OEV's in tryptamines and LSD

[polytrip]

Based on an LSD thread, i find it interesting to start a discussion on the OEV's of several substances.

I have often tripped with other people, and one of the things i liked to do when tripping with others, is describing eachother the visuals we had.

This has led me to conclude that a few phenomena are typical for some substances in most people.

First of all the colours: In LSD visuals are predominantly in red and green, followed by blue.
With shrooms, they are most of the time red, green and blue, and they become more colourfull when the dosage increases. At high doses they are in all colours you can imagine although red and green still seems to underly the basic structure of most OEV's.
DMT visuals are often fainter, but share the characteristics OEV's of high doses of shrooms. They have less bright colours then shrooms but a greater geometric diversity.

The most comon OEV phenomenon is the sense that everything is covered with 'mother of pearl' or a shine that seems electric: it is as if there is a net of very tiny grid lines, layed over everything. It seems as if everything is cought up in, or made of a very fine cell-like structure. Often it has a sort of leaded window appearance with all these tiny glowing cells.
In LSD these grid-lines are predominantly red and green, although the green sometimes seems to melt with blue. The web of gridlines is simply laid over everything, but is 2-dimensionally flat itself.
With mushrooms in higher doses, all kinds of different colours seem to resonate through this webb, but often the red, green and blue web is still visible underneath. The web starts to come loose from the surface of things, and to flow through space 3-dimensionally.
With real high doses of shrooms, the web starts to form, with other color's more complex geometric, often caleidoscopic structures.
With DMT the web is often less dominant, and the geometric structures that form out of it become more dominant.

Other phenomena also occur on other substances like cannabis or XTC and are not as deeply embedded in the visual system. They are the breathing of objects, or perspective distortions and stroboscope effects. They have to do with how the eyelens functions and how the brain interpret's signals in relation to how the lenses function.

 

[69ron]

With bufotenine, SWIM often sees red, purple, and blue as the main colors.

Not only do the colors differ, but the quality of the visuals also differ.

5-MeO-DMT alone tends to produce swirly visuals like that of LSD, but without color.

Bufotenine tends to produce sparkly, jumpy, vibrating visuals, sometimes described as static-like or electric in nature.

THH produces sparkly visuals on its own, often without color, that are similar to DMT, but only when you’re very relaxed and allow the visuals to form.

(All of this is of course SWIM’s personal view)

 

[polytrip]

Well, the funny thing is that when you ask people too describe very exactly what their OEV's look like, that nearly everybody see's the same sort of things. The same colours, the same geometric patterns, etc.

I have not tried bufotenin yet, and nor has anybody in my direct environment, but i would be surprised if this was very different for bufotenin.

I think that one of the causes of the tryptamin visuals is that the different aspects of the visual system are no longer exactly syncronized.

The visual system exists out of different processing 'machines'. There are grid's of neurons that only proces motion, or colour, or contrasts, or straight lines, etc.

I think that when the parts of the visual system that are responsible for seeing shapes are slightly out of line with the parts of the visual system that are responsible for seeing colours, you start getting these typical LSD/tryptamine visuals.
You could compare it to a cartoonpicture that exists out of black outer lines that are filled with colours.
The outer lines of the visual system's pictures appear to us, not in black and white, but in red and green or other colours. Basic primary colours. Probably because, when it's all perfectly syncronized they better fit in that way.
Once they start to become dissyncronized, you start to see the 'outer lines'. The outer lines are very fine and detailed and constantly moving as our brain is scanning for contrasts to make sense of. Possibly there is not even one 'lining-system' but more, because there are different types of lines that cannot be perfectly processed by one single system. The different systems form one subsystem, one part of the picture. When only the entire subsystem as a whole is out of sync, you get visuals in only one or two colours (red and greem), but the more the systems of the subsystem are also out of sync with eachother, the more different colours you get.

This is my theory to how these 'grid-visuals' form.

 

[embracethevoid]

The patterns appear to be overlayed over everything. Imagine looking through some really tech OLED contact lenses that also let you view the world through them, and on the lenses you have a grid of patterns. Except these lenses are in your inner eyes, in your brain and so your brain can apply that 2D mask to the 3D world around you. You'll notice that the pattern overlay is 2D, that is to say that they are the same irrelevant of depth. It's only when depth information is in the picture that there seems to be a variation in the grid, keyword: seems. Otherwise it is as 2D as 2D gets. An easy way to see this is to look at a slanted object.

Another odd thing is that blood pulsating will influence the visuals, it's like your heart rate is their refresh rate. However I don't think it's as simple as a minor processing defect. In reality it must be far more complex than this because of the crazy visuals that are possible. For instance, I see writing and 90% of the time it has some kind of meaning. This implies that other centers of the brain get connected to the visual center, i.e. those responsible for processing speech.

 

[bufoman]

The patterns appear to be overlayed over everything. Imagine looking through some really tech OLED contact lenses that also let you view the world through them, and on the lenses you have a grid of patterns. Except these lenses are in your inner eyes, in your brain and so your brain can apply that 2D mask to the 3D world around you. You'll notice that the pattern overlay is 2D, that is to say that they are the same irrelevant of depth. It's only when depth information is in the picture that there seems to be a variation in the grid, keyword: seems. Otherwise it is as 2D as 2D gets. An easy way to see this is to look at a slanted object.

