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posted by n1 on Thursday August 11 2016, @09:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the enhanced-reality dept.

Scientists have found a way to increase the duration of DMT hallucinogenic experiences:

Known in drug lore as "the businessman's trip" for its lunch-break-size 15-minute duration, DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is infamous for blasting its users into vivid alien worlds. It's among the most literally hallucinogenic of all the psychedelics, and now a pair of veteran researchers have proposed a method to safely extend the experience beyond its normal length. Dr. Rick Strassman and Dr. Andrew Gallimore published their paper in Frontiers in Psychology last month, under the name "A Model for the Application of Target-Controlled Intravenous Infusion for a Prolonged Immersive DMT Psychedelic Experience." Its implications could turn DMT research on its head, allowing for new scientific (and potentially medical) insights into the principle ingredient in ayahuasca. Using techniques borrowed from anesthesiology, the method will regulate the amount of DMT in the body and, more important, the brain. Though still untested on no-doubt-willing psychonauts, Strassman and Gallimore's technology is all but ready for assembly.

Strassman, author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2001) and DMT and the Soul of Prophecy (2014) and perhaps the world's foremost clinical DMT researcher, argues the substance provides access to what users experience as mystical states, comparable to those described in the Hebrew Bible. Gallimore, a computational neurobiologist, is also a historical scholar of DMT. His overview "DMT Research from 1956 to the Edge of Time" recounts a wide range of possibilities researchers have offered over the years (including the notion that DMT is a doorway into an alternate universe). Other theories involve its role in human brain at the time of death, as well as countless South American beliefs inseparable from ayahuasca and DMT snuff traditions. But perhaps the only universal experience of smoked DMT is its brevity.

A Model for the Application of Target-Controlled Intravenous Infusion for a Prolonged Immersive DMT Psychedelic Experience (open, DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2016.00211)

[Continues...]

From the abstract:

Using pharmacokinetic modeling and DMT blood sampling data, we demonstrate that the unique pharmacological characteristics of DMT, which also include a rapid onset and lack of acute tolerance to its subjective effects, make it amenable to administration by target-controlled intravenous infusion. This is a technology developed to maintain a stable brain concentration of anesthetic drugs during surgery. Simulations of our model demonstrate that this approach will allow research subjects to be induced into a stable and prolonged DMT experience, making it possible to carefully observe its psychological contents, and provide more extensive accounts for subsequent analyses. This model would also be valuable in performing functional neuroimaging, where subjects are required to remain under the influence of the drug for extended periods. Finally, target-controlled intravenous infusion of DMT may aid the development of unique psychotherapeutic applications of this psychedelic agent.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Thursday August 11 2016, @04:33PM

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday August 11 2016, @04:33PM (#386635) Journal

    But yeah, you might walk away believing in machine elves or interdeminsional insect aliens.

    Interesting thought: I have a box. Nearly everyone who looks inside sees a small silver bead. Is there a bead in the box?

    I have a pill. Everyone who takes it sees machine elves and interdeminsional insect aliens. Are there machine elves or interdeminsional insect aliens?

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 11 2016, @04:59PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday August 11 2016, @04:59PM (#386649) Journal

    The way I see it, DMT and similar drugs may put the parts of the brain that recognize faces into overdrive, causing extreme pareidolia [wikipedia.org].

    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140730-why-do-we-see-faces-in-objects [bbc.com]

    But I have never used DMT and it's just a guess. Other people report seeing geometric shapes and fractals on DMT. Does that mean the shapes are actually there, or are they merely a distortion caused by making your brain's pattern recognition capabilities go haywire?

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    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 11 2016, @05:55PM

      by JNCF (4317) on Thursday August 11 2016, @05:55PM (#386684) Journal

      I've only smoked it, but geometric shapes were a large part of my few experiences with DMT. No machine elves, unfortunately(?). Oddly, the geometric shapes were sometimes divided into distinct panes as if they were being rendered in a tiling window manager.

      I heard an NPR interview with Oliver Sacks where he said that some neurologists speculate that the geometric patterns some epileptic people see during seizures could be the result of some sort of spacial mapping information leaking into their visual data. I like this hypothesis, and sometimes wonder if it might explain some drug-induced geometries as well.

    • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:09PM

      by jimshatt (978) on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:09PM (#386693) Journal
      I think I might have fallen into a kettle of DMT or some shit as a baby, because I already have an extremely trigger-happy pattern recognition (Me: "Hey, that guy looks like [someone]". Other: "No, he doesn't". Me: "Yes he does! I can't believe you don't see it!"). Pareidolia and recognizing animal and human forms in random shapes (marble and such), are also pretty common for me.

      If it's truly the case that everybody sees mechanical elves and insectoid aliens, then that's something to be researched. Because it's reproducible, not because it's real.

      Anyway, thanks for the answers (takyon, JCNF and others)!
    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:11PM

      by sjames (2882) on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:11PM (#386696) Journal

      The face on Mars is objectively real. Some (not me) draw wild conclusions about the nature of that reality, but we can all agree that the it is objectively real. We all see it in the picture.

      I haven't done DMT either, but the reports I have read were that it was beyond just a visual impression. There was a sense of a presence as well.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:16PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:16PM (#386698) Journal

        We all see it in the picture.

