Drug hallucinations look real in the brain

University of Rio Grande de Norte- The visions induced by an Amazonian brew used by shamans may be as real as anything the eyes actually see, according to brain scans of frequent users of the drug...Volunteers looked at images of people or animals while their brains were scanned...then the volunteers closed their eyes and they imagined they were still viewing the image...when the team then gave the volunteers a dose of ayahuasca and repeated the experiment, they found the level of activity in the primary visual cortex was virtually indistinguishable when the volunteers were really viewing an image and when they were imaging it.

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