~What went down at MoC7; the latest research on Jhāna and 5-MeO-DMT phenomenality using QRI’s Parametrized Dynamic Phenomenology; and Copenhagen meetup details~
~[Guys! I’ve been really active in Substack and Twitter – please follow me there!]~
Qualia Research Institute 2026 Copenhagen Meetup (register [added after the post went out, sorry!])
Venue name: Folkehaven
Time: October 23rd from 5PM to 10PM
Address: Fælledvej 12 | 2200 Copenhagen N
Who should come: YOU. Really, anyone who is reading this is likely to enjoy it. If you’re interested in consciousness, psychedelics, meditation, AI, enhancing wellbeing/suffering reduction, futurism, neuroscience, philosophy, or neurotechnolgy, this will be relevant for you. Please feel free and encouraged to bring a fun experience to share: stim toys, a fun poem, a joke, a weird candy, etc 🙂
Context for the Meetup: I make it a point to organize a QRI Meetup when I visit a new country in order to give people interested in these topics an opportunity to “find the others” 🙂 In the past when someone has attended one of these meetups but wasn’t sure “if they belonged here” they usually had a great time and were happy to have attended – make the jump and join us!
Schedule: 5PM casual social mingling, 5:30PM participants introduce themselves and share the experiences they brought, 6PM catered food (vegetarian and vegan) and vibe coding fun things together, 7PM presentation for ~45 minutes + ~30 minutes of Q&A (depending on how many questions people have! but in practice this tends to be how it unfolds), 8:15PM showing demos and playing with QRI tools, 9PM socializing/music/fun times 🙂
Why Am I in Denmark?
I arrived to Copenhagen on the 10th of October (2026) in order to attend Models of Consciousness^7. I’m staying until the 24th in order to meet relevant people and explore this beautiful city.
Models of Consciousness^7
This has been the largest instantiation of this conference so far. It took place at the University of Copenhagen and had an attendance of over 250 people! I am somewhat of a consciousness conference connoisseur myself, so I wasn’t expecting to be surprised by what I encountered. But I was, in fact, surprised! And in a very positive way!
The quality of keynotes was overall very high. I found particularly fascinating a presentation on what the hippocampus can tell us about consciousness by 2014 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine John O’Keefe. He presented compelling evidence for vector field representations of spatial maps (see: Hippocampal place cells have goal-oriented vector fields during navigation). The conference featured a variety of really excellent parallel sessions, poster sessions, a visit to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (where we did a divination technique involving paintings by Remedios Varos, that at least in my case resulted in getting a new key idea for how to model valence using the Helmholtz decomposition (more on this later!)), and on-site neurofeedback demonstrations.
The Consensus Project
In addition to the above, the conference also featured a new and original activity participants were encouraged to take part in. Participants were assigned to a group carefully crafted to be genuinely interdisciplinary and diverse, and then join six hour-long moderated group discussion sessions (with attendance taken!) in order to generate novel models of consciousness in a bottom-up fashion. The discussions were a mix of free-flowing brainstorming and steered co-working with the goal of arriving at a consensus on how to create new methods to learn something new about consciousness. This, I believe, was partly motived by a desire to to avoid a very common trap in consciousness research: to be perpetually stuck revisiting the handful of main mainstream theories of consciousness (have you noticed how everyone who has a theory of consciousness feels tempted to contextualized it within Global Workspace Theory, Predictive Processing and IIT?). Overall I really enjoyed the discussions and made new friends thanks to this exercise. And, perhaps hard too believe, but the group facilitators of our section did a great job at stopping me from speaking too much (not an easy task, as I have a tendency to infodump about my special interests… and all we talked about concerned my special interests!). Seriously, though, I feel a lot of gratitude to the organizers and moderators for pursuing this daring and unconventional effort to simultaneously help newcomers of the field feel welcomed and included, while also rolling the dice for a chance to collectively come up with genuinely new approaches to the science of consciousness. Thank you!
