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Dr. Valerie Bonnelle: The autonomic nervous system and peak experience
152 Plays13 days ago
On this episode, Rolf and Joe talk to Dr. Valerie Bonnelle, a cognitive neuroscientist interested in the relation of processes in the body to peak experiences. We discuss her paper showing how heart rate variability and the interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems closely tracks phenomenological experience during the use of the psychedelic DMT.
Bonnelle, V., Feilding, A., Rosas, F. E., Nutt, D. J., Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Timmermann, C. (2024). Autonomic nervous system activity correlates with peak experiences induced by DMT and predicts increases in well-being. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 38(10), 887-896.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Valerie Bunnell and Heart Rate Variability
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to Cognation. I'm your host, Joe Hardy. And I'm Rolf Nelson. And on this episode, we are joined by Dr. Valerie Bunnell, who is a neuroscientist who's done some really fascinating research recently into how the heart and heart rate variability in particular play into our experience of the world and how these there sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems And the interaction between those two can influence things like peak experiences. So when you have an experience that is out of the ordinary and reduces your sense of ego, how is the heart involved in that? And what can we learn from our bodies and our hearts about our experience of the world, emotionally and mentally?
00:01:02
Speaker
So really some fascinating research and excited to get into that.
Valerie's Path to Neuroscience
00:01:06
Speaker
So Valerie, thanks for being on the show. Thank you, John. Thank you, Rolf. Good to have you here. So, Valerie, yeah, maybe we could start by just getting into your background. How did you become interested in neuroscience? Like, what was the origin? What's your origin story?
00:01:21
Speaker
Right. Well, it's a bit of a complicated story because it didn't come straightforward. I became aware of neuroscience, of this field of research, quite... late, I mean after i actually started to study chemistry and physics at university level and because back then it was just I was good in science and it was just the logic continuation of of my training but I was not that much into it so I got to my master in in chemistry actually organic chemistry
00:01:52
Speaker
And ah then at this time I realized that actually there was something called neuroscience and I got completely hooked by it. And um so the reason why is that I think that there are two reasons. First is that I always had been fascinated by altered state of consciousness.
00:02:14
Speaker
And then of course, as many people ah in uni, you know, I started to discover altered states personally and and I was very interested by the the fact that you can alter you your brain chemistry and your whole reality completely shifts. So that made me think what is exactly the nature of reality if we can shift it so easily with by by altering our or brain chemistry.
00:02:40
Speaker
So I really wanted to to to study that. um And then on the other side there was also the mental health aspect I grew up with a sister who had serious mental health issues and like she had she started with anorexia and then developed schizophrenia later on and ah that left me and my whole family I think a bit like we didn't understand what was going on at all.
00:03:08
Speaker
um And to me, neuroscience offered the hope of, you know, trying to, ah well, better understand what was going on in in the brain and maybe work towards helping him find solutions for for what was happening to her, basically.
00:03:26
Speaker
So that's these two two angles.
Defining Altered States of Consciousness
00:03:29
Speaker
So go back to to me after my ah chemistry degree, I managed to shift to jump to a neuroscience master.
00:03:39
Speaker
So back then, i was it was quite a traumatic time, I think, because I started, that was the only training I could find, it was working on rats, on the animal model of depression, using some terrible thing like maternal separation, so basically you remove pups away from them from their mother and that messed them up.
00:04:01
Speaker
and they develop some kind of depression-like traits. So that yes, that's what I did at the beginning, which was not something I enjoyed, obviously. um And then I found a my partner ah then moved to the UK. So I was in France back then, in Lyon.
00:04:20
Speaker
And so he found a job in the UK. So I managed to find a PhD at the Imperial College there and still working in rats, animal models, and things like that.
00:04:33
Speaker
And ah again, i hated it. I actually developed even an allergy to rodents. I mean, it was absolutely awful. And quite miraculously, actually, my um supervisor, it's not nice to say that, but he got sacked off the em Imperial College. And I had to decide whether I would continue the project I was doing or start again from scratch another project.
00:04:58
Speaker
And to me that was really a no-brainer. And then I was very lucky to to find a group that adopted me and I started a whole new project in cognitive neuroscience. And this is really where I started to enjoy so much what I was doing. So I learned neuroimaging, fMRI, and I was working on traumatic brain injury, trying to understand um the relationship between cognitive deficits after a brain injury and and changes in in brain circuitry basically.