        "The way I see it, DMT and similar drugs may put the parts of the brain that recognize faces into overdrive, causing extreme pareidolia."

        There was a sense of a presence as well.

        It affects more than one aspect of cognition?!!!! Well, fuck me.

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        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:37PM

          by sjames (2882) on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:37PM (#386716) Journal

          The sense of presence may also be the result of one part of the mind experiencing another part from an unaccustomed perspective.

      • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:46PM

        by JNCF (4317) on Thursday August 11 2016, @06:46PM (#386725) Journal

        The face on Mars is objectively real. Some (not me) draw wild conclusions about the nature of that reality, but we can all agree that the it is objectively real.

        Disagree.

        We all see it in the picture.

        Agree.

        The face on Mars is a trick of light and shadow. Now [drraytalks.com] you see it, now [wikimedia.org] you don't. As a thing percieved in the mind, it exists. As a structure with significantly face-like qualities, it does not. There are things we percieve that don't exist in objective reality. Anybody who has seen a shadowy figure where there wasn't one knows this (or comes up with a supernatural explanation for their experiences). The brain is an organ that models reality in a useful way, not a correct one. It is much more dangerous to miss a human face in the darkness than it is to hallucinate one, so we have more false positives than false negatives.

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 11 2016, @08:10PM

          by sjames (2882) on Thursday August 11 2016, @08:10PM (#386777) Journal

          It is real in the sense that it is a structure that is there. Anyone who cares to look will see a structure there. Further, it is an existent structure that often triggers facial pattern recognition when viewed from a particular angle.

          That as opposed to a friend of mine who while under the influence saw a house stand up and walk away. No surprise, nobody else there saw the house walk away no matter how carefully they looked. That was not real, the event had no objective reality.

          • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 11 2016, @08:55PM

            by JNCF (4317) on Thursday August 11 2016, @08:55PM (#386783) Journal

            Further, it is an existent structure that often triggers facial pattern recognition when viewed from a particular angle.

            When viewed from a particular angle at a particular time. When Mars turns and the shadows are cast differently, only True Believers see a face in the rocks. It is a pattern of light that comes and goes, layered on top of the rocks. Without the shadows, the rocks only have a vague symmetricalish look to them. Github avatars look more face-like, and those are just symmetrical static.

            No surprise, nobody else there saw the house walk away no matter how carefully they looked. That was not real, the event had no objective reality.

            Are shared experiences how we determine objective reality? If so, does this hold true for OcculusRift-induced experiences? My answer is that we can only speak of objective reality probabalisticly (though disclaimers get tiresome so I usually drop them), and that shared experiences are one tool we can use to determine if we want to put more weight on the likeliness of a thing. I suspect that two humans can be tricked into having some very basic shared hallucinations (nothing like a house moving, yet).

            Here's a funny example of a reproducible hallucination without drugs (direct PDF [eaglemanlab.net]):

            Summary
            To judge causality, organisms must determine the tem-
            poral order of their actions and sensations. However,
            this judgment may be confounded by changing delays
            in sensory pathways, suggesting the need for dynamic
            temporal recalibration. To test for such a mechanism,
            we artificially injected a fixed delay between partici-
            pants’ actions (keypresses) and subsequent sensa-
            tions (flashes). After participants adapted to this delay,
            flashes at unexpectedly short delays after the keypress
            were often perceived as occurring before the keypress,
            demonstrating a recalibration of motor-sensory tem-
            poral order judgments.

            If a group of people were conditioned to have a similar hallucination, I would not take it as objective reality (even if I were one of them). Then again, maybe the researchers are lying to us for an interesting paper and the light really did turn on roughly when we experienced it. There's literally no way of knowing, it's poorly understood probabilities all the way down.

            • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 11 2016, @09:58PM

              by sjames (2882) on Thursday August 11 2016, @09:58PM (#386800) Journal

              It is a slippery concept, but it's all we have. I would say that repeatability and commonality are two of the best indicators we have of objective reality. Ultimately, we cannot prove that anything is actually real in an absolute sense. We can only make a useful assumption.

              Keep in mind, it is important to separate objective experience from conclusions drawn about that experience.

            • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 12 2016, @07:59AM

              by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday August 12 2016, @07:59AM (#386929) Homepage
              There's a way more easily reproducible hallucination: that things on TV and in movies are moving.
              --
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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @09:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @09:04PM (#386786)

        You feel a presence when experiencing sleep paralysis too. It just means more than only your visual system is effected, which makes sense since the think effecting you isn't being shown in through your eyes. There were probably a lot of other changes, but we simply notice visual things more. When you think of a place in the world, you always think of how it looks (or a couple times how it smells). You never think about how it felt on your skin or whatever.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 12 2016, @07:51AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday August 12 2016, @07:51AM (#386928) Homepage
    I have a 1980s pocket calculator. Nearly everyone who fiddles around with glitching the mechanical on/off switch gets wacky alien symbols on the display. Do the wacky alien symbols mean anything?
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday August 12 2016, @08:00AM

      by sjames (2882) on Friday August 12 2016, @08:00AM (#386931) Journal

      Yes. With careful analysis they reveal a bit about how the chip works and how it's wired. In the case of the chip, there are easier ways to get at the same information, but those aren't likely to work on the brain.