No. 12
The artwork
The autopilot, reconfigured.
The default mode network is the brain's autopilot: the running commentary that narrates, plans, replays and worries whenever you're not doing anything in particular. Neuroscience only named it in 2001. This seal dates the reconfiguring rather earlier.
That's the wink. Brain imaging shows psilocybin quiets the default mode network, which tracks with what people describe: the narrator goes briefly silent. But cultures were using mushrooms to reach exactly that silence for millennia before anyone could point at it on a scan.
The oldest idea in the newest neuroscience, worn like a maker's mark. Made to order, and 10% of every sale funds research into psychedelic therapy.
- Theme
- Neuroscience · Ritual
