Ultimately, the logic driving these scientific initiatives is the correlation that exists between brain complexity and conscious level. But correlation is not causation, and its possible that the rise in complexity seen when under the influence of psychedelics is actually pointing to brain activity unrelated to growing conscious awareness, says Anil Seth, professor of computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and investigator on the 2017 study.

For example, it could be capturing the multi-sensorial richness of their experience during the trip, the random firing of neurons, or unwanted, reflexive bodily movements.

Theres many missing knowledge gaps, says Seth.

Still, the results led scientists to wonder: could psychedelics ability to boost complexity levels be used to awaken patients with disorders of consciousness?

For David, there was only one way to find out.

On August 25, 2023, exactly 336 days following Sarahs tragic accident, David, who is based in Colorado where psychedelic mushrooms are decriminalized, obtained a tincture of distilled liquid psilocybin. He had already given Sarah low and moderate doses of the drug over the course of several months and it had a remarkable" affect in her bodily movements.

This time, however, he would go all in, using the equivalent of 2.5 gramsa dose high enough to provoke a powerful psychedelic experience and which is often used in clinical trials for therapeutic purposes. At this dose, both Gosseries and Carhart-Harris said an awakening was theoretically possible.

The legalities of what David was about to do were unclear. Colorados decriminalization of certain psychedelics in 2022 means that psilocybin is easy to access and magic mushrooms can be grown and consumed. But whether David was crossing a line by giving Sarah the drug, when she could not consent, was not obvious.

David felt that if there was even a slim chance that psychedelics could awaken Sarah, he would take the risk.

Sarah sat in her wheelchair and wore a helmet-like headset with cables sprouting out of the back of her head, feeding into a laptop. The headset, a commercial-grade piece of equipment called a WAVi, measured the electrical activity from her brain and was going to be recorded and analyzed by Frank Palermo, medical director of the Colorado-based company, WAVi Co., which focuses on medical equipment manufacturing. Palermo also describes himself as a physiatrist specializing in neurorehabilitation, as he does in a video of him posted on Neurologic Life, a company that markets medical devices, including WAVi.

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Can psychedelics treat people with a severe brain injury? - National Geographic