Psilocybin makes the brain work less

Researchers at Imperial College London have been exploring the effects of psilocybin on the brain. A quote from professor David Nutt:

Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding’ drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas. These hubs constrain our experience of the world and keep it orderly. We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as strange.

Here are links to abstracts from the first and second study.

Godin on popularity

Seth Godin on popularity.

In general, the search for popular is wildly overrated, because it corrupts our work, eats away at our art and makes it likely we’ll compromise to please the anonymous masses.

Rejection hurts

Researchers at the University of Michigan have found that rejection hurts, and not just in a metaphorical sense. The study found that “social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain” (via nyt). Maybe artists, musicians and poets have been on to something all of these years.