Participants of the conference came from many different fields and there wasn’t really any collective dogma I could identify. Only a shared desire to, well, model consciousness!
Compared to the ASSC conference, in which computational functionalism is often a presupposed philosophical background assumption, at MoC7 a lot of presentations and posters explored physicalist and biological approaches to consciousness without feeling the constant pressure to prove their sanity. And in comparison to The Science of Consciousness (aka. TSC), people were not really biased in favor of quantum and microtubule-centric approaches to consciousness. It was actually really refreshing to be able to walk just a few meters during the poster sessions and find an entirely different, yet generally rigorous, take on this grand mystery.
Field Lines Before Equations
At the conference I had the honor of my talk proposal being accepted: I presented about QRI’s recent HEART summer retreat in Tepoztlán, México, in which we developed novel methods to study the similarities and differences between the phenomenality* of the various Jhānas and 5-MeO-DMT levels*. See our Twitter/X announcement:
My presentation got recorded and should be available online soon enough (once, I believe, it is made fully compliant with the always-present GDPR… coming from the Bay Area, I’m not used to this, but I’m adapting!).
The bottom line of the presentation is that I made the case that at this retreat we contributed not one, not two, but three important (I would say) innovations to the field:
First, the fact that there is no systematic comparison of 5-MeO-DMT and Jhānas in the literature makes this a novel contribution: a lot of advanced meditators claim these states have significant similarities and yet there is no granular formal research on the matter (the closest published works being the interviews of an experienced Mahāmudrā lama through nondual meditation and two doses of 5-MeO-DMT, and a comparison of fire kasina retreatants’ questionnaire scores with previously published psychedelic data – of note, co-authors of these two studies were participants in ours!). It has been my experience that when I ask advanced meditators what they think of 5-MeO-DMT I am told that their experience with was one of being propelled to e.g. the 5th Jhāna then the 6th Jhāna then the 3rd Jhāna and so on – using these terms in a trip report by someone deeply acquainted with the Jhānas is important information you should not overlook!
We also think, at QRI, that both the phenomenality of Jhānas and 5-MeO-DMT are key regions of the state-spaces of consciousness for the simple reason that they are usually both (a) very pleasant/high valence (though, please note, 5-MeO-DMT can also be very unpleasant at times – see my guide for how to maximize your chances of a beautiful experience with the substance), and (b) low in information content: Jhāna meditation progressively takes you to states of higher and higher dissolution and dereification, culminating in the 8th Jhāna, with near zero information content, and, in the case of 5-MeO-DMT, a whiteout/lights-out state that might feel simultaneously like “everything everywhere all at once” or “absolutely nothing… perhaps not even that”, sometimes simultaneously (see: David Pearce’s Zero Ontology retreat participant and Wystan Bryant-Scott’s A Phenomenology of Zero Ontology: Jhana, Cessation, Awakening, 5-MeO-DMT and the Great Perfection). These state-spaces are thus simultaneously useful to find “standardized experiences” (akin to purifying a metal before studying its spectral emission lines), for studying neural field annealing, to understand the connection between symmetry and valence (see: Michael Johnson’s STV), and to develop theories about the mathematical objects that might correspond to consciousness (see: retreat participant Cube Flipper’s analysis of the formless Jhānas in terms of symmetry groups). I’ve been very eager organize a study to compare the Jhānas and 5-MeO-DMT for many years (“high valence, low information content” -> obviously relevant for QRI.org!) and this summer I finally had the chance to do so thanks to a group 25 wonderful people and big supporters of the organization (thank you Winslow, Olaf, generous anonymous donors! Also thanks to Hunter and Marcin for operational support, and to David Pearce for attending the first part of the retreat!).
