Recent EEG research (finally!) on effects of smoked nn-DMT and 5-Meo-DMT - with discussion.

[zapped17]

I'd like to add to the Nexus a few recently published scientific research articles that I discovered this week which relate to the neural correlates of both nn-DMT and 5-Meo-DMT states. The papers I will attach below I believe should be added to the collective knowledge of The Nexus. I do not believe these papers have been posted anywhere on The Nexus yet - using the search engine I found 2 of them were briefly mentioned in comment, but were not "attached" for accessibility. I also wanted to include a brief discussion of these and related findings on the "neural correlates" of psychedelics.

The first paper by Juan Acosta-Urquidi reports on EEG data obtained from subjects who smoking nn-DMT and 5-Meo-DMT. While there have been a number of studies published on the neural correlates of Ayahuasca (which of course contains nn-DMT as part of its admixture), this is the first study I'm aware of that investigates the effects of smoked DMT and 5-Meo-DMT on the brain, as determined by EEG. DMT was found to cause significant power decreases in the alpha and lower-beta bands, while significantly enhancing power in the delta and upper beta/gamma bands, mostly at anterior sites. Widespread cortical hypercoherence in these upper-beta, gamma, and delta bands was observed. For 5-MEO-DMT, alpha power decreased as well, and beta increased in within certain regions. It seems the most substantial changes in the EEG occurred in the delta band: significant delta hypercoherence was observed globally throughout the brain under the effects of 5-MEO.

The author references another recent paper - attached below - published by Fernanda Palhano-Fontes et al. 2015 on Ayahuasca which showed, via fmri, that blood flow to hub regions of the brain known as the default-mode network was significantly reduced during ayahuasca intoxication. You might recall from elsewhere that Robin Carhart-Harris et al observed the same DMN reductions in their fmri research into the effects of psilocybin (Carhart Harris et al. 2012) and more recently LSD (Carhart-Harris et al. 2016) on the brain. Relatedly, Muthukumaraswamy et al. 2013 found EEG oscillatory power decreased in the DMN regions after psilocybin ingestion. This was further corroborated by Kometer, 2015, again investigating psilocybin. In Carhart-Harris et al.'s first paper (Carhart-Harris, 2012), the authors drew parallels between their findings and Huxley's - as well as Karl Friston's - conception of the brain as a filter, noting that the present study provided support for these models, and that psilocybin led to a state of "unconstrained cognition".

As Acosta-Urquidi notes, ayahuasca, psilocybin, and certain states of meditation, decrease activity in the brain's default mode network. Decreased DMN activity is in line with the conception of the brain as a "filter", which acts to constrain cognition (Carhart Harris 2012), as mentioned above. Such decreased activity is also involved in certain mystical states involving "ego loss" (Carhart Harris 2012), and non-dual awareness meditation (Brewer et al., 2011; Josipovic et al., 2012, 2013).

On the other hand, studies into ayahuasca (Stuckey, 2005; Don et al., 1998; Echenhoffer, 2005; Ekman Schenberg, 2015), smoked DMT (Acosta-Urquidi, 2015) and certain deep states of meditation in highly advanced practitioners (Lutz, 2004) have been found to be associated with enhanced gamma coherence across several regions of the brain. An older study by Das and Gastaut 1957, observed very high frequency gamma oscillations during EEG recording of an advanced meditator in a state of "samadhi". So there might be some further interesting parallels that exist between states induced by psychedelics and deep meditation. Coherent gamma oscillations are thought to be involved in higher-processing tasks and other forms of cognitive functioning. They are correlated with sustained and focused attention, learning, memory, and enhanced information processing. The presence of gamma waves have also been hypothesized to play an important role in the binding of our senses with regards to perception.

However, the findings just mentioned above regarding ayahuasca contrast with those of Riba et al, 2002, 2004, who observed generalized decreases in power across all frequency bands under the ayahuasca condition. Similar results were also found by Wood et al, 2012, using an animal model.

It's also not presently clear how the findings discussed above - of decreased DMN activity observed in some studies, and of increased gamma coherence observed in others - precisely relate to one another. Clearly more research is needed. (Muthukumaraswamy et al. 2013, noted that while desynchronous EEG activity was observed over the default mode network, psilocybin had no effect on low-level visually induced and motor-induced gamma-band oscillations. Perhaps this is relevant.)