00:05:35
Speaker
So yeah, that's I think that's the story. I love that story. That's, ah you know, I think it's helpful for people who are coming up in science to, to hear that it's not always like a totally straightforward path. I think sometimes we tell stories about our ah interests and backgrounds that make it sound like everything was preordained and we knew exactly what we were doing all along. But sometimes the, you know, serendipity and, uh,
00:06:10
Speaker
you know, things happen that just help us along the way. So I'm glad that that worked out for you and got you to a place that you're doing research that you're interested in and and enjoy. So that's great. So I could jump in too with, so you said one of the things that got you really interested was altered states of consciousness.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I've always found this to be, a i mean, and I teach consciousness and and I've been following it for years. But the the actual definition or trying to get your hands on what it means to have an altered state of consciousness can be sort of tricky. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what you mean by that and what sorts of accompanying features go along with an altered state of consciousness.
00:06:56
Speaker
Oh, wow. That's a tricky question because... I know it's a tricky question and I hope i i'm not I don't want to put you on the spot too much here because I know that's yeah's a big question. ah Originally, it was just my understanding of that. you know It was um my understanding of the sort of experiences I could have, for instance, listening to to music and and going so deep into states that is ah no longer my normal functioning and I become and i would become completely absorbed into... ah and yeah another another level of experience. I think it's a level, to me, it was corresponding an intensity of experience to start with.
00:07:36
Speaker
Then, of course, experiencing with with psychedelics, um it took another dimension, which is ah basically the whole structure that we think, the things that we think are solid in reality, ah become completely fluid and start shifting and ah and perceptions, the senses that we think we can so rely on right now in our daily life actually become um completely different as well. So there there is, it's it's like we think we we are on on something stable and suddenly the carpet is removed from under us. And that that's that's what it is to to me then. Of course, there are the academic definitions
00:08:19
Speaker
all the scales to measure to measure it. I don't know if that's that's your your question. If you if um maybe. Yeah, broad I mean, just sort of broadly, yeah, including, you know, scales that are used to measure it. And yeah, if you wanted to talk about any anything that you've used that you've found helpful, that would be great too.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yes, I mean, the the scale I've ah used that I think is the most useful, has shown as proved the most useful in my research was the is the outer state of Consciousness Questionnaire and that measures 11 dimensions I think of the outer states.
00:08:57
Speaker
um So ah some of them are about aspects of a mystical type of experience, spirituality, insights, um I don't have all the dimensions here, but the the important thing about this scale is that there are also um like more challenging aspects of these experiences so they're they're like uh anxiety and uh what is there as well disembodiment i think um is one that's well we can't really say if it's negative or or positive but um time dilation or or or time yes yes there is also yeah time in space uh
00:09:46
Speaker
um deletion and um yeah but the idea is you're going through life you have this sense of consciousness a perception things you're thinking about the way you're feeling your body the way you're feeling the sense of time you don't even realize that some for the most part that you have an ego that you have a an ex something that is the experience or of the experience.
The Heart's Role in Consciousness
00:10:12
Speaker
And then suddenly you have taken a ah drug or you're listening some music or you're having an near-death experience or something crazy happens to you and you're jolted out of that day-to-day experience and you have something that's non-ordinary and you realize wow my ordinary day-to-day experience is not reality it's just my experience of reality it's not the same thing and yeah that can be a profound profound shift when it happens absolutely yeah
00:10:52
Speaker
So really interesting stuff that you're working on these days has to do with how altered states of consciousness and peak experiences that are associated with those involve the body, which is, I think, really, really cool. think a lot of times in cognitive science research,
00:11:15
Speaker
we talk about the brain. So it's all about the brain and we think of it almost like you're a brain on a stick as a human being. And that's kind of one of the themes of our our show here actually is that consciousness and and cognition and experience is beyond the the brain it's not just about the brain it's the body it even extends beyond the body we we did an episode uh it's actually episode 40. uh if you want to go back and listen to that from july 23rd 2022 on embodied cognition uh with dr sheila mccrine and jennifer fugate and uh
00:11:53
Speaker
really cool episode but the the idea of embodied cognition you know where your body is part of your sense making of course i mean your senses your sensory systems extend past the brain obviously but also just the way that your body and your whole your gut but you know we're gonna talk about now your heart are really deeply involved in your sense of the world and your experience of the world.
