prior psychiatric pathologies, both when smoking it and for some time afterwards. In fact, an effect common to most drugs, not just marijuana, is
that the age when consumption begins enormously affects its addictive potential. The younger the user is at initial consumption, the more likelihood there is of that substance becoming addictive.

  Towards a positive pharmacology

  There is a fine line between relieving pain and seeking pleasure, even if later society builds an abrupt wall atop this fine line. It is usually considered acceptable to pump someone in pain full of drugs yet deny the slightest use to someone who is fine but wants to feel a bit better. This asymmetry also occurs in science, which focuses on the detrimental effects of marijuana and largely ignores its possible positive effects.

  Practically all the scientific research on marijuana has to do with determining whether it distances us from some presumed normality. On the other hand, it is hard to find works that investigate whether the line demarcating normality could be moved to a better place. Something similar was seen in psychology; little more than thirty years ago, it was only concerned with improving the condition of those who were depressed, anxious or frightened. Martin Seligman and other researchers changed the focus by founding positive psychology, which deals with research on how to make that normal better.

  Science would be much more honest if it could also create a positive pharmacology. This path was explored in literature with Aldous Huxley as a standard-bearer, in The Doors of Perception, but was almost ignored by scientific inquiry. A possible path of investigation could begin by not thinking of marijuana only in terms of whether it is harmful but whether it can be used to live better. This, obviously, does not mean that marijuana is good. The challenge is in discovering to what extent it can improve everyday life; for example, making us laugh more, socialize and enjoy more, or have better sex. Basically the idea would be to weigh that against the real risks–which exist and in some cases are severe–in order to be able to make better decisions, in both the private realm and the public, political one.