Second, it was the inaugural application of Parametrized Dynamic Phenomenology** (PDP) in a formal empirical in-person study. This builds on the results of a pilot study we did last year to identify the coupling kernels associated with different states of consciousness (DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, 2C-B, Ketamine, Jhāna, and Fire Kasina), which tested our hypothesis that DMT has a high-frequency Mexican Hat-like kernel (oscillators “want to be in opposite phase to their immediate neighbors”) and 5-MeO-DMT a low frequency positive Gaussian kernel (oscillators “want to be in phase with their neighbors”). This hypothesis is the result of putting two things together: (1) having noticed that DMT gives rise to “competing clusters of coherence” whereas 5-MeO-DMT tends towards “global coherence” (see my 2020 writeup 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses) and (2) thinking about this light of coupling kernels applied to systems of coupled oscillators being very effective for compelling psychedelic replications (see: Towards Computational Simulations of Cessation). In order to characterize the Jhāna and 5-MeO-DMT in terms of underlying oscillatory self-organizing principles, we created a wide range of animations generated with systems of coupled oscillators parametrized with various coupling kernels, and then had participants rate them by their similarity to the phenomenality of each Jhāna and 5-MeO-DMT level they recently experienced (see some results here and here).
And third, I also discussed how the HEART Tepoztlán retreat not only introduced a new method for studying exotic states of consciousness, but also, in fact, invented a new kind of meta-method. Sound weird? Ok, hear me out: we brought physicists, mathematicians, software developers, neuroscientists, psychologists, visual artists specializing in psychedelic replications, advanced meditators, and philosophers not only as participants and researchers, but also to work together to develop methods for characterizing the similarities and differences between 5-MeO-DMT and all the Jhānas. Of course we had PDP as a planned methodological paradigm for this study. But participants also worked on developing new methods themselves! With some steering and what can only be described as a kind of product management on my side, participants contributed novel 5-MeO-DMT and Jhāna-specific questionnaires, psychophysics tasks, variants of microphenomenology oriented to mechanistic replication of phenomena, vibe coding approaches to phenomenology, visual depiction methods, and new interviewing apporaches, all of which were utilized on the (thankfully very patient) participants. It was a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” group effort! And even though not all methods ultimately really worked (nor did we have this as an expectation), some of them did, and they are ripe for further development and application. I think this is a highly desirable way of studying non-ordinary states of consciousness: since there isn’t already a bank of methods tuned to the states of consciousness of interest, our best bet is to utilize the intelligence, knowledge, and intuition of the participants (especially those acquainted with the states in question and those with research experience) to form educated guesses about what is likely to actually work (in terms of finding large effect sizes).
We have already done something similar in the past: both of the previous HEART retreats did this to some extent, though at a much smaller scale. For example, in our Brazil mushrooms and ayahuasca retreat, we had participants contribute a large number of psychophysical tasks which they thought had some chance of finding something interesting. Rather than committing to a single method (e.g. repeating a well-known color discrimination task hundreds of times to have enough statistical power to find a small effect), we instead furbished the house we were staying at with numerous laptops running continuously, displaying experiments. When we had, e.g. the ayahuasca sessions, we would have a part of the house dedicated to be a safe container with the help of an experienced facilitator (who was on board with what we were trying to do) and the rest of the place functioning as a kind of “museum of consciousness” with interactive experiments we thought would synergize in an interesting way with the state of consciousness. When you felt you were “high enough” for the experiments to work, you could walk around the house trying out a number of them and focusing on the ones which felt most interesting and synergistic with your current elevated mindset. This way, we were able to go through about a hundred different approaches in the span of an hour. The downside is “not that much data for any given experiment” but the upside is “the experiments we did end up focusing on were precisely those that had the greatest chance to show us something interesting about the state of consciousness”.
