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why does dmt do what it does

Migrated topic.
there are many more of these things, but those are definately the most dominant ones.
The real interesting thing seems to be that psychedelics do two different things 1-they in some way distort the visual system itself. and 2-they also interfere in the way how you interpret the images you see. This last thing may be more a result of the mental processes they induce, and therefore they may be more serotonin related than the pure technical distortions of the visual system itself.

It is probably the interaction between those two different parts of visual awareness, that is responsible for the weird visual phenomena you see with psychedelic's.
For instance when someone believe's to see the window 'breathe', this is 1- a part of that lense focussing thing, but the interpretation of seeing a growing and shrinking window as if it's breathing is probably more a mental than a pure technical thing.
 
The fusiform gyrus is a very peculiar part of the brain. We've been doing this for so damn long... Influenced by ourselves in co-dependency. Forces act on the body as a measurement of electric dynamics, dialect, and delusions. Cymatics have their effect on what we exactly want to see and hear from which we have already evolved from. Comparable to the psychology of the mind where we have developed our words to the most common interface, the organ reverberated by all frequencies of light patterns. How they are developed into the mind is a benign fact that we are interrelated through a medium in the mind that can only be developed through our own production of reality, ego's and common features of being an earthling. As though remembering a familiar face is the last thing I would want to lose sight of, this is the most important part of the brain, not viewing DMT only as a neurotransmitter but to the unity of hemispheres by the corpus collosum.


We're radiating though. Not in the harm of damaging the sensory or peripheral systems but constituted by a black body. If you're familiar with this than you would understand that thermal energy loss must be attained by the body during a psychedelic state releasing vast arrays of yellow, oranges, and all the pretty blue hues. At least that's my blowback hypothesis

sometimes it makes me feel very icy.
 
SWIM has noticed that during dmt the colors that predominate in the visuals are the same colors in the room/place SWIM is tripping in. Not the whites or blacks but things like blue, red, purple, green, orange. Even if the room is dark. SWIM has never experienced dmt in TOTAL darkness which is harder to achieve but would be curious to hear from those who had.

Even if SWIM was in total darkness it might be possible that SWIMs memory would somehow stimulate visions with the most recent set of colors to be seen dominating? This kind of thing could be tested by any SWIMMER.

An interesting phenomenon that SWIM noticed concerning these colors is its especially the colors that one sees in kinds of 'optical illusions' of light that are hovering around the room or certain objects even while sober. This is a bit hard to describe but SWIM will try.

If SWIM when sober relaxes SWIMs eyes in a specifically decorated room and just looks at the blinds covering the window SWIM will see a kind of green and purple light. There is a large green wall covering and SWIM isn't too sure where the purple comes from but its specific to that room. Anyway if SWIM does DMT in that room SWIM always has an initial visual reaction that is dominated by those colors. If SWIM is in a room dominated by orange and red the colors break down into pinks reds and oranges all kinds of shades of the dominant colors. Although other less dominant colors certainly appear and occasionally take over it tends to stick to the major initial colors if SWIM stays in the same environment. SWIM doesn't move around in environments on dmt but while on lsd SWIM does and a similar dominating visual color effect is noted and different depending upon the environment (outside in light or dark for example).

Another typical effect is that take any given color that is dominating the visuals that different shades of it typically illuminate one geometric object seen while hallucinating. For example in the green and purple case SWIM noticed two "layers" of patterns coming out of a white wall. The wall remained white and out of it came two extra layers of pattens one green and one purple. They formed the typical kind of "mayan" art type pattens that most people at some point see when taking psychedelics.

In another case if SWIM is seeing geometric shapes like tubes or triangles one shade of any given color covers each individual object. If they are connected you can clearly see each boundry of for example a fractal of triangles by the difference in color shades. Its almost like what pixels are except on a large scale visually and happening right before your closed or open eyelids. What SWIM means is that the image isn't fuzzy its very sharp but if zoomed out the effect would be similar to what happens when you zoom out on any pixelated image the only difference being that the objects are almost always in motion and that when zoomed in things don't get as "fuzzy" as with a digital camera image but remain sharp.


