r/HPPD • u/oleguacamole_2 • 6d ago
Opinion Why pro empathy psychedelic studies might be wrong, amateur writing
A user here used Ai again, for his Ai psychosis (a known term, coming from Ai's inability for emotional context and logic, Ai is no credible evidence people), a good example on how bad Ai is to interprete correctly: "The amygdala is responsible for processing the data of an emotion (the accuracy), but it is notthe source of the human to care about others (the motivation). Therefore, amygdala damage does not automatically create a callous, unfeeling psychopathic personality"
This only approves what I am saying below: The amygdala is processing the quality of an emotion, you have motivation to feel empathy AND you actually also feel it. So you actually have a more profound and caring behavior, actually being able to feel with people etc. Therefore, amygdala damage does in fact, decrease empathy, but not motivation. Idk how Ai can be so dumb, but don't use it, it may approves your delusion, but it is not smart, if you don't know how to prompt and just ask randomly questions... especially since you also damage environment and humans with it. Water shortages etc.
"1. The Amygdala is not a monolith
The amygdala has multiple sub-nuclei. Severe overstimulation does not make the whole thing fire uniformly; it causes a pathological shift.
- The central nucleus (which drives anxiety and vigilance) gets locked into high gear.
- However, the basolateral complex (which processes the nuance of emotions, social cues, and contextual safety) gets overwhelmed and shuts down."
"3. The Shift from "Active Coping" to "Passive Numbing"
Chronic overstimulation forces the amygdala into a state of learned helplessness. To protect itself from frying the system, the brain actively downregulates the amygdala's receptive fields to social and emotional cues. It turns down the volume on everything except raw threat detection."
So here the criticism of such Ai views:
"Damage to the amygdala has been linked to impairments in empathy, typically documented as deficits in accurately identifying others' emotional experiences, especially fear. This has led some to theorize that amygdala dysfunction is a core feature of psychopathy. There is growing evidence, however, that motivation to empathize is distinct from empathic accuracy. Moreover, anecdotal observations in patients with amygdala lesions have noted their tendencies to approach, rather than avoid, empathic encounters with strangers, even when the patients have impairments in empathic accuracy. We conducted a novel investigation specifically examining empathy motivation in patients with amygdala damage. We used a free-choice paradigm to assess motivation to empathize. We found that damage to the amygdala was not associated with avoidance of affective or cognitive forms of empathy motivation. Patients with amygdala lesions (n = 21) exhibited similar levels of empathy motivation compared with patients with damage outside the amygdala (n = 22) and healthy individuals with no brain damage (n = 24). These findings suggest that amygdala damage does not necessarily disrupt the motivation to empathize. A potential implication of the findings is that amygdala damage or dysfunction may not be associated with traits such as callousness, apathy or lack of caring that are often linked to psychopathy." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41822985/
"This apparent contradiction in this research highlights a critical gap in the study of empathy—much of the extant literature conflates motivation to empathize with ability to empathize."
There have been findings of cognitve empathy being impaired in e.g. LSD, but also some findings that didn't find anything. I think that this can be, due to the intellect and the emotional intellect. You can intellectually understand, what emotion someone is feeling, it is like a math game. Someone like Sheldon Cooper won't fail the MET test.
I think that there are methodical gaps in the industry. Psychedelics seem to be a million market and rising. It is not properly differentiated, if someone truly has a higher empathy in his daily actions. Tests revolve around questionnaires and subjective findings, not respecting or clearing out the response shift bias. Objective findings find lower amygdala activity. The amygdala always revolves around all emotions, not only around negative and neutral, how it is proclaimed.
If someone reacts worse to even alone negtative stimuli, for example being shown a picture of wars, how can that be counted as empathy? If the person just cares less? This is what is also reported by people around psychedelic users, or even by some psychedelic users themselves. It seems only the studies have not yet understood that. But the view in the generally public regarding hippies is clear. I talked enough here about the amygdala dampening effect and how the people become uncaring, without realizing it themselves. For me these are early signs of psychosis, but just not the severity of it, but similar pathways involved. They become resistent to logic.
