The Psychedelic Evidence Atlas

Psychedelic Evidence Updates

Dated surveillance bulletins recording new empirical findings, methodological advances, registered research and the manuscript decisions that follow.

How to read these updates

Experience, mechanism and ontology are different claims.

Each bulletin records what was studied, what was observed and what the result cannot establish. A neural signature does not prove an interpretation of experience, and a reported presence does not establish an externally existing entity.

DMT surveillance · 2 October 2026

DMT Research Update

A new preprint proposes a time-resolved measure of changing brain dynamics during the DMT experience. It is methodologically interesting, but it does not alter the Evidence Atlas's conclusions.

Bottom line

This preprint is a modest methodological development, not proof of a DMT mechanism or externally existing entities. It does not change the book's central conclusions.

Research watch

One development, kept in its proper category

A new analysis assessed on its methods, findings and limits without extending it into phenomenological or ontological claims.

1. Preprint — not peer reviewed · Posted to bioRxiv on 28 September 2026

Spiral brain dynamics during DMT offset and recovery

Sawicka and colleagues reanalysed randomised, within-subject placebo-controlled fMRI data from healthy volunteers. Seventeen participants contributed to the principal analysis and fourteen to the time-resolved analysis. This is a new analysis of an existing dataset, not a new cohort.

Empirical finding

DMT increased two measures of rotational cortical activity—spiral vorticity and spatial spiral-vorticity dispersion—while reducing temporal irreversibility. The largest changes occurred in visual, default-mode, frontoparietal and dorsal-attention networks. Changes in the spiral measures broadly followed reported subjective intensity, with correlations of approximately 0.57 to 0.59. The strongest spatial reorganisation appeared during offset and recovery rather than at peak subjective intensity.

Authors' interpretation

The authors suggest that these measures may provide a time-resolved neural signature of the DMT state and that recovery could involve active network restabilisation rather than a simple reversal of peak effects.

What is genuinely new

The novelty lies in applying vorticity-based measures to DMT fMRI and in identifying pronounced reorganisation after subjective intensity has begun to decline. It is a methodological development, not a new account of DMT entities, recurring environments or visual motifs.

What this contributes

The study adds a potentially useful time-resolved measure of DMT-related brain dynamics and draws attention to offset and recovery as analytically important phases.

Limits

The principal sample was 17 participants and the time-resolved analysis used 14. This secondary analysis was not an independent replication, and the paper does not report preregistration of the analysis. BOLD phase-flow measures are indirect and depend on preprocessing, cortical-flatmap projection and analytic choices. The headline time-course correlations use 28 group-average time points and should not be treated as independent participant-level replication. Phenomenology was represented chiefly by scalar intensity; recurring visual structures, environments, communications and entity encounters were not compared.

Conflicts and transparency

Robin Carhart-Harris reports scientific-advisory roles with Entropy Neurodynamics, Red Light Holland, Otsuka and AtaiBeckley. The other authors declare no competing interests. Analysis code is publicly available; participant data are available only by request.

Editorial impact

Monitor pending peer review. The study reanalyses a small existing dataset and does not change the Evidence Atlas's treatment of phenomenology, recurring structures or entity encounters.

Source: Gabriela Sawicka et al. (2026), Spiral brain dynamics track the temporal unfolding of subjective intensity during the N,N-dimethyltryptamine experience. bioRxiv. DOI: 10.64898/2026.09.22.753116

Decisions

Manuscript action ledger

Actions arising from this surveillance brief, without converting methodological progress into stronger ontological claims.

Decision	Action
DMT volume	No manuscript revision currently required.
Review status	Monitor pending peer review.
Excluded claim	Do not add the undated Noonautics/Trace Institute page as evidence: it provides no registered protocol, sample, comparator, analysis plan, ethics information or results.

DMT surveillance · 25 September 2026

DMT Research Brief

This first edition establishes a short 2026 baseline. One genuinely new paper appeared this week; four earlier items are included because they materially advance the methods needed to study DMT phenomenology and recurring encounters.

Bottom line

The strongest development is methodological. The literature is beginning to move from colourful inventories of entities toward temporal structure, common measurement and testable competing explanations. Nothing here establishes that reported beings are externally real, and nothing yet demonstrates reproducible shared content between independent participants.

Research watch

5 developments, kept in their proper category

One new analysis and four baseline items relevant to studying DMT phenomenology, recurring encounters and competing explanations.

1. Peer-reviewed research · Published online 22 September 2026

DMT–harmine produces faster but more structured brain-state sequences

Niedernhuber and colleagues reanalysed high-density EEG from 25 healthy participants in a double-blind, randomised crossover study comparing DMT plus harmine, harmine alone and placebo.

Empirical finding

DMT–harmine shortened EEG microstates while increasing their frequency and sequence complexity. Curiously, transitions also became less random—a more varied repertoire, but with greater short-range predictability.

What this contributes

This complicates the loose claim that psychedelic consciousness is merely “more entropic.” Neural activity was simultaneously more dynamic and more sequentially organised.