SWIM thinks effects such as the above can lead to testable hypothesis about how dmt works:

-It seems fairly obvious dmt effects parts of the visual system (it has too almost in some way otherwise it wouldn't be called a hallucinogen). How the visual system in the brain works is not entirely known although some good ideas have been proposed. Explaining how dmt effects the visual system wouldn't be complete without knowing how the visual system works. Obviously imaging techniques would lead to more insight into what parts of the brain it effects but that's not an available experimental technique and still doesn't explain how it works only what parts are involved.

What we could maybe think of is some kinds of simple experiments, the kinds cognitive psychologists might use to study the visual system, and see what ones make sense to try while under the influence of dmt?

-DMT must somehow be involved in memory language and facial recognition. This could explain why visions of entities can happen and people can communicate with them. Just seeing if similar parts of the brain are active when seeing real faces and when hallucinating entities is possible to document again with imaging techniques but again not available. SWIM can't think of any tests to further this hypothesis.

-DMT must somehow be involved in ones sense of self. This is also true with LSD and psilocin as they all can induce splits with the and between the sense of 'self'. Again imaging could show more (as has been done with meditation) but doesn't explain the "how". Again SWIM can't think of any tests except SWIM knows that other methods to reach these experiences effect such parts of the brain and thus DMT might as well.


Any feedback would be great. I like taking this kind of direction with these discussions. Thanks for the insights.
 
^^Interesting. Nice to know for sure.

Could light be split into green and purple by passing through a window and being deflected by blinds at a certain angle? The effect is more prominent while sober and under the influence of dmt when the blinds at more of an angle. Just speculating here as to where these hues of color might come from..
 
I see a purple/green oscillation flowing in and out above me every night in bed. I sense this is some kind of feedback from the brain. I've always wondered what it meant.
 
As Strassman declares, I believe there is a clear link between DMT and the state of dreaming. It is self evident that DMT interacts in the brain at a time when we sleep as everyone who alters their natural balance of DMT finds out the next morning. It is self evident that to reshape the universe tomorrow with regards to the affairs of humanity that time must be purchased at some point so that information can be given to the all-seeing who can then ordain the vibrations (physical vibrations) that must be sent down upon us to maintain the order of the divine balance. That purchased time is the time in which we sleep, we wake up the next day and everything is mathematically perfect, as usual! Was it imperfect in the period of time you were gone? No, but you could never say otherwise and others who were awake in this time can only say it is or it would be a lie against their own souls.

burnt said:
^^Interesting. Nice to know for sure.

Could light be split into green and purple by passing through a window and being deflected by blinds at a certain angle? The effect is more prominent while sober and under the influence of dmt when the blinds at more of an angle. Just speculating here as to where these hues of color might come from..
Click to expand...

Light can be converted into other wavelengths via interaction with matter or, a quantity of light of various wavelengths can be split into individual components. If green and purple have their own characteristic wavelengths and the light input contains these wavelengths, deflection or rather diffraction will split it into these wavelengths, the perfect example being a prism:

prism.gif


In terms of personal experience, I haven't found anything closer to "home" than DMT. K brings one to the same place but it is not very homely, Salvia does crazy things, LSD does things, cannabis does things, mescaline does things etc (there are a fuckload more, kekeke) but only DMT has ever given me that sure certainty of being at home.
 
embracethevoid said:
As Strassman declares, I believe there is a clear link between DMT and the state of dreaming. It is self evident that DMT interacts in the brain at a time when we sleep as everyone who alters their natural balance of DMT finds out the next morning.
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what's your basis for this?

DMT binds the serotonin sub-types, with the highest affinity to 5HT7. The serotonin system is inactivated during sleep.
the only thing that's self-evident to me is that I don't dream in fractals.
 
benzyme said:
embracethevoid said:
As Strassman declares, I believe there is a clear link between DMT and the state of dreaming. It is self evident that DMT interacts in the brain at a time when we sleep as everyone who alters their natural balance of DMT finds out the next morning.
Click to expand...

what's your basis for this?

