It was a bit surprising for me to see Ritalin and psilocybin mentioned somewhat interchangeably in this article. Poking around some more it seems while both influence brain function and connectivity, their mechanisms, effects, and subjective experiences are quite different. Psilocybin's profound impact on brain desynchronization are quite unlike the more focused and less transformative effects of Ritalin.
The idea that psilocybin can scramble our brains for a while until we lose our sense of individual identity and become indistinguishable from others could have interesting outcomes (if done right and everyone consents) for team building efforts. If people are not getting along and see themselves as too different and apart from each other, then perhaps they could benefit from a period of cohesion and harmony that they can't fight off.
Bringing people together in such times as we live in seems to be truly magical.
Initially, the study authors found that each person had a highly defined and completely unique pattern of network connectivity, like a kind of neural fingerprint that could be used to identify any given individual. Immediately after taking psilocybin, however, connectivity patterns became more chaotic, to the point that participants could no longer be distinguished from one another based on their brain activity.
“The brains of people on psilocybin look more similar to each other than to their untripping selves,” explained study author Nico Dosenbach in a statement. “Their individuality is temporarily wiped out. This verifies, at a neuroscientific level, what people say about losing their sense of self during a trip.”
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