The brain on DMT: mapping the psychedelic drug's effects | WIRED UK
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/mapping-brain-dmt-psychedelic-drugs
“Perhaps [entity encounters] relate to the fact that, certainly throughout our lives, but especially early on in our lives, we’re surrounded by entities – as in people,” says Carhart-Harris, who has a background in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychology.
“The first thing that we manage to focus our gaze on are people, and their eyes, usually. So it just follows that this will be a major part of the human psyche, and likely a major part of the unconscious.”
Carhart-Harris hopes to show that an encounter with an entity may show a similar pattern of brain activity to an encounter with a person.
“It’s not a bulletproof approach,” he says. “But we’re working on the hypothesis that the experience of entity encounters rests on brain activity. And if it does, then why don’t we look at the neural correlates of some elements of encounters [with] entities off the drug, and get a sense of where people’s brains are sensitive.”
The researchers will also be paying close attention to the transcendental qualities of the DMT experience. By asking participants to rate the intensity of experience, they hope “to capture, potentially, that leap” into another world which characterises a trip.
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“It’s hard to find other tools out there that can alter consciousness so dramatically and so reliably,” says Carhart-Harris.
The dosage the researchers have settled on is 20mg – a quantity that is significantly more potent than it would be if smoked (the usual route of administration) due to its intravenous administration.