Neuroscientist Uses VR to Study Why Psychedelics Make Us Trip

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STORY UPDATE:

Since this story was originally published by DoubleBlind in 2024, Tipado has completed this phase of the VR immersion study, testing these ideas in real time and using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to observe participants’ brain activity while immersed in virtual environments. Tipado tells DoubleBlind that he is now preparing the results for publication. While he could not share specific findings ahead of the publish date (which he estimates will be in the spring or early summer), he said the data revealed several significant results. This VR immersion research will continue later this year, but the next phase will incorporate two psychedelics into the mix.

ORIGINAL STORY BELOW:

Despite imbibing psychedelics for thousands of years, humans still don’t understand how these drugs affect our brains or, more importantly, how they make us trip. Zeus Tipado, a PhD student at Maastricht University, thinks virtual reality may provide key answers to this puzzle since it’s the closest thing we have to a trip without the psychedelics.

Tipado belongs to a growing group of neuroscientists who suspect psychedelics may reveal critical neural structures we previously had no framework for recognizing. Namely, he suspects the human mind is layered like artificial intelligence systems, with higher- and lower-order functions to keep the whole thing running smoothly. In fact, he even suspects the brain perceives reality by predictively constructing it in real-time, again, just like AI images or text generators do.

“Our brain is easily deceived as to what reality is,” Tipado told New Scientist. 

Tipado imagines the brain in a hierarchy of structures. Higher levels include abstractions, belief systems, and other concepts. Lower levels include direct physical observations, such as colors or sounds. According to this model, our brains usually do pretty well at separating lower levels of brain function from higher levels.

Psychedelics, such as dimethyltryptamine, better known as DMT, skew our perceptions by entangling the higher and lower orders of the mind. Essentially, after dosing DMT, low-level perceptions such as colors may get reshuffled into the higher-order regions of the brain. Meanwhile, higher-level functions such as spirituality may get funneled into the lower levels. This jumbling of functions may lead to, say, a kaleidoscopic experience where one “touched the divine,” when neither gods nor kaleidoscopes were present at the time. 

“Whenever you take psychedelics, the location of this information gets mixed up,” Tipado said to New Scientist. “It’s like putting a PlayStation 5 disc in a PlayStation 2. It’s not compatible. That’s why we have visual experiences that are very counterintuitive.”

And just as eyes are windows to the soul, Tipado believes the eyes may give us insights into psychedelic processes, too. His research focuses on amacrine cells in the retina, which act as “filters” for what we see and don’t see. Previous studies with mice that lack amacrine cells show they can perceive certain parts of objects in the dark, which may be a phenomenon similar to so-called closed-eye visuals in the psychedelics community.

Further, amacrine cells are packed with 5-HT or serotonin receptors. Serotonin is a crucial component for psychedelic experiences, so psychedelic substances altering amacrine cells may contribute to visuals and synesthesia seen while under the influence. Amacrine cells may also be central to psychedelic therapy’s success, as stronger visual hallucinations often correlate with better therapeutic outcomes, as shown in one 2018 study from British researchers at Exeter University and Imperial College London.

Tipado’s research seeks to bridge the knowledge gaps between serotonin, amacrine cells, and the predictive generation of reality in our brains. In his research, subjects wear a VR headset before, during, and after consuming DMT. Using near-infrared spectroscopy, Tipado’s team will beam light through subjects’ brains. Brain activity will determine which frequencies of light can be absorbed or detected, aiming for a better understanding of how these neural networks operate.

Studying both the mind and psychedelics through virtual reality isn’t such a far-fetched idea. In 2020, Cornell University began studying VR as a way to duplicate the mystical experiences of psychedelics. According to that study, stimulating psychedelia in VR can produce many of the same feelings and after-study behaviors observed in psychedelic therapy patients. 

One way Tipado’s research can be applied is in mental health. Karl Friston at University College London and Robin Carhart-Harris at the University of California, San Francisco originally developed the “relaxed beliefs under psychedelics” model, or REBUS. This model, which intersects with Tipado’s layered hierarchy model, says psychedelics loosen the hold our higher-level mind has over us, allowing lower-level cognition to take prominence.

For mental health, our higher-level thinking may get in the way of treatments. Stubborn beliefs, prejudices, or deep-rooted fears that resist treatments may fall apart under a psychedelic substance, opening the mind and the heart to other ways of feeling and perceiving. This is precisely how scientists believe MDMA works to treat PTSD: It rearranges orders of thinking and perception, creating a “window” or “critical period” where the brain can become temporarily malleable – just long enough to undergo significant treatment progress.

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