And at our Canada 5-MeO-DMT retreat, we explored a range of visual stimuli while on the state. I literally had the chance to sit with two amazing psychedelic replicators (Symmetric Vision and Rudolfs Balcers) for three hours while stabilizing our states to a ~medium dose of 5-MeO-DMT (i.e. re-hitting the vaporizer to more-or-less achieve a constant desirable high, sometimes pushing into high dose territory, sometimes comings almost all the way down, but mostly being at a “I feel incredibly high but somehow I can still speak” functional level for the work) while looking at pretty visuals and talking, in real time, to a recorder, and to each other, trying to get a really good look at what was going on, with the intention of figuring out the core principles underpinning the phenomenality of the state (see my essay: Visual Effects of 5-MeO-DMT). This time around, we looked at a wide range of visual illusions while on 5-MeO-DMT in order to then visualize what they look liked. Of note is Anna Eiserbeck’s writeup of what the “rotating snakes” illusion look like on 5-MeO-DMT. It is worth saying that Anna was actually one of the organizers of MoC7!
Our 2026 Tepoztlán retreat allowed us to do in an even more exalted way: we had three weeks before the meditation retreat to work together as a group to lay the groundwork of the research methods. And the fact that people there were quite technically capable and/or had significant experience with Jhāna and/or 5-MeO-DMT and/or many other psychedelics, allowed us to build experiments as educated guesses rather than as shots in the dark.
We also used this retreat to evaluate the entries to QRI’s The Jhana Visualization Competition 2026 (see results), which we were able to do with a decent level of epistemic fortitude because the submissions were rated by participants who had just come out of the meditation retreat, and who were subsequently interviewed by two advanced meditators to determine “which Jhāna they actually experienced”. This approach was patterned around our 2023 QRI Psychedelic Cryptography contest (see the Vice Magazine article about it).
For an overview of the retreat as a whole, I recommend reading my writeup: The QRI Tepoztlán Retreat of 2026. I should note that what has been published in the website so far is merely the first tranche of essays and simulations. We will release a second tranche of content focused on a more rigorous academic-style analysis of the data we gathered, and then a third tranche that aims to share as much of the data we collected as possible (once we have lightly curated it to preserve anonymity for those who request it) so that the broader consciousness research community can make use of it (and hopefully discover something interesting).
Are DMT Entities Real?
Right before I presented, Niffe Hermansson delivered a beautiful presentation titled “Traces of the Other”. He is a senior researcher at the recently established Trace Institute, founded by Donald Hoffman, where Robert Prentner (one of the organizers of MoC7) is also a senior researcher. The institute is developing mathematical models that place conscious observers at the foundations of science. Niffe’s talk explored how Conscious Agent Theory might help us investigate DMT entity encounters, translating the question of whether the entities are “real” into more precise questions about their dynamics (e.g. whether they exhibit stable structures over time, respond to information hidden from the participant, or show nontrivial correlations across observers). I find this direction exciting because it opens up a way to investigate some of the strangest features of consciousness with mathematical precision while keeping the ontological questions open. And I can’t help but point out I deeply resonated with something he said: “Remember Contact, the movie? When Jodie Foster is overwhelmed by the beauty and strangeness of what she is seeing and says ‘they should have sent a poet’? Well, we’ve been sending poets to report back on the DMT realm for the last 60 years… it’s time we send some mathematicians instead.” I should note Niffe is a friend and dear co-traveler of exotic states of consciousness, and he actually was one of the participants of our summer HEART retreat. 🙂
Solving the Phenomenal Boundary Problem: Can We Formalize the Topological Approach?
