Psychedelics Expose A Mysterious Link Between Language & Consciousness
If psychedelics are the key to consciousness, language might just be the window.
In his seminal book Consciousness Explained, philosopher Daniel C Bennet writes:
“We often do discover what we think (and hence what we mean) by reflecting on what we find ourselves saying. The fact that we said it gives a certain personal persuasiveness — or at least a presumption of authenticity.”
In other words… we are not consciously aware of our thoughts until they are spoken out loud.
Establishing the relationship between language and consciousness has been challenging (to say the least), and proving this connection exists in the brain has been even more difficult.
Psychedelics could be the missing link to understanding this elusive connection — while simultaneously uncovering the complex and fascinating relationship between language and consciousness.
Mapping The Brain’s Elusive Language Centers
In the early days of exploring the neural basis of language, a physician named Pierre Paul Broca encountered a patient nicknamed “Tan” (1861). He received this nickname because it was one of the few sounds he could utter.
Tan had a severe speech impairment that prevented him from being able to form words — yet he had no problem understanding language and could communicate using gestures.
When Tan passed away, Broca conducted an autopsy on his brain. He discovered a lesion in the left temporal lobe. This area became known as Broca’s area and was believed to be the region responsible for speech production.
In 1874 another physician by the name of Carl Wernicke encountered patients with different language impediments than Broca’s. His patients could speak fluently, but the meaning of their words were nonsensical. Several of them also had difficulty comprehending spoken and written language.
The autopsies of these patients revealed lesions in the temporal lobe, but in a different, more posterior region now known as Wernicke’s area.
The autopsies of these patients revealed lesions in the superior temporal gyrus, which later became known as Wernicke’s area — the region responsible for language comprehension.
At the time, the idea of specialized brain regions was revolutionary and laid the very foundation of language neurobiology that was used to understand clinical conditions such as aphasia — a language disorder that can entail impairments to speech, comprehension, reading, and writing.
While this localized model was widely accepted for a long time, there were some major problems:
Anatomical Vagueness — Nobody could agree on the exact anatomical boundaries of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. In fact, there has never been a consistent anatomical definition of Wernicke’s area.
Clinical Anomalies — There have been several cases with patients who have their entire left hemisphere damaged or inactive, yet they can still somehow manage to speak and comprehend language.
Model Limitations — While many find the localization model useful, many agree that it doesn’t adequately address the complexity of language processing in the brain and does not account for the distributed nature of language processing across various brain regions.
Neural Networks: The Overlap Between Psychedelics & Language Processing
Gradually, a new theory came about that speech and language are not localized to a certain area — but rather a dynamic interaction of multiple brain regions (called networks).
The idea of dynamic brain networks is a relatively new discovery — which has closely overlapped with the growing field of psychedelic research.
Marcus Raichle and colleagues identified the first recognized functional brain network — the Default Mode Network (DMN).
The DMN is thought to be responsible for constructing our sense of “self.” It’s essentially the “physical location” of our ego. It’s also heavily affected by the use of classical psychedelics like LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), DMT (dimethyltryptamine), psilocybin, and mescaline.
The DMN is also thought to play a key role in the production of language.
One of the most interesting aspects of the DMN is that it’s more active when you’re not paying attention. It’s involved with things like rumination and self-reflection, which means that when you’re not actively focused on something, your DMN steps in to fill your mind with thought (AKA daydreaming).
When you engage in active thought — such as speaking to others — the DMN becomes less active.
Researchers have discovered that an active DMN impairs our ability to produce language. Conversely, when the DMN is suppressed, language becomes more fluid.
Psychedelics have a unique capacity to suppress our DMN, which has several important implications for our use of language. Some researchers believe psychedelics may be able to offer treatment for disorders that involve the dysregulation of the DMN.
Some research groups are already exploring psychedelics as a treatment for developmental stuttering.
How Psychedelics Affect Language
A recent research study revealed some intriguing changes to the language abilities of participants under the influence of 75 μg of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide).
During the study, the researchers discovered some notable changes in speech:
Increased Entropy — LSD leads to disorganized speech as it becomes more unpredictable. The participant’s speech patterns under LSD were less structured and more random compared to when they were on placebo.
Reduced Semantic Coherence — Participants experienced less logical flow and meaningful connection between words on LSD, leading to more fragmented and less comprehensible speech.
