Oculus Science Journal
Issue 3
The Push for Magic Mushrooms By HUGH KANG
Psychedelic drugs, or hallucinogens, are chemical substances that are known to induce hallucinations and other sensory disturbances. Among them, one of the most well-known is psilocybin, a naturally-occurring hallucinogenic and psychoactive compound. Magic Mushrooms, also known as “shrooms” in more colloquial terms, are mushrooms that contain this psilocybin. Currently, psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I drug, which means that it is considered as a drug that has a high potential for misuse and has no medically accepted use of treatment in the United States. However, these hallucinogenic drugs have recently had a moment. Particularly, researchers from John Hopkins University have recently pushed for the reclassification of psilocybin for medical use because they believe that it has the potential to pave the way for psychedelic drugs to treat depression, anxiety, PTSD, and even addiction. They are striving to have psilocybin reclassified from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule IV drug, which would legally allow it to be used in medical treatments. Before the Food and Drug Administration is allowed to petition for the reclassification, there has to be clear, comprehensive studies that demonstrate the safety of the drug, and this could take several years. Nevertheless, this may be sooner then it seems. According to a study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center, a single dose of psychedelic mushrooms in combination with psychologic counseling decrease(d) the mental anguish of cancer patients for several months. Specifically, this hallucinogenic drug treatement, which required federal waivers because of its banned state, brought stress relief
for over 6 months at a time for 80% of the 29 cancer patients. This is noteworthy because this shows that these psychedelics are better and more comprehensive treatment than conventional anti-depressants, and could also be a powerful new therapy for a host of other mental illnesses, such as food disorders. “If larger clinical trials prove successful, then we could ultimately have available a safe, effective, and inexpensive medication—dispensed under strict control—to alleviate the distress that increases suicide rates among cancer patients,” says Ross, also an associate professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine. Something that parallels with this shift in the attitudes towards the use of certain illegal drugs is the legalization of marijuana. People first began to see the various benefits of the medicinal use of marijuana for people with anxiety, arthritis, and other ailments. Similarly, both scientists and patients have been reconsidering the use of “magic mushrooms” for combating depression and anxiety. In addition, studies are constantly and continuously being revealed to show the immense effects these drugs have on alleviating mental ailments. It would be indefensible to ignore the weight of the evidence. In reality, much of the neuroscience behind the “magic mushrooms” actually remains unknown. Certain MRI scans of the brains of patients after receiving psilocybin has shown a decreased blood flow and activity in the amygdala, a region of the brain that is associated with emotional processes and often overactive during stages of anxiety and depression. In other words, the brain seems to be “resetting” itself through the psilocybin. Also, researchers from Imperial College London believe that psilocybin is a special case among the current treatments: if modern antidepressants are able to dull the emotions of people, psilocybin is able to increase emotional responses by working on the serotonin system. This explains the
effectiveness of the drug because it encourages people to actively confront their depression, which is a massive shift in their mindset. Psilocybin is not a drug that simply alleviates the struggles of mental illness. Unlike other treatments, it allows the patients to actively participate in their resistance. According to the World Health Organization, more than 300 million people suffer from globally in the world and many of these most serious cases are not being helped by simple antidepressants. What are the drawbacks of such an effective drug? Since it was classified as a Schedule I drug in the first place, it is crucial that psilocybin is only used in a strictly controlled setting. There are also several floating questions about the drug. What kind of complications can arise? Why do some patients not hallucinogenic effects of the drug? Can it trigger latent schizophrenia? Nonetheless, the numerous studies being done on these “magic mushrooms” seem to all favor the use of these drugs. It seems like it will only be a matter of time before psilocybin, not to mention other psychedelics, change the way we treat mental suffering and understand our minds.
Works Cited Harrison, Rachel. “The Underground World of Psychedelics and the Potential of Plant Medicine.” NYU, 19 June 2018, https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/june/the-underground-worldof-psychedelics-and-the-potential-of-plant.html.
Hartney, Elizabeth. “Magic Mushrooms: Everything You've Been Afraid to Ask.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 15 Sept. 2019, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-magic-mushrooms-22085. Hartney, Elizabeth. “How Psychedelic or Hallucinogenic Drugs Work.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 28 June 2019, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-psychedelics-22075.
Holson, Laura. “Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Closer to Medicinal Use (It's Not Just Your Imagination).” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 Oct. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/science/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-schedulei v.html#.
Jacobs, Josh. “'They Broke My Mental Shackles': Could Magic Mushrooms Be the Answer to Depression?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 10 June 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/10/magic-mushrooms-treatment-depres sion-aztecs-psilocybin-mental-health-medicine.
Ross, Stephen, et al. “Single Dose of Hallucinogenic Drug Psilocybin Relieves Anxiety & Depression in Patients with Advanced Cancer.” NYU Langone News,
https://nyulangone.org/news/single-dose-hallucinogenic-drug-psilocybin-relieves-anxie ty-depression-patients-advanced-cancer.