On the last day of the conference, I also co-presented with Chris Percy about our efforts to formalize the Topological Solution to the Boundary Problem, which we develop in a forthcoming chapter for a Journal of Consciousness Studies collection edited by David Skrbina and Tam Hunt. The presentation focused on the mathematical formalization of the binding and boundary problems. The basic question is: how does physics carve itself into distinct subjects of experience, each with a rich internal world? We propose a five-step framework for making answers precise: specify the physical substrate and its mathematical representation, define its dynamics, establish which transformations preserve the relevant structure, construct the segmentation, and explain what the resulting segments mean phenomenologically. We then examine what makes a proposed segmentation plausible, including whether it supports complex internal dynamics, explains phenomenal unity, has non-arbitrary causal significance, and preserves experiential boundaries across reference frames (some of these requirements are more contestable than others). Topology seems particularly promising here, although the deeper challenge is explaining how spatially distributed physical activity constitutes a unified experience with causal power, which motivates our exploration of nonclassical physics (are coming out as quantum mind folks? Only time will tell!). The aim is to get theories to specify exactly what binds, where the boundaries come from, and how we could eventually test whether those structures correspond to experiences.
Visualizing Multi-Modal Data
Yet another of the HEART retreat participants gave a lecture at MoC7, in fact the closing showcase presentation of the whole conference: Teodora Vukovik. Her talk, “An AI-powered Data Science Platform for Multimodal Human Understanding”, introduced a platform she is developing to bring physiological measurements, speech, behavior, and first-person reports into a shared temporal framework (so that, for example, a reported sudden change in experience can be studied alongside corresponding changes in EEG, heart rate variability, and facial expression). She demonstrated the current prototype and discussed early pilot studies, and this included applications to the study of meditation and psychedelics, as well as possible uses in psychiatry. This is particularly relevant to what we are doing at HEART, where sometimes it’s much more powerful to visually inspect the data all at once than to simply run a regression analysis on it (similarly to what I did in Stimulus Grid).
To end this write-up, I want to thank all of the participants and organizers of MoC7 (though, if we are playing favorites, I’d love to give a special thanks to Camilo Miguel Signorelli and Johannes Kleiner, who somehow manage to mix a great vibe, organizational acumen, and impressive academic rigor all at the same time, without ever coming across as pompous or elitist – it’s always mood boosting to interact them and they are truly lovely people!).
Also huge thanks to the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science for making this happen. I had a blast!
Infinite bliss!
Andrés 🙂
*At the 2026 Computational Neurophenomenology Cabin Workshop in Austria earlier this year (which was awesome btw! consider applying next year if you’re into these topics, see below) Robert Chis-Ciure (see his interview with Michael Levin) argued that it makes no sense to say things like “the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT” in order to refer to “what it is like to be on 5-MeO-DMT”. The suffix -ology means “the field of study”. So “phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT” would be “the study of this substance” rather than the very feeling of being on it. Instead, he argued, we should use “phenomenality” in this context. I’ve been trying to abide by this onerous vocabulary switch ever since, even though my auto-correct keeps telling me it’s not a real word (and thus I often misspell it!), and people are a bit confused when I use it in a context where its meaning is not easily pragmatically inferred. That said… be the change you want to see the world and all that.
** Here is the application I submitted for the Computational Neurophenomenology Cabin Workshop outlining Parametrized Dynamic Phenomenology as a method and research program in December of 2025 (which thankfully got accepted and I ended up going and having a wonderful time!):
> Your application should contain the following:
- > A brief statement of motivation for attending the workshop (a few paragraphs at most).
Since I was an undergraduate at Stanford back in (class of 2013) I’ve been thinking about how to “mathematize consciousness”. One of the most interesting threads of research I pursued soon after was to focus on describing the phenomenal character (the structural properties of experience) rather than the intentional content (its aboutness/the concrete semantic referents). For example in 2016 I focused on classifying the visual patterns one experiences while on psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT (taken at various legal retreats in Mexico). I found early on that psilocybin’s so-called “visual texture repetition” wasn’t merely about translation symmetry (or even mirror symmetry) but in fact included all 17 wallpaper symmetry groups. To me this was a really significant finding: whatever process underpins the formation of psychedelic visuals is going on, it is clearly general enough to be able to converge on any of the possible 2D Euclidean symmetries. More so, I noticed that DMT’s visuals can often express hyperbolic symmetries. I then went on to document the mathematical properties of visuals at different “levels” of the DMT experience (later presented in my well-known lecture at Harvard; see also: Symmetry Perception and Psychedelic Experience). What is exciting about these observations is that they ground the states with mathematical features anyone can verify, something that previously would have been described as “incomprehensible” or “beyond grasp”. My sense from the beginning has always been that (1) mathematical frameworks and vocabulary can be enormously generative and explanatory in phenomenology, and (2) at the deepest level, we will ultimately find out that consciousness can be understood mathematically (not unlike how science’s best story of the universe, the Standard Model, is itself a mathematical framework).
