/sci/ - Science & Math

In blindingly extreme layman's terms:

Because your brain is a computer, all it's doing is fucking with your input data. Your neurons try to process the "corrupted" data and you get weird effects, depending on the drug and how it influences your sensory receptors.

You're just atoms arranged into molecules, too.

>>4667823
>how do atoms affect other atoms

answer: chemistry

Chemistry.

>put garbage into a machine
>Machine: Ohhhh gawd what is going on how the fuck do I process this into proper information

>>4667834
Is it like a jigsaw puzzle where certain molecules fit into certain places? And they spark reactions that fuck with the electrical impulses of my neurons? Because that sounds cool as hell.

>>4667855
That's basically what happens. it's like crossing wires in a finely tuned machine.

Which is BAD FOR THE MACHINE

WINNERS DON'T DO DRUGS

This thread is full of shitty analogues.

Drugs work as analogues to normal neurotransmitters, and because different parts of your brain have different concentrations of receptors to said transmitters you can get different effects. Also, like a dam blocking the river upstreams, there can be downstream effects that are hard to predict.

I always wondered how the fuck molecules think to begin with. THEN you have these other molecules that affect how the first set of molecules think. I mean, shit, if I was suddenly a corpse, I wouldn't be able to think but I'd still be made of the same shit.

what the fuck.

>>4667887
Your consciousness manifests itself in the interaction between all the neurons in your body or some shit, which is incomprehensible for me.

>>4667855
Yes. Psychotropic drugs fit into these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptor_(biochemistry), which affect the chemical and electrical properties of neurons in dozens of ways.

>>4667861
This is dogma. There's little reason to believe that exogenous neuroactive chemicals are strictly bad.

The brain is finely tuned for an environment that isn't necessarily the environment we live in. Remember that the demands of civilization are very young, but our neuroanatomy is very old.

I'll talk about the "affect your body" part of it.

> Is the actual physical form of the molecule responsible for this?

Yep.

A lot of your body's processes are accomplished in part through the action of signal proteins and enzymes (which are basically little globs of protein that do shit and can help chemical reactions happen).

Receptor proteins recognize molecular signals from another part of the body because they recognize specific shapes and chemical interactions (like charge and affinity for water). The signal molecule interacts with the receptor (usually there's a little pocket that it just fits into), the protein's shape changes in some way, and that is recognized by other proteins and enzymes as a signal. Enzymes are similar, but they can have different effects (maybe they turn the enzyme on, maybe they disable it, whatever).

Usually these receptors are pretty specific to the molecule they recognize. The reason that drugs work - even though they may be a molecule that your body has never seen before - is that if the shape is close enough to the natural form, it might fit into the receptor anyway. Sometimes it fits WAY TOO WELL, sometimes it just barely fits.