Fungi shown to increase salinity tolerance in tomato plants By JOSHUA NAM
A tomato is a common sight in our everyday diets. Its smooth, bright red texture, and the explosion of tangy, sweet juice after you sink your teeth into it makes it a popular choice for any kind of food. From appetizers to even desserts, the tomato stands as an ingredient of high demand in countless culinary cultures all over the world. Tomato farmers make up the large demand for tomatoes through advents of industrial agriculture; usage of vehicles to plow more land, powerful fertilizers to facilitate plant growth, etc. But one large obstacle that has hindered the production of these plants is the lack of freshwater. Since the supply of freshwater is so low, many farmers rely on light saltwater to irrigate their plants. Saline waters can be used for crop irrigation and moreover have been used for millennia. But when growing these sumptuous fruits (or vegetables, depending on your perspective), salt in the soil or salty irrigation water can be detrimental. While not fatal to the survival of a tomato plant, salt water can have the effect of reducing the yield of the fruit which is critical for a fruit of such high demand. In a recent paper in the journal PLOS One by researchers at Hohai University and Henan Agriculture University on the effects of saline water drip irrigation on tomato yield and quality, a three-year study on the effects of saline water irrigation was presented for different soil salt contents. Saline water differing in electrical conductivity (from 3 dS/m to 5.5 dS/m) was supplied to the plant after the seedling establishment. Irrigation water with 5.5 dS/m salinity reduced the maximum leaf area index and chlorophyll content most significantly when compared with other salinity treatments. Not only that, saline water
decreased the yield by around 20 percent compared with the control, but improved tomato quality, including fruit density, soluble solid, total acid, vitamin C and the sugar-acid ratio. Many efforts have been made to increase the salt tolerance of tomato plants so that they can preserve yield amount while also maintaining the benefits of saltwater irrigation. These efforts have come in many ways, such as incorporating genes that allow for the formation of a vacuole to pump sodium out of the plant faster. But perhaps one of the most interesting improvements come in the form of a unique fungi. Plant scientists at the Cairo University of Agriculture found out that adding a desert root fungus, Piriformospora indica, which was first isolated in India, to the soil in which the tomatoes are grown in protects the tomatoes from the damaging effects of high salinity. Tomatoes were planted in a greenhouse, half of which were placed in the fungi. Next, half of each group were fed freshwater and that the other half light saltwater. The leaves of the tomato plants within fungi made more sodium regulating enzymes by expressing the genes PIP1;2, PIP2;4, TIP1;1 and TIP2;2. What’s more, the plant was better able to maintain proper levels of potassium, which is necessary for growth, as stated by the researchers in the journal Scientia Horticulturae. But even more, the fungi increased fruit yield. For the plants irrigated with salty water, fungal infection of the roots boosted the yield of tomatoes 65% compared with uninfected plants. Even infected tomatoes irrigated with freshwater did better, with a 22% increase in yield. As the human population continues to grow and freshwater supplies reduce, methods to increase the yields of agriculture become ever-more relevant. In the case of tomatoes, Piriformospora indica s erves as an effective measure for ensuring a steady supply of tomatoes. However, perhaps a more important issue would be reducing the rate at which freshwater supplies are depleted and agricultural soil dried of moisture. Through a
combination of regulations in agriculture and advancements in science, we can secure a much more sustainable tomato market.
Mantis Shrimp: Surprising Seniors in the Medical World By JIWON LEE
Mantis shrimp are animals with a deceiving name. Despite being classified as “shrimp,” these creatures are at best remotely related to them; in fact, mantis shrimp are stomatopods, distant relatives to crabs, shrimp, and lobsters. While this misleading name is definitely a defining feature of the mantis shrimp, they have a far more peculiar characteristic: their ability to detect cancer. Starting from a minute change in a small group of cells, cancer often spreads throughout the bodies of victims even before symptoms begin to appear. The discovery about the mantis shrimp’s cancer-seeing ability was made by a group of scientists from the University of Queensland in 2014. Since then, developers across the world have been working to build a camera that can recreate this capability.
Mantis shrimp, similar to all its stomatopod brethren, have visual field specializations that allow them to detect polarized light — a type of light that reflects differently off different types of tissue. Through detecting these small differences in light reflection, mantis shrimp are able to discern the existence of cancer cells. On the other hand, humans make out the world around them using hues and shades, thus are not able to distinguish between healthy cells and cancer cells through sight alone.
The conventional method of detecting cancer in patients is through performing a biopsy, in which a physician extracts an amount of tissue from a patient’s body and runs it through a
series of tests and numerous scans. Not only is this procedure time-consuming and frankly quite expensive, but patients also tend to not sign up for these checkups unless certain symptoms for cancer begin to appear. Developing cameras that model the compound eyes of mantis shrimp, however, will allow for this cumbersome process to be shortened immensely.