A few other relevant pointers: My first effort to “mathematize” psychedelic phenomenology was a “mongrel-based psychophysics” paradigm designed to characterize the statistical features that become more ore less detectable while on psychedelics. I also came up with the concept of “psychedelic cryptography“ (see Vice article about it) – this might seem trivial or just for fun, but there is a deep concept behind it. Namely, the approach is to identify the computational advantages of non-ordinary states of consciousness as a window into the mathematical properties of consciousness. We shouldn’t only focus on how different states of consciousness impair information processing, but also on how they enhance it.
At QRI, we have been developing mathematical models of consciousness and mathematically-grounded frameworks for characterizing phenomenology for years. And I think that this workshop might be a perfect venue to stress-test these ideas with other serious researchers and their approaches. While we do engage and collaborate with academics, we rarely have a chance to present our ideas in a more intimate and friendly setting where they can be discussed at length (e.g. outside conferences and online).
> A proposal of at least one, maximum two questions or topics for discussion sessions. Please explain:
- > Why you consider these worth discussing?
- > How they fit the idea of the workshop as explained above?
A selection of topics will be made according to the interest and expertise of the participants. Note that the proposal need not originate from your own work.
The central topic I would like to bring to the table is what we have recently been calling the “Parameterized Dynamic Phenomenology” paradigm. This is a new concept handle we’re developing at QRI, which packages a number of principles, which I will now proceed to articulate. First, we represent certain sensory stimuli as a data structure. Second, we use a parametrized mathematically-defined operation to modify this data structure in a dynamic way. Third, we translate the modified data structure into a representation of phenomenology. And fourth, we match parameters to different states of consciousness. In this way, we can directly interpret the characteristic changes introduced by a given state of consciousness in terms of precise and interpretable modifications to an underlying dynamical system.
Our classic example is QRI’s Tracer Tool. Here we ask participants to “replicate” the “visual tracers” (aka. trails) they experienced while on e.g. LSD using the tool. When they are happy with the replication, they can submit the parameters to us (note: we have options for participants to do this while on the state, after the state having seen the input image, and after the fact without having seen the image while on the state). Since the inception of the tool, the data we have gathered suggests that different substances produce different kinds of tracers. Of note is that DMT produces “higher frequency” tracers relative to psilocybin or LSD (~30hz vs. ~15hz). Additionally, we have seen that DMT tends to generate fast, flickering, color-anti-color alternating tracers, whereas 5-MeO-DMT tends to produce “solid color” tracer effects (e.g. the tracer of the blue ball used as the default stimuli in the tool looks blue-yellow-blue-etc. on DMT, but “solid blue” on 5-MeO-DMT). We believe that this data can be very powerful to reverse-engineer how these substances affect the dynamic organization of perception (admittedly this remains as data- we must then figure out how to explain this data using a theory, such as e.g. applying a coupling kernel to a network of coupled oscillators structured to operate in accordance with principles of predictive processing).
More recently, we have released the “Oscilleditor”. This belongs squarely within the PDP paradigm: we’re gathering replications of all manners of exotic states of consciousness in terms of coupling kernels, drifting effects, and deep-dream filters. Finally, we recently conducted a pilot study using the Oscilleditor by asking 200+ highly experienced psychonauts to rate these replications by how “LSD-like”, “DMT-like”, etc. each of them is and then inferring what combinations of parameters predict which state of consciousness. Our preliminary results are very promising: we can tell what drug a given visual replication belongs to with just a few key features. See our tutorial and preliminary data walkthrough.
