The drugs they gave the rats in NIMH/parallel in real life

I'm pretty surprised nobody has mentioned this yet. Has anyone ever thought about the events that actually happened at the National Institute of Mental Health that spawned this movie?
In the 1950's ad 1960's the National Institute of Mental Health were actually using mind-altering substances on rats and mice to see if they had any effect on intelligence, logic, etc. Some of those substances are well known (such as LSD, Mescaline, etc.) and some were not so well-known (STP, etc.) Many of them showed significant improvement on motor, logic, and learning. I doubt any of the mice learned how to open their cages and wire lights through their dens, but this is where the basic concept of the novel came from.
Knowing this, it is interesting to see the comparison between some of the characters. Mr. Ages, the wise, quirky, sometimes spastic, but intelligent old man; Nicodemus- the mystical, spiritual character. Johnathan Brisby, perhaps the leader or motivator of the original group; Jenner- the evil side of the drug scene- conniving, selfish, lazy, willing to sacrifice his friends and family for his own good. All of these could be reflections of the different aspects of the psychedelic drug scene in the 60's and 70's.