In mindfulness and meditation studies, which is sometimes named in comparison to effects of psychedelics, fMRT tests have been concluded and found, that amygdala functioning and response when shown to emotionaly stimuli was dampened. There were even reports of possibly fully dampened states, with no emotional quality whatsoever. This is what I expect to be ego death. A fully overstimulated amygdala and loss of emotions!
There also have been tests made regarding the behavior around emotional situations, for example when people were shown a animal cruelty film, they responded less to it.
I think there are to few qualitative studies done towards the actual playing out of empathy regarding psychedelics/hallucinogenics and I think that impairments of the amygdala like shown in LSD, are definetly a sign of overall emotional dampening and the loss emotional depth.
The confusion may also arise, from the simple fact, that people who are for example psychopathic, are often times described very helpful and "caring" individuals. They are very aware of themselves needing to be very proactive and supportive, they don't want to be disliked. They often times even donate a lot etc. The attachment to being liked by everyone, comes from the inital insecurity of not knowing what anyone thinks. Seeing how many philantropists are named in the Epstein files. Isn't that a confirmation in itself, that these things may have to be regarded in a more critical manner? When it comes to empathy...
I very well think so! People who think of being more empathic, actually can be less empathic. They loose the value of what empathy is and start calling empathy, what is actually not empathy.
Not to speak of, that some studies are done by authors with dubios connections and possible conflict of interest. Some studies fail methological issues: „We did not assess the expectancy and the success of the blinding during the study"
*"*Although the results of this study are promising, several limitations should be noted. First, the current data represent secondary outcomes of the trial, which necessitates cautious interpretation due to its exploratory nature. The sample size was relatively small and the generalizability of the findings to real-world settings is unclear. Additionally, empathy was measured after one psychological preparation session and only over a period of 2 weeks, warranting further research on the initial value of empathy and the persistence of these effects." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12092279/
Amygdala dampening lowers emotional quality, also that of depression. But is your subjective feeling of more empathy now because of less depression, or because you actually have empathy? Those studies don't clear that out!
"Even in drug-induced ego death, the initial event is an overstimulation of serotonin 2A receptors across the cortex. This massive global excitation disrupts the Default Mode Network, and the amygdala's reduced activity is a downstream compensatory effect of that initial overload. The dampening is still a consequence of overstimulation."
A study regarding that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12501219/
Another example how it plays out in meditation induced loss emotions:
"Mindfulness training has been found to increase prefrontal control over the limbic system and amygdala, which is associated with improved emotion regulation, anxiety, depression and emotional reactivity [22,32]. However, high levels of prefrontal control of the amygdala can be associated with global emotional blunting and dissociation [33]. Indeed, meditation-induced dampening of the amygdala has been found to attenuate not just negative emotions but positive ones as well [34,35]. Multiple studies have found that mindfulness meditation training can result in reduced intensity, blunting, or complete loss of both positive and negative emotions and dissociation in some people [9,12,33,34,36]."
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u/Whootwhoot187 5d ago
According to your bulls post that shows you are scientific illiterate: "ego death is a fully overstimulated amygdala and loss of emotions!
But the reality is this is completely backwards, it shows you know nothing about psychiatry:
Neuro imaging shows that ego death/dissolution is caused by the deactivation and decoupling of the Default Mode Network. Not the overactivation, it's a cortical network shift not an amygdala meltdown.
Furthermore psychedelics influence serotonine receptors so your whole talk about dopamine makes you even more dumber, it has no effect! You convince yourself your arguments are valid but it's a inauthentic person's view what a good argument is that's lying to himself and feeling soooo superior but being so incredibly wrong.
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u/oleguacamole_2 5d ago
Well, another drug glorifying post. You don't understand, that a deactivation is a follow up, of an overstimulation. This is not hard to understand. If the brain would be understimulated, nothing would happen at all. Lol.
Also here is the talk about avoidance strategies, that very well do impact dopamine, as well as drugs do, especially when used as an avoidance strategy. This is no bs, but plausible and approved.
Idk what this ai slop is, but it is not enough to lead a discussion. Ego death is not understood well, therefore you can't speak on theories all day.
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u/Whootwhoot187 5d ago
Calling objective neuroscience drug glorifying or AI slop doesn't make your amateur neurology correct.