DMT binds the serotonin sub-types, with the highest affinity to 5HT7. The serotonin system is inactivated during sleep.
the only thing that's self-evident to me is that I don't dream in fractals.
Click to expand...

The lucid dream state the next day after taking jurema and the fact that I slip into the DMT state every time for weeks afterwards until all residual DMT-like effects are gone. I don't mean that DMT is what mediates dreams itself but from my personal experience, it is clear that it does act on something that controls what goes on during sleep. Sure, you can say the serotonin system is inactivated during sleep (and what exactly do you mean by that? Sources?) but that doesn't change the fact that in reality, it does alter something. DMT also acts on other receptors, not the serotonin system alone. Indeed I think this is a rather primitive way to look at the brain but it surely must be. The way I see it, comparing actions on receptors is essentially like saying "this thing uses a 3 pin power plug and that thing uses a 2 pin plug and since that thing only takes a 2 pin plug it clearly cannot do things that 3-pinned objects do" without taking into account what these sockets actually power.

Maybe you are different but for me after oral tripping I feel residual effects of DMT for a prolonged period of time. In terms of intensity as a function of time, after the initial trip the graph would peak at each hypnagogic/hypnapompic state and also go down gradually as the initial burst of DMT is metabolised out over the first and second day. However I do take far higher oral doses than other people most of the time, 20-30g of MHRB and more (and no, this is not the weak bark). It might be the case that you only smoke DMT for instance and that im my experience simply comes in one way (lungs) and disappears the other.

How I came to my understanding is simply that DMT has this powerful ability to show you things that can vastly modify your perception of reality and hence vastly alter your future actions. Statistically, it tends to bring you closer to the truth than away from the truth and it also has this connection to the asleep/awake states which also hold a lot of significance to me.

Remember we are still vastly unaware of the inner workings of the brain, don't be so quick to dismiss such a thing. Nobody can concievably tell me my personal experience is incorrect and you have my word that I'm not bullshitting about it here either.
 
REM sleep inhibits serotonin reuptake, and vice versa. the primary neurotransmitters involved with REM sleep are acetylcholine and glycine.


what concentrations do you think DMT exists endogenously?
it's typically in the low nanomolar range. at this concentration, you're not going to feel anything resembling psychedelics.

it doesn't quite work like electricity. there are a lot of regulatory functions going on with regards to signal transduction; for the most part, the subjective effects one gets from DMT are primarily from 5HT, raphe nuclei.
 
I'm not a neuroscientist and I don't have the time to direct my efforts in this direction at this time so I wouldn't know.

Does it matter that you are not going to feel anything resembling psychedelics? A small quantity of LSD or Salvinorin is all it takes to knock one into space and I somehow doubt that the majority of a 100ug dose reaches the brain. A threshold dose of oral DMT which will not produce any trippy effects whatsoever will still result in a very good night's sleep. Think about how that must happen, if "the serotonin system is deactivated during sleep".

Also, don't read too much into my analogy. What I said is clear, the way the brain is understood nowadays is still a matter of "this plugs into that and causes that to plug into that so levels of that go up and then cause levels of this, that, the other to go up, down, left, right" rather than "DMT is crossing the blood barrier, the concentrations of DMT in the brain are mapped out on the graph, as you can see the action of DMT at these levels cause these waveforms to be transmitted which then interfere to produce whatever waveforms", can you disagree? We don't trace all these neuronal firing patterns because it is still physically impossible for us to trace a molecule going into the brain then find out even to a rudimentary degree what it does to all the complex firing patterns in the brain.

In my simplistic view, it's simply a case of DMT goes into my brain. It then does things. It is then metabolised out of my body. During this time, I experience wacky lucid dream states. Once it is gone, I no longer experience these wacky dream states.

