[visionlist] Material for psychedelics class

[Olivia Carter]

For others interested in teaching a class relating to psychedelics and 
perception. There are a number of good papers (no books that I can think 
of).

As a start I would recommend the following 5 papers

1) Huxley (1954) The Doors of Perception. (great as a short 
phenomenological  description of the hallucinogen effects.)

2) Nichols DE (2004) Hallucinogens. Pharmacol Ther 101: 131-81 (reviews 
a lot of the known pharmacology)

3) Vollenweider FX, Geyer MA (2001) A systems model of altered 
consciousness: integrating natural and drug- induced psychoses. Brain 
Res Bull 56: 495-507.  (reviews links between hallucinogens and 
schizophrenia).

4) Gonzalez-Maeso J, Weisstaub NV, et al (2007) Hallucinogens Recruit 
Specific Cortical 5-HT(2A) Receptor-Mediated Signaling Pathways to 
Affect Behavior. Neuron 53: 439-52 (this paper describes  some very 
detailed work identifying exactly which 5-HT2A metabolic pathways appear 
to be important on the layer 5 pyramidal cells. This may be more detail 
than you need, but this is where the field is at.. so if your group is 
quite advanced, then  they might find it interesting.)

5) Carter OL, Pettigrew JD, Burr DC, Alais D, Hasler F, Vollenweider FX 
(2004b) Psilocybin impairs high-level but not low-level motion 
perception. Neuroreport 15: 1947-1951  (a short study that is easy to 
explain to undergrads)

I have pdf's for these and others. I also have a number of PPT slides 
that might be helpful. Feel free to contact me if you would like me to 
send you the material.

best wishes

Olivia


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------
Olivia Carter
Vision Sciences lab
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
Ph: +1  617 495 3884(ext3)
Fax:+1  617 495 3764
http://visionlab.harvard.edu/Members/Olivia/olivia.html