Departamento de Física, Universidad de Buenos Aires and Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires (IFIBA - CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Fundación para la lucha contra las enfermedades neurológicas de la infancia (FLENI), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
J Psychopharmacol. 2021 Apr;35(4):406-420. doi: 10.1177/0269881120981384. Epub 2021 Feb 10.
N,N-dimethyltryptamine is a short-acting psychedelic tryptamine found naturally in many plants and animals. Few studies to date have addressed the neural and psychological effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine alone, either administered intravenously or inhaled in freebase form, and none have been conducted in natural settings.
Our primary aim was to study the acute effects of inhaled N,N-dimethyltryptamine in natural settings, focusing on questions tuned to the advantages of conducting field research, including the effects of contextual factors (i.e. "set" and "setting"), the possibility of studying a comparatively large number of subjects, and the relaxed mental state of participants consuming N,N-dimethyltryptamine in familiar and comfortable settings.
We combined state-of-the-art wireless electroencephalography with psychometric questionnaires to study the neural and subjective effects of naturalistic N,N-dimethyltryptamine use in 35 healthy and experienced participants.
We observed that N,N-dimethyltryptamine significantly decreased the power of alpha (8-12 Hz) oscillations throughout all scalp locations, while simultaneously increasing power of delta (1-4 Hz) and gamma (30-40 Hz) oscillations. Gamma power increases correlated with subjective reports indicative of some features of mystical-type experiences. N,N-dimethyltryptamine also increased global synchrony and metastability in the gamma band while decreasing those measures in the alpha band.
Our results are consistent with previous studies of psychedelic action in the human brain, while at the same time the results suggest potential electroencephalography markers of mystical-type experiences in natural settings, thus highlighting the importance of investigating these compounds in the contexts where they are naturally consumed.
N,N-二甲基色胺是一种短半衰期致幻色胺，天然存在于许多植物和动物中。迄今为止，很少有研究单独研究 N,N-二甲基色胺的神经和心理效应，无论是静脉内给药还是以游离碱形式吸入，并且都没有在自然环境中进行。
我们的主要目的是在自然环境中研究吸入 N,N-二甲基色胺的急性效应，重点关注针对进行现场研究优势的问题，包括上下文因素（即“设定”和“环境”）的影响、研究相对大量受试者的可能性，以及参与者在熟悉和舒适的环境中消费 N,N-二甲基色胺时的放松心态。
我们将最先进的无线脑电图与心理计量问卷相结合，研究了 35 名健康且经验丰富的参与者在自然状态下使用 N,N-二甲基色胺的神经和主观效应。
我们观察到 N,N-二甲基色胺显著降低了所有头皮位置阿尔法（8-12Hz）振荡的功率，同时增加了德尔塔（1-4Hz）和伽马（30-40Hz）振荡的功率。伽马功率增加与主观报告相关，表明具有一些神秘体验的特征。N,N-二甲基色胺还增加了伽马频带中的全局同步性和亚稳定性，同时降低了阿尔法频带中的这些指标。
我们的结果与以前在人类大脑中对迷幻药物作用的研究一致，同时结果表明在自然环境中神秘体验的潜在脑电图标志物，因此强调了在其自然消费的背景下研究这些化合物的重要性。
