While higher doses of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin cause trippy visual hallucinations, lower doses may not cause the same impairments, anecdotal reports suggest. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated at 5:15 p.m. E.T. 
 
 For Martijn Schirp, it's a way to make an ordinary day just a little bit better. 
 
 A former poker player and recent graduate in interdisciplinary science in Amsterdam, Schirp has been experimenting with a new way to take psychedelic drugs: Called microdosing, it involves routinely taking a small fraction of a normal dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or magic mushrooms (the latter is legal to purchase in coffeeshops in Amsterdam but not the former). 
 
 Microdosing has gained a cult following amongst a small group of hallucinogen enthusiasts like Schirp, who now writes at HighExistence.com. Proponents report improvements in perception, mood and focus, minus the trippy tangerine trees and marmalade skies normally associated with psychedelics. 
 
 Schirp said he prefers to microdose when he's immersed in creative or contemplative activities, such as writing, painting, meditating or doing yoga. 
 
 "It's like the coffee to wake up the mind-body connection. When I notice it is working, depending on the dosage, time seems to be slowing down a bit, everything seems covered with a layer of extra significance," Schirp told Live Science in an email. 
 
 Given his positive experiences with higher doses of psychedelics, "microdosing offered a way to get a taste of this without [the experience] completely overwhelming me," Schirp said. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens] 
 
 But while the effects Schirp and others describe are plausible from a physiological perspective, microdosing is uncharted territory, said Matt Johnson, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who has studied the behavioral effects of psychedelic drugs. Scientists have yet to run a clinical trial to assess the effects (or lack thereof) of microdosing. Johnson added that taking a smaller dose of a psychedelic is safer than taking a large dose, but the way people tend to do it — regularly taking small doses every several days — could have long-term side effects. 
 
 Just a little bit 
 
 The idea of taking small doses of psychedelics has been around for a while. The inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, was known to microdose in his old age and told a friend that microdosing was an under-researched area. But microdosing gained greater visibility when James Fadiman, a psychologist and researcher at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, described it in his book "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide" (Park Street Press, 2011). 
 
 Since then, Fadiman has received about 50 anecdotal reports from microdosers around the world. Most report positive, barely perceptible shifts while microdosing, Fadiman said. [Images: Scientists Analyze Drawings by an Acid-Tripping Artist] 
 
 "What people say is that whatever they're doing, they seem to be doing it a little better," Fadiman told Live Science. "They're a little kinder, a little bit nicer with their kids." 
 
 People with creative jobs report improved focus and an ability to enter the state of flow more easily. Some report a desire to eat healthier or start meditating, Fadiman said. 
 
 "It's like they tend to live a little better," Fadiman said. 
 
 Still others report taking the teeny doses of psychedelics for psychiatric conditions, said Brad Burge, the director of marketing and communications at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Santa Cruz, California, where scientists study the effect of psychedelics on medical conditions such as PTSD. 
 
 "I've heard anecdotally of people using it for depression, seasonal affective disorder, anxiety, OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Burge told Live Science. "With microdoses, the point would be to create subtle changes in people's psychopharmacology or experience, in much the same way as most traditional pharmaceuticals are used now." 
 
 Plausible mechanism, no evidence 
 
 The effects people report with microdoses of LSD, psilocybin, DMT or other "classic" psychedelics aren't completely implausible, Johnson said. All of these drugs work by activating a particular receptor in the brain known as the serotonin 5HT-2A receptor. This receptor fuels the release of the "feel-good" brain chemical, serotonin, which creates a domino effect in the brain that leads to many other brain changes. 
 
 At high doses, these drugs temporarily, but radically, reshape brain networks; for instance, one study found that magic mushrooms create a hyperconnected brain. But antidepressants like Prozac also target serotonin receptors, so it's possible that a low, constant dose of a psychedelic might work in a similar manner, Johnson said. [11 Odd Facts About Magic Mushrooms] 
 
 Still, there's absolutely no evidence to suggest microdosing works as people claim it does, Johnson said. The effects described are so subtle — on par with having the caffeine in a cup of coffee — that they "fall within that category of barely perceptible, and it's right in the range where people can so easily fool themselves," Johnson told Live Science. That means microdosing is particularly susceptible to the placebo effect, in which people taking a sugar pill who believe they're taking a drug report perceptible effects, he said. 
 
 To prove that microdosing has an effect, psychedelics researchers would need to do a double-blind study, in which neither the people administering the drug nor the recipients know whether a particular participant is getting a microdose of a psychedelic or something inert, like a little sugar dissolved in water, Johnson said. Some groups of people are allegedly doing these trials — but because LSD is illegal, and is only approved for research use in a few small trials in a few locations, all of these people are off the grid and not publicizing their efforts, Fadiman said. 
 
 Unknown side effects 
 
 What's more, microdosing could have side effects, Johnson said. The few microscopic grains of LSD — just 10 micrograms — typically used to microdose are too tiny to measure even on a professional laboratory scale, Johnson said. To get around this, people who microdose typically take a blotter paper laced with one hit of LSD, soak it in water and then drink some of the water. But since LSD is an illegal substance procured on the black market, there's really no way to know exactly what you're getting, Johnson said. 
 