In fact, what you say about the serotonin system being inactive is dead on. I don't obviously feel this while asleep. There must be some level of waking consciousness for me to experience these lucid dream effects. What I gather so far is that if this system is inactive during sleep but the DMT is still circulating, it does act on other things. However as soon as the serotonin system activates (i.e. I am slightly awake) then the residual DMT in the brain immediately acts on the relevant receptors and produces a transcendental state (I have +4ed in my sleep many a time).

As your link states:

Serotonin released during W activates 5-HT1A somatodendritic receptors and 5-HT2A/2C receptors expressed by GABAergic interneurons, and induces a decrease of the firing rate of 5-HT cells characteristic of SWS.
Click to expand...

These are the very receptors DMT is believed to target resulting in psychedelic effects. So clearly while asleep after taking oral DMT, it must reach a psychedelic concentration. The question is, why does it not interfere with waking life (the residual visuals the next day are barely there yet a week later I will wake up in bed dissolved into eternity)? Why does it appear to be released in powerful bursts during hypnagogic/hypnapompic states?
 
SWIM has never had or heard of these residual DMT effects the next morning. Nor am I remotely tired after DMT in fact the opposite. I have never heard nor seen a single bit of evidence regarding these claims and have talked with many many DMT users. Maybe it has to do with the time of day you are using DMT.

Burnt:
There is a large body of imaging literature for disease state hallucinations. The types of hallucinations including faces correlate well with specific brain regions in this case the FFA (fusiform face area) and others. The primary visual cortex (V1) seem to be correlated with but not sufficient this can likely be attributed to the feedback loops of the cortex. The "higher level" regions typically are high in the sensory processing hierarchy and their so called "descriptive field" is very specific and typically not concerned with space oriented. They respond to faces, colors, objects, it gets more and more specific as one moves up the heirarchy.

Hallucinogens certainly alter many of these ventral processing stream regions. Vollenweider showed that some of the motion altering effects of psilocybin (psilocin) result from its actions on higher level regions of the motion processing and not early visual regions like V1.

Benzyme:

5-HT system is likely not the only receptor involved in the subjective effects of hallucinogens. Contemporary knowledge of 5-HT2a is unable to explain the visual effects or psychological for that matter. Plenty of 5-HT2a agonists, partial agonists exist that are not hallucinogenic at all (lisuride, ... ), or are "hallucinogenic" without visuals (AMT, MIPT, 5-MeO-DMT).

Also I know of people (including myself) have have taken 5-HT2a antagonists which did not attenuate DMT effects and in one case consistently potentiated. ALthough a large body of animal data suggests 5-HT2a this can and has been misleading in the past. More research with humans need to be done and the selectivity of the agonists and antagonists used must be verified to the best of our ability. A good bet would be to try and understand the endogenous hallucinogen system as this system may be where the hallucinogens act. This has been the case with the opioids and cannabinoids.
 
Do you primarily smoke DMT or consume it orally? I think I experience this because the MAOI is still getting metabolised while I sleep and that still prevents DMT breakdown (I tend to dose MAOI, then DMT, then MAOI again, then DMT again, maybe more after that if wanted, resulting in quite the journey).

Also one has to remember there are hallucinogens that act on other receptors yet can still cause full blown hallucinations (salvia, ketamine, etc). I do agree that it has all to do with the endogenous hallucinogen system. DMT just vastly exaggerates the effects of it.
 
Well MAOI's are a totally different compound with their own pharmacology. Depending on the MAOI you are taking and the dose this may explain these effects. However I have done both and have not noticed these effects nor heard of them.

Administered DMT likely acts on this endogenous hallucinogen system which may be involved in mediating waking perception and higher level cognitive processes. This would explain the effects of administered hallucinogens very well. Of course it may just be any NT system but the endogenous hallucinogens system is a good bet as the fact that DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and 5-OH-DMT are in our bodies the latter two in the brain, with DMT having all the necessary requirements of a neurotransmitter .... based on its subjective effects it is very likely to be involved in higher level cortical processes.
 
I experience these effects when I repeatedly undergo high intensity long duration experiences (jurema consumption can be as much as 100g to myself in the space of a week) so the body is perpetually flooded with it. Of course I don't do these things anymore, it can come at the price of one's sanity if you are not careful!