00:12:23
Speaker
So you do want to talk a bit about that, about how the the heart is involved in these experiences and and how you became interested in that as well. So how I become interested in that, I think that's that's interesting one because it's it's really out of personal experience. And I think that's an interesting approach because often in neuroscience and in academia in general, general it's all about what we've read and what people have done before. And then we follow up on that, but it's really about our own ah experience of things, our direct experience, right? And and and this particular shift in my interests as, you know, I was completely focused on the brain, as you say, as a neuroscientist, as most neuroscientists are.
00:13:05
Speaker
um And suddenly realized, hold on, that there is there must be more and to the story than there's the brain. So one thing was, I think, a massive life-changing psychedelic experience I had as a volunteer for a clinical study in in London.
00:13:28
Speaker
And during this experience, I think I really felt ah everything that I was like shifted from my brain to to All my experience became, ah how and it felt like it was happening from my heart basically, it it really felt like that.
00:13:47
Speaker
ah Like the brain became empty, sort of, you know, or just mirroring, just mirroring what was happening but the body became fully alive and I had all sorts of experiences of shifting into different states of embodiment, different beings, different how does that feel to be this and that animal. It was fascinating really, but completely embodied and um and and and I could really feel the experience, yes, at the level of my heart, my heart beats where were almost orchestrating the experience in a way.
00:14:27
Speaker
So when I came back from this experience, I i thought, oh my God, that's what like what happened actually is it felt like it had happened in my heart rather than in my brain.
Research on DMT and Cardiac Activity
00:14:38
Speaker
So I said, I want to research that stuff.
00:14:41
Speaker
What's happening in the heart? Is it just um just a... like misinterpretation or it was actually all happening in my brain or, but yes, I, uh, from, from there, I wanted to, to, to research that. And then there was also another aspect, um, which came from my meditation practice, which is very simply to realize how, um, the posture of your body affects the quality of your meditation, of your meditation state. So if you are, uh, you shift a little bit, you're not quite straight, your colon is not quite erect, then your mind is going to start
00:15:16
Speaker
to to wonder you're going to have like a... it's going to affect your ability to to concentrate and meditate and straight away if you correct your your you posture then you're back into getting this this right state of mind for the for the meditation and and I found that quite fascinating as well.
00:15:35
Speaker
um We always think yes that's the brain who controls the body but actually it goes, definitely it goes both ways. um So I was a scientific officer at the Becler Foundation, which is an organization, foundation that's initiated, initiated I don't know what's the status of this foundation now, but that works in psychedelic research.
00:16:01
Speaker
And so I was involved in in many different projects all to do with the the brain and and so and psychedelics.
00:16:12
Speaker
And so I think it was in 2021, 2022 maybe, I started ah to really want to to conduct my own research, looking at the heart during these experiences.
00:16:25
Speaker
And um what happened then is that there was no much funding for me to do that at the Berkeley Foundation. And ah so I had to be a bit resourceful, but actually that's what that worked out pretty well because most studies, whether fMRI or EEG,
00:16:42
Speaker
um they also use They also measure cardiac activity just to correct the the signal that they get from from from the brain. basically normally it's but it's just um They don't actually use that for analysis, they just use that to remove noise basically. But actually, so this data was available, so I've been able to reach out to researchers at the Imperial College, so most notably Chris Timmerman.
00:17:13
Speaker
And so he agreed to share his so ECG electrocardiogram data with me. And so that was data he collected during while people were receiving DMT.
00:17:31
Speaker
and And yeah, so from there I was able to to do the analysis to to look at what was happening in the heart, in cardiac activity, while people before and during the DMT experience.
00:17:46
Speaker
Okay, so and this is from your from the 2024 paper and this is what Joe and I have both read. And just for listeners too, I'll read the title of the paper too.
00:17:57
Speaker
So it's autonomic nervous system activity correlates with peak experiences induced by DMT and predicts increases in well-being. yeah Yeah. And so the, the, the idea is that from what, from what you're saying, this is a study in which they were under, they wanted to look at what was happening in the brain when people did DMT.
00:18:22
Speaker
And so they put people in the scanner, uh, an fMRI scanner, functional magnetic resonance imaging. They also did EEG as well, right? On the same one. Yeah.
00:18:33
Speaker
so EEG and so electroencephalography as well as fMRI together at the same time which is already like a big undertaking and then what you're saying is just by chance they happen to be getting this heart measurement of the ECG measurement just as a happy side effect of of the research that they were doing and wanting to correct things that are happening in the fMRI yeah and EEG so That's really cool because I didn't realize that when I was reading it, that that was just that was a nice side effect of just the protocol. and so In this study then, half the people received DMT and half the people received placebo, right? Or is it or was it a crossover?