Another odd thing is that blood pulsating will influence the visuals, it's like your heart rate is their refresh rate. However I don't think it's as simple as a minor processing defect. In reality it must be far more complex than this because of the crazy visuals that are possible. For instance, I see writing and 90% of the time it has some kind of meaning. This implies that other centers of the brain get connected to the visual center, i.e. those responsible for processing speech.

I call this the tryptamine glaze. It appears as if this 2-D screen or glazing is over everything. It is typically a transparent bluish color for SWIM but can be others, green and rainbow is also common. With psilocin it sometimes is more opaque. It is made up of slowly evolving paisley-like patterns, but other symbols, and images are occasionally incorporated in it.

 

[polytrip]

This seems to be an effect almost everybody has, on tryptamines or LSD.

Because the initial shape of the 'glazing' follows the shape of everything you see, like it's a 2-dimensional sheet layed ofer every 3-dimensional structure, i think that it indeed must be caused by a part of the visual system that's out of sync with other parts of it.
And because it exists basically of lines that indicate shape, i think that it is the part of the visual system that is responisble for the 'outlines of the cartoon-picture' in your vision.

The fact that often, these lines are seen in two colours, is an indication that the system that draws the outer lines, exists out of at least two subsystems.
It could be as simple as a system for horizontal and a system for vertical lines, but it could be more complex.

When you take higher doses of DMT or shrooms, patterns can become visible in it. Often of caleidoscopic quality and of extreme detail.

I think that this effect is just something like a rorsach inkstain-test, where people start seeing things like bats or butterflies in random stains of ink.
The random spots in the 'glaze' occur automatically once the outlines of a picture start to become out of sync far enough with the rest of the picture.

When the dose increases further, the patterns start to become 3-dimensional and they start to flow through space as well.

 

[bufoman]

Yes higher doses give it more and more detail but even at lower doses and as 2-D the glaze many times contain intricate patterns and imagery. Multiple cortical processing areas are likely involved. Especially higher level regions involved in "picking out" recognizable information. This area or another like it is also likely involved in boundary recognition. These areas are probably involved in the rorsach tests in normal states. If these areas become stimulated one begins to have experiences of familiar shapes, objects, ....images . contained within the imagery they are already seeing. I am not sure why the glaze occurs except that possibly high level regions directly involved in generating perception may themselves be effected generating experiences that occur overlain on the visual world or with eyes closed they just appear. This occurring with the alteration of the other earlier and parallel regions and thalamus and altered feedback loops likely leads to the complex imagery. Research has found that it is the higher level regions that seem to be involved in the visual effects rather than the earlier regions (Retina, LGN, and V1...). It is likely that both the dorsal and ventral visual processing systems are effected leading to the multi-colored, multi-motioned,... imagery. Also complex feedback loops are likely involved as well.

Additionally areas involved in interpretation and the assigning of meaning and understanding of the raw sensory data are also altered. Eventually in the visual processing system this classification information merges with the raw sensory data and things become more and more specific. These regions are also certainly altered to a great degree. Thus we don't just watch a "raw screen" of images...we have true perceptions much information is coded within these perceptions.

 

[polytrip]

Yes higher doses give it more and more detail but even at lower doses and as 2-D the glaze many times contain intricate patterns and imagery. Multiple cortical processing areas are likely involved. Especially higher level regions involved in "picking out" recognizable information. This area or another like it is also likely involved in boundary recognition. These areas are probably involved in the rorsach tests in normal states. If these areas become stimulated one begins to have experiences of familiar shapes, objects, ....images . contained within the imagery they are already seeing. I am not sure why the glaze occurs except that possibly high level regions directly involved in generating perception may themselves be effected generating experiences that occur overlain on the visual world or with eyes closed they just appear. This occurring with the alteration of the other earlier and parallel regions and thalamus and altered feedback loops likely leads to the complex imagery. Research has found that it is the higher level regions that seem to be involved in the visual effects rather than the earlier regions (Retina, LGN, and V1...). It is likely that both the dorsal and ventral visual processing systems are effected leading to the multi-colored, multi-motioned,... imagery. Also complex feedback loops are likely involved as well.

Additionally areas involved in interpretation and the assigning of meaning and understanding of the raw sensory data are also altered. Eventually in the visual processing system this classification information merges with the raw sensory data and things become more and more specific. These regions are also certainly altered to a great degree. Thus we don't just watch a "raw screen" of images...we have true perceptions much information is coded within these perceptions.

If indeed those area's that are involved in rorsach-test 'recognition' are also involved in boundary recognotion, then it's exactly like i have always suspected.

That what you call boundary recognition, is what i meant with the 'outer-lines of the picture'.
In some way, this area must be, when you've taken LSD or many tryptamine hallucinogens, out of order with the rest of your visual system.
It can be that it's overstimulated (as a result of feedback loops maybe), but it could also be that it's delayed or in another way singled-out.
But it's clear to me that this part of our visual processing that normally blends in perfectly with the rest of it, so you don't even realise that it's a system that exists out of these different elements, is somehow raised out of it's normal role.

The visual effects that also occur on cannabis and other susbstances are probably the result of much simpler functions like how the brain and retina relate. If your eyes focus on something, just like a photography lens, they zoom in. So this may result in an object that seems to grow. So that's why i think objects sometimes seem to breathe in and out and also why on some substances, 3d reality suddenly seems to dissapear into a flat 2d reality: Just like with photography, if a wide-angle lens is used, objects further away seem closer.
In these types of visual effects, the brain probably missinterprets the lense function the eye was using, or it doesn't interpret this at all.