 Even in the lab, with carefully measured doses of drugs administered in a controlled environment, Johnson has found substantial variation in the way that people react to the same dose. Combined, those two uncertainties mean people may not be able to reliably microdose, he said. 
 
 "Someone might be expecting a kind of sparkly day, just a really productive day at work — and next thing you know, they're grasping hold to their office chair wondering why the world is dissolving," Johnson said. 
 
 Schirp, for instance, has occasionally had negative microdosing experiences. 
 
 "At times, the experience was still too overwhelming to be productive — I just wanted to lay down or take a walk," Schirp said. 
 
 Beyond that possible experience, the long-term risks of the drug are unknown. The risk of taking a single, tiny dose of LSD or psilocybin is going to be smaller than the risk of taking one big hit, Johnson said. But even the most dedicated psychonauts don't typically trip daily or even weekly, Johnson said. By contrast, people who are microdosing report using the drugs every three or four days, he said. 
 
 Such frequent use could have unknown, long-term side effects, he said. 
 
 "You're tinkering with the system that is involved with depressive systems, but in unexplored ways," Johnson said. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Martijn Schirp's name. 
 
 Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Swiss scientists broke a four-decade-long informal ban on LSD research yesterday when they announced the results of a study in which cancer patients received the drug to curb their anxiety about death. 
 
 The study, which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, looked at the safety and efficacy of LSD when used in combination with talk therapy. The researchers used the semisynthetic psychedelic drug to facilitate discussions about the cancer patients' fears of dying. The patients who took LSD, most of whom were terminally ill, experienced 10-hour-long supervised "trips." One patient described the trips to The New York Times as a "mystical experience," where "the major part was pure distress at all the memories I had successfully forgotten for decades." 
 
 These periods of distress are regarded as therapeutically valuable because they allow patients to address their memories and the emotions they evoke. The patients underwent 30 such trips over the course of two months. 
 
 A year after the sessions ceased, the patients who had received a full dose of LSD — 200 micrograms — experienced a 20 percent improvement in their anxiety levels. That was not the case for the group who received a lower dose, however, as their anxiety symptoms actually increased. They were later allowed to try the full dose after the trial had ended. 
 
 "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture." 
 
 Because of the small number of study participants, the researchers are reluctant to make any conclusive statements about the LSD treatment's effectiveness. Indeed, the results were not statistically significant. But the fact that the study took place at all bodes well for psychedelic drug research, as the drug caused no serious side effects. Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a foundation that has funded many of these studies, thinks that revisiting LSD-based treatments is worthwhile. "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture," Doblin told The New York Times, "and bring them back to the lab as part of a psychedelic renaissance." ||||| A lot of research has been conducted into how psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, affects human behaviour, but what does it actually do to the brain? To find out, a team of researchers from Imperial College London gave some test subjects the drug, and documented the results using brain imaging techniques. 
 
 This is the first time the human brain has been imaged while under the influence of LSD. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
 
 LSD is known for its hallucinogenic properties and altered consciousness, and the results of the study revealed why. 
 
 "We observed brain changes under LSD that suggested our volunteers were 'seeing with their eyes shut' -- albeit they were seeing things from their imagination rather than from the outside world," explained study leader Robin Carhart-Harris in a statement. 
 
 "We saw that many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD -- even though the volunteers' eyes were closed. Furthermore, the size of this effect correlated with volunteers' ratings of complex, dreamlike visions." 
 
 Enlarge Image Imperial College London 
 
 The study involved 20 healthy participants, each of whom had previously taken some form of psychedelic drug. Each participant received either 75 micrograms of LSD or a placebo, and their brains were then imaged. 
 
 The results revealed that the barriers between the sections of the brain that perform specialised functions break down under the influence of LSD. This means that, as mentioned, more of the brain is involved in visual processing, which causes the hallucinations, but it also contributes to the altered consciousness associated with LSD. 
 
 "It is also related to what people sometimes call 'ego-dissolution', which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world. This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way -- and seems to be associated with improvements in well-being after the drug's effects have subsided," Carhart-Harris said. 
 
 "Our brains become more constrained and compartmentalised as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature. In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained. This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind." 
 
 Adding music to the mix caused even more interesting changes in brain activity, causing the visual cortex to receive more information from the region of the brain associated with mental imagery and personal memory. Under the influence of both music and LSD, the study participants reported seeing even more complex visions, such as memories played out as scenes. 
 
 "Scientists have waited 50 years for this moment -- the revealing of how LSD alters our brain biology," said senior researcher David Nutt , Edmon J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology. 
 
 "For the first time we can really see what's happening in the brain during the psychedelic state, and can better understand why LSD had such a profound impact on self-awareness in users and on music and art. This could have great implications for psychiatry, and helping patients overcome conditions such as depression." ||||| First modern scans of people high on psychedelic drug has given researchers unprecedented insight into neural basis for its effects 
 
 The profound impact of LSD on the brain has been laid bare by the first modern scans of people high on the drug. 
 