The 3rd and 4th papers I will attach are also by Juan Acosta-Urquidi, and were presented at the Science and Nonduality conference in 2014. The 3rd paper is in power-point format and summarizes the findings just discussed above. For the 4th paper, unfortunately only abstract/first pages is available. This paper presents a theory/model of the brain and mind which attempts to bridge "matter and spirit", drawing on the Everett's Many World interpretation of quantum mechanics. If anyone comes across the entire paper, please let me know!

---

Brewer, JA. et al. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. PNAS vol. 108, no. 5, 20254– 20259.

Carhart-Harris RL, et al. (2012) Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as de-
termined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(6):2138–2143.

Das, H. H., & Gastaut, H. (1957). Variations de l’activité électrique du cerveau, du coeur, et des muscles squelletiques au cours de la méditation et de l’extase yogique. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, supplement 6, 211–219.

Don, NS. et al. (1998 ). Effects of Ayahuasca on the human EEG. Phytomedicine 5(2): 87-
96.

Echenhoffer, F. (2005). Ayahuasca/EEG Research Progress Report and Invitation to Donate. MAPS, volume XV, number 1

Ekman Schenberg, E. et al. (2015). Acute Biphasic Effects of Ayahuasca. PLoS ONE
10(9).

Josipovic Z, Dinstein I, Weber J and Heeger DJ. (2012). Influence of meditation on
anti-correlated networks in the brain. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 5:183.

Josipovic, Z. (2013). Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation. In: Advances in Meditation Research: Neuroscience and Clinical Applications. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1307(1).

Lutz, A. et al. (2004). Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. PNAS 101(46): 16369–16373.

Muthukumaraswamy, SD, Singh, KD (2008) Spatiotemporal frequency tuning of BOLD and gamma band MEG responses compared in primary visual cortex. NeuroImage 40:1552–1560.

Palhano-Fontes, F. et al. (2015). The Psychedelic State Induced by Ayahuasca
Modulates the Activity and Connectivity of the Default Mode Network PLoS One
10(2).

Riba, J. et al. (2002). Topographic pharmaco-EEG mapping of the effects of the South American psychoactive beverage ayahuasca in healthy volunteers. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 53, 613–628.

Riba J, Anderer P, Jane ́ F, Saletu B, Barbanoj MJ (2004) Effects of the South American psychoactive beverage ayahuasca on regional brain electrical activity in humans: a functional neuroimaging study using low-resolution electromagnetic tomography. Neuropsychobiology 50:89 –101.

Stuckey, DE. et al. (2005). EEG Gamma Coherence and Other Correlates of Subjective Reports During Ayahuasca Experiences. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 37:2, 163-178.

Wood J, Kim Y, Moghaddam B (2012) Disruption of prefrontal cortex large scale neuronal activity by different classes of psychotomimetic drugs. J Neurosci 32:3022–3031. CrossRef Medline

 

[fluidfocus]

Interesting stuff. I'm not familiar with the gamma brain wave state. Is that between beta and theta?

 

[corpus callosum]

Interesting stuff. I'm not familiar with the gamma brain wave state. Is that between beta and theta?

The different EEG waveforms, in order of increasing frequency in Hertz, is Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta and lastly Gamma (at around 40Hz).

OP, thanks for posting the papers. :thumb_up:

 

[NotTwo]

Great stuff :thumb_up:

"The 3rd and 4th papers I will attach are also by Juan Acosta-Urquidi, and were presented at the Science and Nonduality conference in 2014."

Can't find this on youtube. Only related one I can find is "Aya Awakenings"

 

[fatherseb]

Thanks a lot for your effort. Interesting stuff indeed!

 

[digitalvygr]

From the paper:
" It is well established that visual processing is associated with Gamma synchronization
across occipital brain regions (Muthukumaraswamy, 2008), and the recent studies
linking lucid dreaming to increased occipital Gamma (Voss, 2009, 2014; Filevich et al.,
2015) are of great interest as they may shed light on the possible mechanism of
psychedelic visionary states which closely resemble conscious dreaming states, and also
involve increased Gamma power. The N,N-DMT QEEG findings of increased
Gamma power are also consistent with the vision and lucid dreaming EEG data as the
hallmark of the smoked N,N-DMT experience is characterized by a rich visionary
experience with exquisite visual displays that overwhelm the user with their beauty
and strangeness."