For example, developers of this new technology hope that consumers will be able to use their phone cameras to take a picture, which will then be processed through an application able to detect the presence of cancer cells in the photograph. The first steps to make this innovative idea a real-life possibility have already been taken, with the aforementioned Australian scientists having created a camera able to replicate the ability of the mantis shrimp’s eyes. It is only a matter of time before this function will also be made available for phone cameras, thereby making cancer checkups available to a larger audience at a lower cost, in turn drastically reducing the number of patients that fall victim to cancer each year. In the meantime, the invention of this camera has already simplified the cancer-detecting process by significant bounds for clinics and patients alike.
Technology has never been able to overcome nature. For centuries, scientists have developed vaccines against common diseases, only for them to mutate and evolve to outpace us. This is much the same in the present world — we may never be able to ‘beat’ cancer in the sense that we will be able to completely eradicate it from the surface of the earth. However, while humanity can never overcome nature, we certainly can adapt and learn from it; and perhaps, the development of this new technology is one such example.
Why Students Should Abide by the Criminally Undervalued 8 Hour Mantra of Sleep By ERIC YOON
Students who wish to survive (let alone excel) must actively spend time on school assignments, extracurricular activities, and relationships with friends to be successful in higher education and beyond. What an irony it is, then, that The National Sleep Foundation and CDC state that students between thirteen and eighteen years of age need to fit 8-10 hours of sleep into their schedule, when sleep is the first casualty in the delicate act of balancing a student’s schedule. Has the CDC even considered that students hopeful of working to fight disease later in life will need to pad their resume with activities that sapped their total sleep count, exponentially adding to their risk of Alzheimer’s, heart failure, diabetes, and cancer in old age? (CDC, that was a joke, I actually really appreciate you advocating for 8 hours of sleep <3)
In reality, no student wants to avoid sleep, but sleep has been framed to be at odds with academic and social success. You “choose” between getting an A on a test or sleeping. You “choose” between strengthening a friendship by answering a FaceTime versus sleeping. Yet, sleep has shown itself time and time again to bolster performance in all parts of the brain, from stress relief and creative thought to memory retention and critical thinking. It may be, then, that the overwhelming number of assignments you need to complete exist because sleep
takes time away from working but rather because you don’t get enough sleep to work at peak focus. When you don’t listen to the eight hour mantra of sleep, you don’t give your body the rest it deserves to run at full capacity; your work is less efficient, you’re left with more things to do, and you feel less awake to boot.
What aspects of sleep, then, make it so critical to our happiness and success? On a fundamental level, sleep is the ‘rest period’ of the body. It runs in cycles of approximately ninety minutes, broken up into phases of nREM and REM sleep. nREM sleep is where the body enters full restoration mode: a removal of metabolic waste, growth of tissue and bone, and a strengthening of the immune system. For the brain specifically, nREM sleep is the stage in which plaque and protein buildup is cleared, crucially decreasing the chance of disease and preparing the brain for REM sleep. To provide some perspective on its importance in the early stages of sleep, the first sleep cycle is an 80-10 minute split between nREM and REM sleep, while the final sleep cycle can go as far as a 30-60 minute split with REM sleep. You can thank nREM sleep for feeling fresh (at the very least, not feeling terrible) after a good night’s sleep. REM sleep, as a contrast, enters the domain of dreams: your brain sorts through ideas and memories, forming connections between rational and irrational sets of ideas. It is here you foster the creative spike to link ideas that would otherwise never be considered connectible. The key takeaway from the existence of these two phases is that both are crucial in staying sharp on a daily basis, and losing out on even one of them barrs performance significantly. Being woken up by an alarm before the body gets a full
nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth of sleep cuts out precious REM sleep, hampering your ability to make connections and develop creativity thinking.
This has been reflected in numerous studies. Matthew Walker, a British scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, determined that greater information retention occurred the more participants slept. It also found that the opposite held true- running on less than ideal sleep would reduce information intake, and after a certain point, concentration would be almost impossible. You may have felt this manifest as the experience of hitting a mental block when trying to study late at night, unable to cram more information into your brain. This line of logic can be extended to claiming that time spent sleeping would be more productive than continuing to study.
The argument against this in the context of academic success is that there may only be a one percent chance of retention by studying late, but a zero percent chance if one sleeps. And this is true for some cases, especially if a student had not studied at all beforehand. The department of psychology at the University of Minnesota, however, found a strong positive correlation between more sleep and higher GPA when testing its university kids- though this may have many other factors tied to it, the trend still shows itself to be true.
Of course, we as humans still function without getting a full 8 hours of sleep. If you spend the night working on a project, the academic results for that assignment will likely be better. And
from a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective, there are always cases that must break the 8 hour mantra of sleep for immediate survival. What the first day of school looks like versus the week before finals goes to show how fickle a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s schedule really is, and saying in absolute that a student must get at least 8 hours of sleep is unrealistic. What I hope you take away, however, is to be mindful of the eight hour mantra of sleep.