The secondary topic/question is: “can we make inferences about the properties of the medium of computation that consciousness is involved with using PDP?” Here is a concrete example: properties suggestive of nonlinear optics seem to show up while on DMT. You can certainly train a classical neural network to model non-linear optical behaviors – but if you excite a network that was trained to model e.g. visual imagery a human might normally encounter, there is no reason why the “artifacts” that show up in its excited state would happen to resemble specific physical behavior characteristic of a given specific substrate e.g. water wave-based computers might have predictable artifacts (e.g. certain kinds of splashing and foaming). But according to many highly experienced, rational, STEM-trained DMT users we have interviewed and to whom we have shown replications characteristic of different physical substrates, nonlinear optical artifacts tend to be highlighted as uniquely accurate. In other words, we think we might be able to find compelling evidence for the kind of computer that the nervous system is by studying the mathematical properties of its artifacts under perturbation.
How does this fit into the idea of the workshop? ([think/discuss] “fundamental questions related to mathematical phenomenology, computational phenomenology, neurophenomenology, and their interrelations“) – both of these topics sit at the center of all of mathematical phenomenology, computational phenomenology, and neurophenomenology.
> For most discussion sessions, we will have kick-off talks given by the participants (30 minutes). Please specify:
- > For which of your discussion proposals you would be willing to give a talk.
I’d like to present the Parameterized Dynamic Phenomenology (PDP) paradigm.
- > An abstract of the introductory part of your talk.
I’ll introduce the Parameterized Dynamic Phenomenology (PDP) paradigm through concrete examples from QRI’s psychophysics research toolkit. PDP is a methodological framework with four core components: (1) representing sensory stimuli as a data structure, (2) using parameterized mathematically-defined operations to modify this structure dynamically, (3) translating the modified structure into a representation of phenomenology, and (4) systematically matching parameters to different states of consciousness. Our classic example is the Tracer Tool, which asks participants to replicate the “visual tracers” (trails) they experienced on psychedelics like LSD or DMT. Participants adjust parameters until satisfied with their replication, then submit these parameters to us. We offer multiple protocols: replication during the altered state, after the state while viewing the input image, or retrospectively without the image. The accumulated data reveals substance-specific signatures – DMT produces higher frequency tracers (~30Hz) compared to psilocybin or LSD (~15Hz), and generates fast, flickering color-anticolor alternating patterns, whereas 5-MeO-DMT produces “solid color” effects. I’ll explain how PDP addresses a fundamental methodological challenge: moving from subjective reports to quantifiable mathematical structures. When someone accurately replicates their phenomenology by manipulating specific parameters in a generative model we completely understand, this reveals the mathematical features actually present in their experience – providing much stronger evidence than verbal description alone. The parameters themselves (coupling strengths, temporal frequencies, spatial decay functions) become hypotheses about the computational properties of consciousness.
- > An abstract or description of the part of your talk which focuses on your own thoughts or on the existing approach. (In case you choose to present an existing approach, please specify one specific work whose main idea you find particularly relevant/enlightening w.r.t. the proposed topic and upon which you would like to base the second part of your talk.)
I would like to show preliminary empirical results of our paradigm using the Oscilleditor in particular. Based on our legal exploratory psychedelic retreat work (see: HEART) and the data we have gathered so far with our surveys and tools, we posit that DMT and 5-MeO-DMT effects can be characterized in terms of distinct “coupling kernel signatures”. In simple terms, it seems that 5-MeO-DMT has a generalized effect where the oscillators that compose the vibrations of experience want to “couple together” at all scales and across systems. In contrast, DMT’s characteristic coupling kernel is best described as one where each oscillator wants to be “in opposite phase to its immediate neighbors and in the same phase as its neighbors once removed”. More on this here: