Dear wonderful community,

Just as a fire uniformly raises the temperature throughout a building, causing diverse but interconnected effects (metal beams expanding, wood supports burning, windows cracking from thermal stress, smoke rising through air currents) psychedelics might work through a single fundamental mechanism that ripples through all neural systems. This isn’t just theoretical elegance without grounding; it’s a powerful explanatory framework that could help us understand why substances like DMT and 5-MeO-DMT produce distinct but internally consistent effects across visual, auditory, cognitive, and somatic domains. A single change in coupling dynamics might explain why these compounds have such distinct but internally consistent effects: DMT creates rapidly alternating color/anti-color visual patterns and oscillating somatic sensations, whereas 5-MeO-DMT tends towards a state of global coherence.

As demonstrated in our work “Towards Computational Simulations of Cessation“, see how a flat “coupling kernel” triggers a global attractor of coherence across the entire system, whereas an alternating negative-positive (Mexican hat-like) kernel produces competing clusters of coherence. This is just a very high-level and abstract demonstration of a change in the dynamic behavior of coupled oscillators by applying a coupling kernel. What we then must do is to see how such a change would impact different systems in the organism as a whole.
Source

The key insight is that psychedelics may modify the coupling kernels between oscillating neural systems throughout the body. Think of coupling kernels as the “rules of interaction” between neighboring neural oscillators. When these rules change, the effects cascade through different neural architectures (from the hierarchical layers of the visual cortex to the branching networks of the peripheral nervous system) producing the kaleidoscopic zoo of psychedelic effects we observe.

DMT, for instance, appears to enhance contrast and create competing clusters of coherence (possibly through 5-HT2A activation), while 5-MeO-DMT tends toward global coherence and boundary dissolution (potentially through 5-HT1A pathways). These changes in coupling dynamics appear to tune into the brain’s natural resonant modes, as described by connectome-specific harmonic waves, modulating their spectral power distribution in predictable and reliable ways.

Simulation comparing coupling kernels across a hierarchical network of feature-selective layers (16×16 to 2×2), showing how different coupling coefficients between and within layers affect pattern formation. The DMT-like kernel (-1.0 near-neighbor coupling) generates competing checkerboard patterns at multiple spatial frequencies, while the 5-MeO-DMT-like kernel (positive coupling coefficients) drives convergence toward larger coherent patches. These distinct coupling dynamics mirror how these compounds might modulate hierarchical neural architectures like the visual cortex.
Source: Internal QRI tool (public release forthcoming)

We’re excited to announce that we’ll be hosting a meeting in Amsterdam to explore this paradigm-shifting framework. This gathering will bring together researchers studying psychedelics from multiple angles – from phenomenology to neuroscience – to discuss how coupling kernels might serve as a bridge between subjective experience and neural mechanisms. Recent work on divisive normalization has shown how local neural responses are regulated by their surrounding activity, providing a potential mechanistic basis for how psychedelics modify these coupling patterns. By understanding psychedelic states through the lens of coupling kernels, we may finally have a mathematical framework that unifies the seemingly disparate effects of these compounds, much like how understanding heat transfer helps us predict how a fire will affect an entire building – from its structural integrity to its airflow patterns.

Simulation comparing different coupling kernels (DMT-like vs 5-MeO-DMT-like) applied to a 1.5D fractal branching network, showing how modified coupling parameters affect phase coherence and signal propagation. The DMT-like kernel produces competing clusters of coherence at bifurcation points, while the 5-MeO-DMT kernel drives the system toward global phase synchronization – patterns that could explain how these compounds differently affect branching biological systems like the vasculature or peripheral nervous system.
Source: Internal QRI tool (public release forthcoming)

Event Details & Amsterdam Visit

The meetup will be held on the 25th of January (location: Generator Amsterdam – event page; time: 1-8PM), featuring presentations from myself and Marco Aqil, whose groundbreaking work on divisive normalization and graph neural fields provides a compelling neuroscientific foundation for the Coupling Kernels paradigm. Marco’s research demonstrates how spatial coupling dynamics can bridge microscopic neural activity and macroscopic brain-wide effects: a perfect complement to our phenomenological investigations.

Additionally, I’ll be in Amsterdam throughout the last third of January and available to meet with academics, artists, recreational metaphysicians, and qualia researchers. If you’re interested in deep discussions about consciousness, psychedelic states, and mathematical frameworks for understanding subjective experience, please reach out.

Much love and may your New Year be filled with awesome and inspiring experiences as well as solid paradigm-building enterprises!

~Metta~