I first met Nicco Reggente and Leo Christov-Moore while waiting in line for a tattoo at a party in Malibu, California. I’d never wanted a tattoo before that night, but I had just separated with someone after an intense betrayal – the kind that shakes your model of the world and makes you question whether you can trust anyone, or yourself, ever again. The theme of the party was “the unmasking” of a side of yourself that usually remains hidden to others, which felt like a lot of pressure, but a pop-up artist was offering tattoos for free. Leo sat down on the couch where I was waiting and shared his fries with me. He was wearing nylon leggings with illustrated anatomy of the thighs and hamstrings – an ironic nod to the party theme. Then Nicco showed up, so convincingly dressed as a street thug that I mistook him for one immediately. We discovered a shared interest in interoception and consciousness – in fact, they were neuroscientists who studied the very topic I’d been writing about for the past six years. When they told me goodbye that night, they embraced me like family. I got a tattoo of a snake on my inner left wrist and it hasn’t felt trite for a single second since I got it. 

One reason breakups can be so painful, especially if they involve betrayal, is because our models of the world – including the social world – are built on “priors,” or the beliefs we’ve formed around what ought to happen given our history plus the circumstances we’re currently in. They’re our way of predicting the world, of reducing uncertainty and staying safe while achieving our goals. When something happens that shatters that model, we question everything that once made us feel safe. 

This can look like post-traumatic stress, or – when we manage to handle it the right way – post-traumatic growth (PTSG). In fact, people can hold maladaptive priors that lead to all kinds of conditions: anxiety, depression, and OCD, to name a few. When we move from rigid patterns of thought to a different experience of ourselves as agents in the world, however, we can update those beliefs. This is one reason why psychedelic experiences can be so transformative: they can acutely and powerfully update our models, often in profoundly positive ways. But you don’t need plant medicine to do this – you just need an impactful experience. 

As it turns out, Reggente and Christov-Moore study non-pharmacological ways of updating prior beliefs. Their work at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS) in Santa Monica is part of a larger wave of research on “technodelics,” immersive digital experiences that induce altered states of consciousness. They are currently testing four modalities for well-being outcomes: the MindGym (or Infinity Cube), aesthetic chills, stroboscopic light, and the Regenesis Pod. The aim is to find out whether some of these tools may confer mental health benefits similar to those achieved through psychedelic therapy or meditation. 

The MindGym is a 7-foot chamber lined with mirrors and LED lights. It is, in essence, an audio-visual trip that allegedly decreases anxiety while enhancing cognitive performance. The “frisson device” delivers aesthetic chills – a physiological response similar to fever chills, but from art – while paired with emotional stimuli like music, triggering an expansion in neural complexity, experience of self-transcendence, and reductions in depression that may be on par with what’s typically seen under classical psychedelics. 

Meanwhile, stroboscopic flashing light paired with music is said to entrain a user’s brainwaves, downregulate the stress response, and ease anxiety. In 2024, IACS and colleagues published a study in Scientific Reports showing that just five minutes of audio-visual stimulation through such means may rival the benefits of traditional breath-focused meditation. Up next for study is the Regenesis Pod, originally developed by tennis pro Novak Djokovic to improve his performance, which delivers sound therapy, infrared heating, haptic vibration, and visual entrainment to help its users update their priors on a deep, embodied level. 

“Technodelics are not a replacement for psychedelics but part of an arsenal,” says Christov-Moore. For people who fear there is “no way to get off the ride” once you take a psychedelic, he says, the digital route promises more agency. “Maybe there are people who are more willing to undergo psychedelic therapy if they can test drive through technodelics.”

In some cases, it may even be possible to personalize technodelic experiences. “It’s not the molecule,” Reggente says, referring to how transformative insights and belief updating occur; “it’s accessing the right states of neural activity. You can create mimetic states that confer similar phenomenology as psychedelics.” Doing so, he says, is “more conducive to bespoke journeys that have built-in integration.”

One of the most unique and compelling findings from their studies in recent years has been the discovery that aesthetic chills (the goosebumps we get from music, for example) appear to be “micro-mystical experiences,” eliciting the same neural, phenomenological, and behavioral effects as psychedelics. With the frisson device, they’ve been able to enhance the self-transcendence, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight people experience during chills-inducing music sessions. They’ve begun conceptualizing these types of chills as the “body’s belief update receipt,” a somatic signal that one’s perceptual model has shifted in light of a new perspective – almost like an insight that begins in the body and propagates to the mind when the right stimulus provides the “missing puzzle piece.” 

In fact, Christov-Moore notes that converging research from physical rehabilitation therapy and cognitive computational neurosciences — which is an interdisciplinary field that uses computer-based and mathematical models to explain how the human brain processes information, generates behavior, and performs complex cognitive tasks like perception, memory, and decision-making — shows that, to some extent, beliefs are not just in the mind but deeply embodied. “If the body responds in a way to molecules, then that is a belief.” Interventions like technodelics may help the brain and body reorganize maladaptive beliefs to exist in greater harmony with one’s surroundings, for example through greater interoceptive awareness. “We are systems of priors, and those priors can be revised.”

Like mystical experiences, technodelics seem to let us step outside of whatever story we’re currently telling ourselves about who we are, who others are, how the world is. “For a moment,” Reggente says, “you can see and appreciate the potential for different perspectives.”   

But this is where a few questions arise around the “technodelic hype”: from a research perspective, how do scientists tackle issues like functional unblinding, which has haunted psychedelic research for decades? And from a clinical perspective, what are the implications of offering technodelic services before thorough research has been conducted to determine safety and efficacy? What’s more, as wellness centers, digital startups, and tech firms start offering these services – sometimes in combination with psychedelic therapy – will patients and clients come to rely more heavily on screentime, or will they be nudged away from it by a different experience of themselves? Either way, if we’re not intentional about it, we may run the collective risk of expecting the same thing from technodelics that we expected from psychedelics – that they’ll save the world.  

Perhaps these tools should be sold as gentle mirrors, not magic pills: if you want change, you already hold all the power you need within you.

One thing that helped me shift from PTSD to PTSG after my breakup that winter was the sudden realization, during a sober hike in nature, that I myself had betrayed a partner before. That’s how I got wise to what was going on: I recognized the signs. At the time, I was young and justified the behavior; now I see it as self-sabotage. Still, I have a vivid, personal memory of what motivated me to do it – and if I can hold compassion for myself around that choice, how could I not hold it for this person who had betrayed me years later? A compassionate view doesn’t condone harmful behavior; it simply helps us relate to the suffering that caused it. I was able to end that connection with dignity and grace, in a way that felt like a new experience of myself. 

Eight months after we met, Leo and Nicco were standing over me, hooking me up to the stroboscopic light device. There was something gentle about their presence. They presented a menu of 11-minute journey options to me, from “relaxing” to “peak experience.” I chose “flow.”

“How was your trip?” Leo asked, adjusting the device, knowing I’d been on the road for the past few weeks with a new friend. 

I rested a limb on the arm of the chair, exposing the tattoo. Like someone who shows up every day for life, perhaps naively, I said:

“I’m energized and exhausted and in love.”

💌 If you loved this email, forward it to a psychonaut in your life.

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