Professor was injected with magic mushrooms to have ‘near death experience’

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Via metro.co.uk by Rob Waugh

Can injecting psilocybin – the hallucinogenic drug inside magic mushrooms – let you see down the ‘long dark tunnel’ that some dying people see?

Professor Steven Laureys was determined to find out – as part of his research into near-death experiences, according to the Express.

He said, ‘So, we always hear similar stories: people feeling very good, this sense of well-being.

‘And so I wanted to experience that for myself, of course I don’t want to nearly die. It’s like fighter pilots who experience a similar feeling.

‘I was injected with magic mushrooms, that was the first time for me. I better understand now one of its main features.'


Laureys says he didn’t have a full near-death experience – but one of his researchers did.

People can trigger near-death experiences by hyperventilating and rapidly changing posture – and one researcher did it and saw a ‘long dark tunnel’.

Dr Laureys used a brain scanner and found that the experiences trigger activity in a brain region called the temporal parietal junction.

Dr Laureys said, ‘All over the world, stories of near-death experience keep emerging and that means we can pick out similar factors and try to work out what is causing them.’

What we found suggests that even people who seem unconscious or in a coma could be living a rich neurological life.’

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