Another reason that I believe it has some sort of role in dreaming is that I once took a massive dose and ended up in a state of lucidly dreaming while more wide awake than ever (think God mode), I had the ability to change any element of my perception at will. Which of course, is required when dreaming. To get into this state you need to go beyond a +4, the real crazy shit about DMT starts at those doses which forcefully dissolve you into the universe, anything below is essentially a demo version. Past those doses it is like a K-hole.
 
bufoman said:
5-HT system is likely not the only receptor involved in the subjective effects of hallucinogens. Contemporary knowledge of 5-HT2a is unable to explain the visual effects or psychological for that matter. Plenty of 5-HT2a agonists, partial agonists exist that are not hallucinogenic at all (lisuride, ... ), or are "hallucinogenic" without visuals (AMT, MIPT, 5-MeO-DMT).
Click to expand...


yes, I'm aware of this
aniracetam supposedly exerts a modulatory effect at 5ht2a, but is not hallucinogenic

yet DMT's affinity (besides at TAR) is centered around several 5HT subtypes. does it have D1 affinity like psilocybin?
i also observe that the visual feedback is occuring elsewhere in the cortex. i realize there are still a lot of unknowns,
but I really think the DMT-dreaming theory is still anecdotal at best, mostly unsubstantiated. I'd imagine it's easy to confuse a recollection of a dmt experience while dreaming, with an actual experience
 
benzyme said:
bufoman said:
5-HT system is likely not the only receptor involved in the subjective effects of hallucinogens. Contemporary knowledge of 5-HT2a is unable to explain the visual effects or psychological for that matter. Plenty of 5-HT2a agonists, partial agonists exist that are not hallucinogenic at all (lisuride, ... ), or are "hallucinogenic" without visuals (AMT, MIPT, 5-MeO-DMT).
Click to expand...


yes, I'm aware of this
aniracetam supposedly exerts a modulatory effect at 5ht2a, but is not hallucinogenic

yet DMT's affinity (besides at TAR) is centered around several 5HT subtypes. does it have D1 affinity like psilocybin?
i also observe that the visual feedback is occuring elsewhere in the cortex. i realize there are still a lot of unknowns,
but I really think the DMT-dreaming theory is still anecdotal at best, mostly unsubstantiated. I'd imagine it's easy to confuse a recollection of a dmt experience while dreaming, with an actual experience
Click to expand...

If dreams are the state in which our brains start rearranging and filing away memories after testing them, it might be the case that I always happen to simply be remembering a DMT trip each and every time I wake up in the sleep-paralysis state, the brain taking a memory of that state and plays parts of it to the "conscious observer" bundle of nerves. However I think it's more likely that it's a case that the DMT is there all the way through and peaks during sleep in some interesting manner given that all these experiences happen typically when I go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. The DMT provides "light power" to the hypagogic processes and as I go to sleep, the processes start kicking in. Because the DMT provides the light, I get to see far more of what goes on than I really should. One must ask, why does the serotonin system deactivate at the time of sleep?
 
burnt said:
An interesting phenomenon that SWIM noticed concerning these colors is its especially the colors that one sees in kinds of 'optical illusions' of light that are hovering around the room or certain objects even while sober. This is a bit hard to describe but SWIM will try.

If SWIM when sober relaxes SWIMs eyes in a specifically decorated room and just looks at the blinds covering the window SWIM will see a kind of green and purple light. There is a large green wall covering and SWIM isn't too sure where the purple comes from but its specific to that room. Anyway if SWIM does DMT in that room SWIM always has an initial visual reaction that is dominated by those colors. If SWIM is in a room dominated by orange and red the colors break down into pinks reds and oranges all kinds of shades of the dominant colors. Although other less dominant colors certainly appear and occasionally take over it tends to stick to the major initial colors if SWIM stays in the same environment. SWIM doesn't move around in environments on dmt but while on lsd SWIM does and a similar dominating visual color effect is noted and different depending upon the environment (outside in light or dark for example).

