Molecular descriptors – an useful tool for assessing the physico-chemical properties of hallucinogenic drugs of abuse

Molecular descriptors play a fundamental role in chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences, being defined as a way to transform molecules into a set of numbers, allowing the mathematical assessment of the chemical information characterizing a molecule. This study presents the usefulness of molecular descriptors for the determination of physico-chemical properties of a series of new hallucinogenic amphetamines. Molecular descriptors of these compounds was performed with the Dragon 5.5 software. The chemometric processing of the information allowed the determination of structural correlations (similarities) between this class of designer drugs and an unknown compound.

Investigation into Aphantasia: Neurological, Functional, and Behavioral Correlates

In this paper I will conduct a thorough examination and organization of available research on aphantasia. I will examine two theories of the known types of aphantasia, as well as the neurological correlates associated with a range of mental imagery ability, and the functional and behavioral correlates of aphantasia and low imaging ability. I will then consider published accounts of the effects of hallucinogenic drugs on the visualization abilities of people with aphantasia and review popular strategies for coping with and treating aphantasia. I will end by discussing related disorders and other extreme mental imaging phenomena, providing my own opinion on existing research, and suggesting possible future research about aphantasia.

1958

Around the same time that Salvador Roquet was investigating the use of hallucinogenic drugs in the sierra mazateca, the Mexican government undertook its first sustained efforts to implement a development agenda in the region where Mexico’s most important peyotists (the Huichols) lived. The Huichols had existed largely beyond the authority of the Mexican state for most of its existence. This chapter explores the shape of that development project, focusing on the ways that federal officials made sense of the traditions they encountered in the sierra. They showed an almost complete lack of interest in Huichol peyotism, in spite of the fact that Mexican and foreign researchers were increasingly fascinated by the customs they found in this region. We also see the top down, authoritarian state at its peak. Government officials simply sought to impose development on an unruly countryside and made almost no effort to develop programs or priorities through a cooperative relationship with the erstwhile clients of the developmentalist state.