The first article in the latest issue of The Journal of Psychedelic Psychiatry is called “A Critical Review Investigating whether there are similarities in EEG band waves between Schizophrenic patients and participants given DMT or Ayahuasca Tea.”

“Early research suggests,” the abstract begins, “that the endogenous neurobiological chemical
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) may be responsible for schizophrenic symptoms.” This is another way of saying, “People do not quite understand schizophrenia, but have guessed at its causes in the past – namely, one idea is that the way that the schizophrenic brain generates its own DMT is a bit haywire.” It’s also a great opener for foreshadowing one of two likely conclusions: that this idea does or does not hold up against the data!

Without reading the abstract any further, you can already guess at the study design by this very first sentence: “Somehow,” you guess aloud, “the authors will compare and contrast schizophrenic brains (pre-loaded with endogenous DMT) with healthy brains under the influence of exogenously-sourced DMT (e.g., extracted from some chacruna, mimosa hostilis, or yopo).” That’s a great guess, Dear Reader! The abstract continues: “This article investigates EEG band waves between participants given Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) or Ayahuasca Tea and schizophrenic patients.”

Comparing and contrasting brains sounds simple, but how exactly do you do it? You can’t just induce a psychotic episode in a schizophrenic patient, then cut their brain out and freeze it. Can’t do that to the healthy folks ingesting DMT or ayahuasca either!

“Fair enough, Kevin. So how do we do it?”

Good question, Dear Reader. Well, just riffing here, but – one thing we might do is use brain imaging technologies (e.g., an fMRI) to track neural activity and blood flow throughout the brain. But we’d need to do this right! The schizophrenic patients should be off their medication and suffering through an episode of psychosis so we can capture the effects of that endogenous DMT (probably not a great mindset when holed up in the claustrophobic coffin that is an fMRI machine). Similarly, we would want to capture the effects of the exogenous DMT on the non-schizophrenic participants – also not a great mindset to be in while locked inside an fMRI, but SCIENCE!

“Oh, cool – this actually sounds like an interesting experiment. Is this what they did in the paper?”

Err, well no. Just getting excited. Sorry! Let’s get back to the paper.

“Ok, cool.”

In the paper, they reviewed published EEG data from several studies that mostly looked at the populations of interest separately. The author wanted to profile…

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EDIT: Never finished writing this! Need to get back to it.

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SOME UNFINISHED WRITING:

Specifically, they were interested in 5 bands of brain wave: delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma.

So we’re looking to determine whether distinct patterns or signatures exist in the EEG signals that can be used to infer whether or not the brain is schizophrenic or a non-schizophrenic brain driven by DMT. If such a pattern is found to exist, then this provides evidence that the schizophrenic brain is not necessarily driven by endogenous DMT. If no pattern is found to exist, then this lends some credence to the idea that the schizophrenic brain is indeed driven by DMT. In either case, we do not have a slam dunk. For example, if a distinct signature does exist, the schizophrenic brain might still be driven by endogenous DMT – just differently than how exogenous DMT typically affects the brain (e.g., different regions). Or it could be an artifact from a small population sample. Similarly, the inability to detect a difference doesn’t necessarily imply the schizophrenic brain is analogous to a healthy brain influenced by consuming DMT.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of the article here.

https://7fc19784-edaf-4431-98b4-2059a1a2ae2b.filesusr.com/ugd/e07c59_c258946a78bb4e80859e31dd24b1cb07.pdf

unique to schizophrenic brains when compared with healthy-but-DMT-driven brains