Another typical effect is that take any given color that is dominating the visuals that different shades of it typically illuminate one geometric object seen while hallucinating. For example in the green and purple case SWIM noticed two "layers" of patterns coming out of a white wall. The wall remained white and out of it came two extra layers of pattens one green and one purple. They formed the typical kind of "mayan" art type pattens that most people at some point see when taking psychedelics.
Click to expand...
I think that in these optical illusions people have when sober, to a certain extent the same thing must happen as when people have taken hallucinogens.

These black and white optical illusions usually suggest motion that isn't there or shapes that aren't there.

So to me this seems to sugest that certain parts of the visual system like the parts specifically responsable for seeing horizontal lines or vertical lines, are associated with peticular colours: the logic behind this is the other way round: if a black/white optical illusion makes certain shapes emerge and in this specific optical illusion a particular colour emerges as well, than the part of the brain that is responsable for this type of shape or elements of it apparently sees these shapes in that particular colour.

Like pictures in a comic book, pictures our visual system makes consist out of different elements. In a comic book the outlines of this picture are always black on white. The brain also has a system that's responsible for seeing outer lines but this system exists out of several subsystems: seeing vertical lines, horizontal lines, curved lines, etc.

So i think that the brain gives all these different systems their own colour to be able to decode the total picture when doing complex visual tasks, when for instance you have to look for predators in the jungle, etc.

Than the brain can quickly determine where in the comlexity of the whole picture, something is changing or something irregular occurs.

So i think that both hallucinogens as these optical illusions, simply disturb one of these little machines in the brain. Make it run slightly out of it's normal context, and that the brain normally doesn't see all these different coloured lines, because it is completely used to having them fully integrated in the total picture. If one of these lines is no longer perfectly integrated...it becomes apparent that there is a coloured line.

That seems logical to me. Since the ability to see those colours must have a function that normally is totally integrated in the whole system.
 
Burnt:
There is a large body of imaging literature for disease state hallucinations. The types of hallucinations including faces correlate well with specific brain regions in this case the FFA (fusiform face area) and others. The primary visual cortex (V1) seem to be correlated with but not sufficient this can likely be attributed to the feedback loops of the cortex. The "higher level" regions typically are high in the sensory processing hierarchy and their so called "descriptive field" is very specific and typically not concerned with space oriented. They respond to faces, colors, objects, it gets more and more specific as one moves up the heirarchy.

Hallucinogens certainly alter many of these ventral processing stream regions. Vollenweider showed that some of the motion altering effects of psilocybin (psilocin) result from its actions on higher level regions of the motion processing and not early visual regions like V1.
Click to expand...

Thanks bufoman. Any citations preferably a review citation? I'll check out the author you cite.

Anyway it seems what your pointing out is that some hallucinogen effects seem to be effecting the higher cortical regions and not so much the initial visual processing regions? What kinds of neurotransmitter receptors are most expressed in these regions or is that too broad of a question? Also what exactly is meant by "higher" cortical regions? I often see that term but I never really understand what exactly it means.

Good stuff.

Also I know of people (including myself) have have taken 5-HT2a antagonists which did not attenuate DMT effects and in one case consistently potentiated. ALthough a large body of animal data suggests 5-HT2a this can and has been misleading in the past. More research with humans need to be done and the selectivity of the agonists and antagonists used must be verified to the best of our ability. A good bet would be to try and understand the endogenous hallucinogen system as this system may be where the hallucinogens act. This has been the case with the opioids and cannabinoids.
Click to expand...

Yea there certainly has to be more going on then just 5-HT2a.

What role does agonist directed trafficking have on the 5HT2a receptors if any?

It would be nice to have a list of all receptors hallucinogens were known to act on and their potency (Ki or some similar measure) as well whether they behave as agonist antagonist or partial agonists etc if known. This should of course including what different methods were used to determine the above such as; binding displacement studies, cell based assays, in vivo tests human and or animal. That might make a good review paper!
 
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