Limits

This was DMT combined with harmine, so the result cannot automatically be assigned to DMT alone. The small sample came from an existing formulation trial, making this a new analysis rather than a new cohort. EEG microstates are descriptive signatures, not established representations of particular experiences or entities. Two authors co-founded Reconnect Labs, which develops psychedelic medicines; code and data are available.

Source: Journal of Psychopharmacology paper

2. Peer-reviewed primary research · 14 July 2026

A structured sequence preceding perceived presences

Sanders and colleagues conducted detailed micro-phenomenological interviews after 23 experienced psychedelic users received 20 mg intravenous DMT during combined fMRI–EEG scanning. Perceived presences appeared in 17 interviews.

Empirical finding

Bodily changes generally arose before visual and auditory effects. Perceived presences ordinarily appeared only after multisensory effects and three-dimensional spatial organisation had developed. The researchers extracted 125 phenomenological categories, with substantial-to-high inter-rater agreement.

What this contributes

Rather than merely counting aliens, guides or beings, the paper maps the construction sequence of the experience. It suggests that perceived agency may be a higher-order feature of an already assembled immersive world, rather than an isolated hallucination dropped into otherwise ordinary perception.

Limits

Exploratory analysis; small and preselected sample; psychedelic-naïve participants were excluded; interviews relied on recall immediately after the event; scanner noise, blindfolding and repeated intensity questions could shape the experience. This extends an existing experimental cohort rather than providing an independent replication. Several authors report psychedelic-industry advisory work; the study also had private philanthropic funding.

Source: Neuroscience of Consciousness paper

3. Peer-reviewed methods paper · 2 September 2026

A better instrument for comparing recurring visual structures

Hewitt, Seth and Schwartzman introduce the Six-Dimensional Visual Hallucination Questionnaire, measuring geometric content, semantic content, detail, vividness, entropy and focality. Validation used three studies totalling 962 responses, including images, stroboscopic hallucinations and retrospectively reported psychedelic closed-eye visuals.

Empirical finding

Stroboscopic effects were predominantly vivid, simple and geometric; psychedelic visuals combined geometric structure with greater semantic content, detail and vividness.

What this contributes

It provides a common quantitative vocabulary for comparing visual structure across induction methods. This could improve future attempts to test whether reported “rooms,” tunnels, lattices or architectural spaces genuinely cluster across DMT participants.

Limits

The psychedelic component was retrospective, online and chemically heterogeneous—not a controlled DMT study. High internal consistency came with substantial inter-item redundancy, so the six dimensions are not yet convincingly independent. It measures visual content, not entity agency, communication or ontological status.

Source: Royal Society Open Science paper

4. Prospective Phase I protocol · Registered July 2026; planned start September 2026

The next extended-state DMT study is now registered

A UC San Diego study targets 20 healthy volunteers with prior DMT experience. Participants will receive two continuous intravenous DMT conditions lasting approximately an hour during fMRI. Outcomes include visual phenomenology, immersion, the Autonomous Entity Questionnaire, explicit entity-intensity ratings and follow-up measures.

What this contributes

Unlike earlier feasibility work, this protocol directly prespecifies entity phenomena alongside prolonged-state neuroimaging. It may allow investigators to compare how immersive environments and presences develop while the state is sustained.

Limits

No findings yet. The sample is small and deliberately non-naïve, so expectancy and prior DMT narratives could influence reports. The design can identify associations between experience and brain activity but cannot determine whether perceived entities possess external existence.

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT07693257

5. Theoretical and speculative analyses · 2026 baseline

Two competing explanatory frameworks—neither established

Computational spirits proposes that psychedelic disruption of sensory attenuation, combined with richer or less constrained predictive models, encourages the brain to attribute internally generated agency to a non-self source. Traces of the Other asks whether extended-state DMT could support blinded information-transfer or intersubjective-correlation experiments.

What this contributes

The first framework has value because it produces behavioural and neural predictions. The second is useful insofar as it asks how extraordinary claims could be tested rather than merely asserted.

Limits

Computational spirits contains no new empirical data, no formal mathematical implementation and currently lacks direct measures of several proposed mechanisms. Traces of the Other is a preprint and its claim that DMT exposes normally inaccessible conscious agents remains speculation resting on the contested “conscious realism” framework. There is presently no positive evidence for information originating outside the participant.

Source: Neuroscience of Consciousness paper; PsyArXiv preprint

Decisions

Manuscript action ledger

Actions arising from this surveillance brief, without converting methodological progress into stronger ontological claims.

Decision	Action
Change now	Add a substantive note on the Sanders paper to the entity chapter.
Place carefully	Add the DMT–harmine EEG result under neural dynamics, not ontology.
Monitor	Six-Dimensional Visual Hallucination Questionnaire and the registered extended-state DMT study.
Framework watch	Keep both explanatory frameworks clearly labelled as theoretical or speculative.
Ontological claims	No upgrade: no external reality or reproducible shared content has been demonstrated.

Scope and limits

Surveillance, not advice or endorsement

These bulletins support The Psychedelic Evidence Atlas. They are not medical, psychological or legal advice, and nothing here encourages the obtaining, possession or use of any controlled substance.

The Psychedelic Evidence Atlas Volume III: DMT Corrections & Transparency