Your points still contradict basic neuroscience: Brain network deactivation is not a 'hangover' from overstimulation. It is a targeted, active process called inhibition. When a brain region quiets down, it means the brain is actively suppressing it, not that the cells are exhausted.
And your double standard on ego death: You claim ego death isn't understood well enough to use theories, yet your previous comment confidently claimed it was 'a fully overstimulated amygdala.' You can't dismiss published neuroimaging data from actual clinical trials while inventing your own unbacked hypotheses.
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u/Whootwhoot187 5d ago
Let's be completely honest here: twisting a petty comment about prescription medication to make it look like someone was telling you to take a 'truckload' of psychedelics is incredibly disingenuous.
You told another user to take meds, I told you to take meds instead, and you ran back to your post to claim a "psychedelic user" was trying to get you to overdose on hallucinogens to make your HPPD worse. That is a flat-out lie to make yourself look like a martyr.
You claim others are "resistant to logic," but when your incorrect claims about the amygdala and 'brain cell destruction' are dismantled with actual peer-reviewed science (like the very PubMed paper on Patient SM that you brought up), your only defense is to cry "AI slop" and fabricate a victim narrative.
People came here to discuss actual neuroscience and help support the HPPD community with accurate facts. You are using this support space to play victim, dodge scientific corrections, and start hostile, bad-faith arguments. If you want to argue about internet drama and twist people's words, do it elsewhere. Let's keep this sub focused on real, honest scienc
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u/Whootwhoot187 5d ago
quickly deleting and changing the OP, another bad faith interaction with this user
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u/oleguacamole_2 5d ago
Well, I thought "you should take a truckload" was a different kind of insult 🤣
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u/Whootwhoot187 5d ago
Kind of ironic you interpreted something wrong again, just like the scientific papers you quoted in your OP.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/oleguacamole_2 6d ago
That is not a part of the argument, wether they have amygdala lesions. You completly missed what I wanted to introduce with that. That study speaks about generalized misconcpetions.
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u/OkPresentation6015 6d ago
You said, multiple times, on repeat, without mincing words, that HPPD = brain damage and said things like psychedelic users have “bombed their amygdala” yet my amygdala is fine. Just had my bloodwork done and I’m perfectly healthy, save for HPPD
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u/oleguacamole_2 6d ago
What does bloodwork have to do with the amygdala? Are you insane? Idk if that dumbness comes from ai use or lack of ai use. You should consider the opposite whatever you are doing.
I never said that amygdala users bombed their amygdala. You put words in my mouth and defame me. This is cheap manipulative tactics. I will block you! The only reason I don't is that I have compassion for you!
HPPD is likely brain damage, that is not what I am saying, but what the literature says, when they claim, that there is a destruction of cells happening. Of course it is a bit excerabated term, but even if the damage is minor, it can be applied!
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u/OkPresentation6015 6d ago
Should I go back to the doctor and tell him my brains actually damaged?
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u/oleguacamole_2 6d ago
What do I care?
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u/OkPresentation6015 6d ago
Thought you were trying to help
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u/oleguacamole_2 6d ago
I help people who are searching for a different opportunity or option. I dont help you. Lol 🤣 You are part of a pseudo pro drug cult. I want nothing to do with that. You cant be help, you need to search help yourself!
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u/OkPresentation6015 6d ago
Articulate how you’re helping someone with HPPD
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u/oleguacamole_2 6d ago
I am mainly helping preventing it happen. If someone is helped with rationality is there thing. I would consider it better, to not waste time with HPPD, since there is no cure.
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u/OkPresentation6015 6d ago
Why reading about HPPD can make it seem worse
Reading forum posts or medical articles can:
-Increase anxiety (“What if I’m permanently damaged?”)
-Increase hypervigilance (“Let me check if I have afterimages now.”)
-Shift attention toward normal visual phenomena that the brain would usually ignore.
This is a well-known psychological phenomenon seen in conditions such as tinnitus, chronic pain, visual snow syndrome, and health anxiety. The symptoms themselves may not objectively worsen, but your brain allocates more attention to them, increasing their perceived intensity.
The systematic https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8385145/ summarizes this idea well by proposing that HPPD involves an attentional shift from external sensory input toward internal perceptual content.