00:19:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's a crossover. so That's the same people who who did a placebo session and a DMT session. Okay, so but not in this not in the same session, two different two different time periods. I didn't know going into the session, which session was which, right?
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, but quickly became pretty obvious. Yeah, that's the yeah and functional unblinding thing is is is a topic, obviously, and ah in psychedelics. And maybe you could just quickly describe for those are who are not familiar with the substance DMT what what its effects are.
00:19:52
Speaker
So DMT, that's a classical psychedelic that acts on the serotonin 2A receptor, so as do classical psychedelics. And this one is quite different to ah other most well-known psychedelics like psilocybin, so the magic mushrooms, or LSD, in that it has a very short-acting effects. So it's the the experience after injection starts in one or two minutes and it lasts about twenty twenty five minutes.
Therapeutic Potential of DMT
00:20:29
Speaker
And after half an hour, people are back to to normal states. So in in that aspect, in terms of in terms of therapy, it seems like a ah more easily administered um substance than, say, psilocybin, which can take a fall a full day's worth of preparation and take everything out of your day, right?
00:20:53
Speaker
So DMT, relatively short-lasting, intense, but short-lasting. I don't think it means it needs less preparation. Okay. um But, um and I mean, research indicates, i was skeptical initially, research indicates that it does seem to work as an antidepressant.
00:21:15
Speaker
i ah The reason I was skeptical is that I think the time you you have in the experience is important because it's not only about the drug and the and the chemistry and and and as when you take an antidepressant and then ah it changes your mood and all that. It's it's different with psychedelics. It's actually the the experience itself that' that affects you and the insights you get out of the experience.
00:21:39
Speaker
So um obviously if you are in a six hour long so ah six hour long experience, you you are more likely to have to go deeper and have maybe not different is not the right word but have more different sort of insights have a journey that is more easy also to make sense of I think sometimes with DMT people might have like very ah ah violent shifts of consciousness that it can be difficult to to integrate maybe but um it seems like I was wrong because like ah ah data shows that people respond quite well to it so
00:22:17
Speaker
it's That's
Understanding Heart Rate Variability and ANS Balance
00:22:18
Speaker
interesting. Yes, though, some trade offs between DMT and other psychedelics that have been shown to be effective in depression, too. And I think there's that recent paper out in Nature, maybe that's partially what you're referring to with the effectiveness of DMT, too, showing that even in these shorter sessions, too, it can be an effective treatment as effective as psilocybin for yeah major intractable depression.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yes, there is that and there is also 5-MeO-DMT now that's that has been trialed for depression with positive results. And that's the that's the proprietary version of DMT?
00:22:58
Speaker
No, 5-MeO-DMT is a different molecule. Oh, okay. Yeah. theyre They're, they're, they're actually quite a bit. They have the same part of the same name and part of the same structure, but they're quite, quite different experiences, both short, shorter acting psychedelics.
00:23:17
Speaker
Okay. um Okay, great. But so before we dive into the hypotheses and and the research, might be helpful to talk a little bit about some concepts that will be helpful to understand. One is heart rate variability.
00:23:37
Speaker
So this is one of the things you were looking at in this study. you talk a little bit about heart rate variability, what it is, where it comes from, and maybe a little bit about why it's important? You know what, Joe? Actually, I didn't start with heart rate variability because when I um started in this field, I was very confused by what exactly is heart rate variability, because every time I was looking at a paper that was different form of heart rate, different measure, and it did it was never clear really what the hell business this measure is and what does it reflect.
00:24:09
Speaker
i mean, of course, well, we know that the heart rate, what's happening is that the heart rate is under the influence of the sympathetic nervous system. which is our fight and flight response. So whenever we are undergoing a stress response, that's how sympathetic nervous system that kicks in um and that stimulates our heart rate to beat faster and to help recruit energy to to act upon, this yeah, to escape the situation or
00:24:44
Speaker
And then we have the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the also called the rest and digest system, and that's the recovery system. So after a stress response, then the parasympathetic system kicks in to ah to help um return to homeostasis, so to a normal balance of of the equilibrium of the cardiac activity.
00:25:10
Speaker
And what's happening is that the heart is constantly under the effect of these two systems and um and there is a natural effects of ah increase and decrease of heart beats, ah heart rates basically.