I have had a few insane OBE/Lucid Dream visionary states that are fractal, hypergeometric and generally 4D/hyperreal. Most of my experiences are NOT of that variety, and I have had hundreds, so I can understand when people assume you cannot have anything close to a DMT like experience endogenously, but I have had few that start to come close. Nice to see this bit of correlation between the two brain states, and the bit about gamma waves being the common link.

And wow, those coherence plots in Figure 3, sure is reminiscent of the often quoted meme that we supposedly only use 10% of the *capacity* of our brains.

 

[zapped17]

From the paper:
" It is well established that visual processing is associated with Gamma synchronization
across occipital brain regions (Muthukumaraswamy, 2008), and the recent studies
linking lucid dreaming to increased occipital Gamma (Voss, 2009, 2014; Filevich et al.,
2015) are of great interest as they may shed light on the possible mechanism of
psychedelic visionary states which closely resemble conscious dreaming states, and also
involve increased Gamma power. The N,N-DMT QEEG findings of increased
Gamma power are also consistent with the vision and lucid dreaming EEG data as the
hallmark of the smoked N,N-DMT experience is characterized by a rich visionary
experience with exquisite visual displays that overwhelm the user with their beauty
and strangeness."

I have had a few insane OBE/Lucid Dream visionary states that are fractal, hypergeometric and generally 4D/hyperreal. Most of my experiences are NOT of that variety, and I have had hundreds, so I can understand when people assume you cannot have anything close to a DMT like experience endogenously, but I have had few that start to come close. Nice to see this bit of correlation between the two brain states, and the bit about gamma waves being the common link.

And wow, those coherence plots in Figure 3, sure is reminiscent of the often quoted meme that we supposedly only use 10% of the *capacity* of our brains.

Did you have these hyperreal dreams before or after having experienced psychedelics like DMT? I've noticed in my own case - as well as some others I've talked to - that I did not have a "capacity" for such strange hyperreal dreams until after (days, weeks, months, years) I had experiences via psychedelics. (I know that this is not so for all - there are particular "sensitives" I've read about who have similarly odd, realistic dreams w/ no psychedelic use...)

And indeed - recent research has shown that the presence of gamma activity in specific areas of the brain is associated with "lucidity" attainment during the REM dream state. However, it's important to note that overall, the character of activity is rather different in the two states - DMT/5-MEO-DMT vs lucid dream - discussed above. Gamma activity is, in general, a correlate of waking-state conscious awareness, hence it's presence during sleep would be indicative of the "paradoxical-ity" of being awake while sleeping ("lucid dream" ). The gamma activity mentioned in this study has a bit of different signature (there's "more" of it, more "hypercoherence", for one thing ) compared to normal waking state gamma, I believe.

 

[digitalvygr]

Good question. Some happened prior, though in some cases those states seemed to be mediated by taking Galantamine at around 4 am, so it was not 100% endogenous. Something about galantamine just seemed to turbocharge my OBEs into what they call the "Mental" plane and Causal plane. Prior to galantamine most of my OBEs were things like flying around a very close simulation of my apartment, neighborhood, etc. On Galantamine I was flying around space creating galaxies and telepathically flinging them across the universe, or losing my "body" and just perceiving fractal and mandala realms, amazing stuff, no question. But there were still some that were fractal without galantamine, too.

One of the most powerful ones though was indeed a year or two after one of the few times The Dreamer experienced smoked spice and/or ate fungal teachers, so what you suggest sounds like it has merit. The whole "a mind stretched to its limits can never return to its original state" kind of thing.

Good points on the gamma differences. Though a lot of the lucid dream studies seem to also be on people who are having the generic flying type dreams or whatever. They should get some people who have been having OBEs for 40 years and can reliably hit the mental and causal planes and see what is going on in them, I bet it would be closer to what these smoked DMT studies are showing.

One example is a guy named Jurgen Ziewe. The guy is also a graphic artist who makes immersive videos that try to simulate some of his experiences, here is a clip:

This shows both alternate worlds with fractals built into the ground, as well as just pure fractal mandala stuff... I'd love to see what his brain EEGs and such look like when having these experiences. In his case he can get there from meditation, amazing.