|
Siegel RK.
“Pharmacology of Hallucinogens: HALLUCINOGENS AND ATTENTIONAL DYSFUNCTION: A MODEL FOR DRUG EFFECTS AND REALITY TESTING”.
The Psychopharmacology of hallucinogens.. 1978;p268-296.
|
|
Abstract
Hallucinogens have been traditionally defined as those drugs which produce hallucinations. The word hallucination, in turn, comes from the Latin deponent or half-passive verb alucinari, meaning "to wander in mind". To the extent that drugs produce a "wandering in mind" or a "wandering in attention", many, if-not most, psychoactive agents qualify as hallucinogens. However, in both pharmacological and psychological usage, hallucinogens have come to refer to those drugs which produce changes in mood, thought, and perception and are further characterized by the presence of sensory distortions, illusions, hallucinations, and impaired reality testing. Observations on hallucinogen-treated animals are rich with descriptions of these effects. For example, Schecel and co workers (1968) found that the general behavioral changes in squirrel monkeys given delta-8 or delta-9-Àetrahydrocannabinol (THC) were much more dramatic than changes observed in operant responding, Low doses of THC (4 or 8mg/kg) caused the monkeys to sit quietly near the operant levers and look down at the lower part of the chamber. Higher doses seemed to induce apparent hallucinations that excited the monkeys and caused them to walk about the box, apparently looking at something the experimenters did not see, or crouch and move their heads from side to side and up and down as if watching some moving object. Some animals had a blank expression and gazed into space. We assumed that the animals had visual hallucinations. In all monkeys given 32 or 64mg/kg, this apparent hallucinatory reaction was more obvious. Monkeys moved quickly about the box, looked above and behind themselves, seemed to be in a state of panic, and appeared to Fight with imaginary objects; their arms would swing rapidly through the air and they would attempt to grasp objects that were not there (p.1467). Such behaviors are strikingly similar to those of oreverbal children given the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine prior to surgical procedures (cf. Siegel and Jarvik, 1975). The recovery behavior of these children is frequently marked by pointing, reaching, and grasping at the air; spontaneous head and eye orientations in the absence of apparent stimuli; and, in one case a crawling away from an area of the bed which the child continued to strike at with his hands while screaming and crying,. The nature of the phenomena is better understood when these perceptual-motor behaviors are coupled with verbal reports, as in the case of studies with adult humans. Among the many effects
|