Increased Verbosity with Reduced Lexical Diversity — Participants would use more words but with less variety, causing their speech to be repetitive and verbose as they used the same words and phrases more frequently without introducing new vocabulary.
Disrupted Structural Complexity and Organization — Speech graphs show how words are connected in a sequence, and under LSD, these connections became more erratic and less predictable, revealing that the structural complexity and organization of speech were disrupted by the psychedelic.
While the sample size of this study is too small to make generalizations, other studies have supported the idea that psychedelics make language simpler and more random.
Psychedelics also promote more emotion-driven language and increase the semantic (conceptual) differences between words in a way that’s similar to dreams. In other words, psychedelics make language more bizarre.
Online studies also point to possible differences between psychedelics and language, with LSD and psilocybin involved with more emotional language, while ayahuasca and DMT induce more analytical language. LSD also decreases “mental time travel.”
Language Barriers in Psychedelic Experiences
While these findings offer a window into how psychedelics affect language, the disruption of language during psychedelic experiences highlights a deeper connection between language and consciousness.
At the height of a psychedelic experience, individuals often struggle with ineffability —the inability to put thoughts and feelings into words. This makes it difficult to learn much about the psychedelic experience itself directly from participants.
One hypothesis for this phenomenon is that the complex and vivid imagery of the visual system is competing with language for attention or that there is a disruption in the motor areas responsible for language during a psychedelic trip.
Alternatively, this ineffability could point to the limitations of language in describing novel experiences or even suggest a temporary loss of the conscious self needed to articulate these experiences.
This interplay between the disruption of language and altered consciousness under psychedelics suggests that language is not merely a tool for communication — but is fundamentally intertwined with how we experience and understand our conscious reality.
The ineffability during psychedelic experiences may highlight how deeply language and consciousness are connected, as the boundaries of what we can articulate shape the boundaries of what we can consciously understand and share.
How Language Shapes Conscious Thought
Language used to be viewed as an add-on to cognitive abilities, an external tool for communication. But this idea has been disputed for being too reductive.
Cognitive neuroscientist Jeremy Skipper, for instance, states that:
“Language organizes our thoughts perceptually, emotionally, and abstractly, and is a tool for organizing the world” but at the same time, “Language is not separable from consciousness and generates and maintains conscious experience in and of itself.”
Language is how we make sense of reality, and in turn, shapes how we view reality.
A classic example of this is using a certain word to label a color, like “red,” the word will change how we perceive the visual experience even when the word is not being used. These labels help us categorize the world around us, however, they also create a separation.
Psychedelics partially, or maybe even completely, remove these dividers, and the brain takes in the world in a new, unfiltered way.
Our ability to use language may be the secret ingredient to the development of self-awareness in human beings, as it continually shapes our brain function, conscious experience, and social interactions.
Humans raised in isolation from society, who never acquire proper language skills, often lack a narrative self — sometimes even failing to recognize themselves in a mirror.
Individuals who recover from aphasia, which can comprise the complete loss of language, including inner and outer speech, relate to a complete loss of narrative self and think less of the past and future.
The writings of Helen Keller can also shed light on the role of language in the narrative, conscious self.
Before language entered her life, Keller described herself as being in a “sea of dense fog,” but the moment language was revealed to her, she described herself feeling “a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought.”
Language then became the very means through which Helen Keller was able to identify her sense of self, giving her words to convey her conscious thoughts. Language speaks the self into existence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said:
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
In that same vein, perhaps the limitations of our understanding — both of the psychedelic experience and our everyday conscious experiences — may stem from the limitations of what we can articulate.
Some researchers even believe psychedelics may provide a solution for people who have difficulties with language processing — such as those recovering from a stroke or brain injury.
The intersection between language and psychedelics brings exciting new prospects and possibilities, and perhaps these discoveries are closer than we think; they just need to be spoken out loud.
Further Reading
🎥 Watch: “I can’t seem to say what I want to say.” A firsthand video account of how psychedelics can affect language from a University of Southern California Medical study in 1955.
🎥 Watch: “I can’t seem to say what I want to say.” A firsthand video account of how psychedelics can affect language (University of Southern California Medical)
📓 Read: The intimacy of psychedelics, language, and consciousness (Jeremy Skipper) — An Interview With a Neuroscientist
📓 Read: Psychedelics Might be Able to Promote Language Learning (Johns Hopkins)
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