 The images, taken from volunteers who agreed to take a trip in the name of science, have given researchers an unprecedented insight into the neural basis for effects produced by one of the most powerful drugs ever created. 
 
 
 
 A dose of the psychedelic substance – injected rather than dropped – unleashed a wave of changes that altered activity and connectivity across the brain. This has led scientists to new theories of visual hallucinations and the sense of oneness with the universe some users report. 
 
 
 
 The brain scans revealed that trippers experienced images through information drawn from many parts of their brains, and not just the visual cortex at the back of the head that normally processes visual information. Under the drug, regions once segregated spoke to one another. 
 
 
 
 Further images showed that other brain regions that usually form a network became more separated in a change that accompanied users’ feelings of oneness with the world, a loss of personal identity called “ego dissolution”. 
 
 
 
 David Nutt, the government’s former drugs advisor, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, and senior researcher on the study, said neuroscientists had waited 50 years for this moment. “This is to neuroscience what the Higgs boson was to particle physics,” he said. “We didn’t know how these profound effects were produced. It was too difficult to do. Scientists were either scared or couldn’t be bothered to overcome the enormous hurdles to get this done.” 
 
 
 
 LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, was first synthesised in 1938 but its extraordinary psychological properties did not become clear until 1943. Throughout the 1950s and 60s the drug had a major impact on psychology and psychiatric research, but its adoption as a recreational drug and its influence on youth culture led to it being banned in the 1960s. 
 
 
 
 Psychoactive substances ban 'will end brain research in Britain', experts warn Read more 
 
 The outlawing of LSD had an immediate effect on scientific research and studies into its effects on the brain and its potential therapeutic uses have been hampered ever since. The latest study was made possible through a crowdfunding campaign and The Beckley Foundation, which researches psychoactive substances. 
 
 
 
 With his colleague Robin Carhart-Harris, Nutt invited 20 physically and mentally healthy volunteers to attend a clinic on two separate days. One day they received an injection of 75mcg of LSD and on the other they received a placebo instead. 
 
 
 
 Using three different brain imaging techniques, named arterial spin labelling, resting state MRI and magnetoencephalography, the scientists measured blood flow, functional connections within and between brain networks, and brainwaves in the volunteers on and off the drug. 
 
 
 
 Carhart-Harris said that on LSD, scans suggested volunteers were “seeing with their eyes shut”, though the images they reported were from their imaginations rather than the world outside. “We saw many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD, even though volunteers’ eyes were closed,” he said. The more prominent the effect, the more intense people rated their dreamlike visions. 
 
 Under the influence, brain networks that deal with vision, attention, movement and hearing became far more connected, leading to what looked like a “more unified brain”, he said. But at the same time, other networks broke down. Scans revealed a loss of connections between part of the brain called the parahippocampus and another region known as the retrosplenial cortex. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A second image shows different sections of the brain, either on placebo, or under the influence of LSD (lots of orange). Photograph: Imperial/Beckley Foundation 
 
 The effect could underpin the altered state of consciousness long linked to LSD, and the sense of the self-disintegrating and being replaced with a sense of oneness with others and nature. “This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way, and seems to be associated with improvements in wellbeing after the drug’s effects have subsided,” Carhart-Harris said. 
 
 
 
 The drug can be seen as reversing the more restricted thinking we develop from infancy to adulthood, said Nutt, whose study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
 
 
 
 The study could pave the way for LSD or related chemicals to be used to treat psychiatric disorders. Nutt said the drug could pull the brain out of thought patterns seen in depression and addiction through its effects on brain networks. 
 
 
 
 Amanda Feilding, director of the Beckley Foundation, said: “We are finally unveiling the brain mechanisms underlying the potential of LSD, not only to heal, but also to deepen our understanding of consciousness itself.”
– Some users of LSD like taking tiny amounts of the hallucinogenic drug—often by drinking acid-laced water—to experience subtle benefits like increased focus, creativity, or friendliness toward people, LiveScience reports. "It's like the coffee to wake up the mind-body connection," says former poker player Martijn Schirp, who now writes for HighExistence.com. "When I notice it is working, depending on the dosage, time seems to be slowing down a bit, everything seems covered with a layer of extra significance." Schirp says he embraced the practice, called "microdosing," because it gave him a chance "to get a taste of this without [the experience] completely overwhelming me." But any possible long-term risks are unknown because, as Medical Daily notes, LSD remains an illegal drug that's rarely tested. "The unintended consequence is they've really impeded research and development," a psychopharmacologist told LiveScience a couple of years ago. "We cannot understand the brain if we're not studying drugs." According to one psychologist, LSD does mimic antidepressants like Prozac by freeing up the brain's "feel-good" chemical, serotonin, so microdosing may work as advertised. It's been around for years, too: LSD inventor Albert Hofmann microdosed in his old age, and the practice is described in James Fadiman's 2011 book The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. Yet even Schirp admits it's not always positive: "At times, the experience was still too overwhelming to be productive—I just wanted to lay down or take a walk," he says. (Recent studies on psychedelic drugs downplay the risk of psychosis and note possible anti-depressant effects.)