00:25:30
Speaker
um So if you pay attention to, for instance, if you try to do to slow breathe, you will see that during When you inhale, your heartbeats tend to accelerate, and when you exhale, your heartbeats tend to slow down. So this is theres this natural variability that we call heart rate variability and that we study using all sorts of different measures, and that's where things get a bit a bit confusing.
00:25:59
Speaker
um And the reason why I'm saying I didn't use heart rate variability to start with is because I was not particularly interested in heart rate variability in itself. What I wanted to know is what's happening to the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
00:26:14
Speaker
And um I came across this, ah back then I was using a software of cardiac activity analysis called Cubios, and that's offered ah the and analysis of ECG data that's in a proprietary way, sorry,
00:26:34
Speaker
propatory way so we that ah was extracting an index of sympathetic activity and parasympathetic activity. So um they do explain exactly how they do that. It's a bit complex, so maybe I don't need to enter into the details now, but that's the approach I used for this for this paper. Rather than use HRV, classical HRV measures,
00:26:57
Speaker
I use this these indexes ah to to really measure separately the activity of of of these two branches of the autonomic nervous system.
00:27:08
Speaker
Yes, just trying to get this straight too, because I can see heart rate variability on my Fitbit, but I never really knew exactly what it meant, right? um So from the way that you are talking about it, and just correct me if I'm wrong, if you had lower heart rate variability, that would indicate that you're maybe being dominated by parasympathetic or sympathetic responses for a prolonged amount of time, but with higher heart rate variability,
00:27:38
Speaker
you're going back and forth between parasympathetic and sympathetic response. Is that correct? still um Yeah, so there are different elements here, and that's where things get a bit complicated. So there is, on one hand, if you are ah under sympathetic dominance, so when people are under stress or even chronic stress, always in a state of sympathetic activation, what's happening is your um youre you've got low heart rate variability because you your heart rate, so there is this dominance here instead of natural balance between the the two systems and you lose this this nice variability and this variability is quite a mark of a healthy state so we can use, that's why yeah hjavi is often used as a marker of thumb of yeah of your health state basically. What's happening if you are in ah parasympathetic dominance is that you you still have this variability because it's, um um there is something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which is what I mentioned when you take
00:28:45
Speaker
when you breathe in your heart rate increases, when you breathe out, it tends to reduce. And this is under parasympathetic control. So that's a bit, that's, is the bit that is, that gets a bit tricky to to understand is that.
00:29:01
Speaker
And I don't think I've ever seen anything very clearly explained about that. ah But so what I'm saying here is my understanding of things, okay? um My understanding is that HRV is optimal when your your these two branches of the nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic, are in balance.
00:29:21
Speaker
And the the way to understand that is a bit um if you consider like the chord of a guitar, you know, either it's too tight and you lose some of the natural oscillation or it's too loose and and you you lose the right tone, you know, that that it's it's it's you lose a dynamic effect. So what you want is really like this this right optimal balance.
00:29:48
Speaker
And um What happens in current research or in this field is that often we say, well, parasympathetic activity is good, it's a relaxation, it's increased HRV.
00:30:01
Speaker
um But my understanding is that that's not the case because if you go too much into parasympathetic activity, then you sort of lose this high amplitude oscillations that are ah allowed parasympathetic activity.
00:30:21
Speaker
healthy level of of sympathetic tone basically. I hope that makes sense. It's a bit, ah it's a tricky um thing two to get to your head around. It took me a while and I'm not even completely sure it's a perfectly accurate ah um um view, but that's that's what I've been able to make out of of this field so far. So we'll see. It's a work in progress, I would say.
Meditation and Nervous System Balance
00:30:51
Speaker
And one of the things that ah I found interesting too is looking at your at your website, you talked about the relationship between this parasympathetic and sympathetic alteration as being a bit like Zen processes that neither you know too aggressive nor too passive, right? So sort of the middle ground.
00:31:14
Speaker
um I wonder if you could say, and i don't I don't know if you're thinking of this in a broader sense or how how far you might take this analogy, but I thought it was kind of useful to think about this. ah How do you see Zen as being in accordance with this kind of these kinds of processes?
00:31:34
Speaker
Well, I think Zen is a great example because it's often people think that meditation is ah like relaxation, that you sort of really calm down and go into this very ah relaxed state. And and and so they they they think definitely meditation is something to do with parasympathetic activation and all that.
00:31:54
Speaker
And actually, so I'm a Zen practitioner and... um What's happening in in Zen practice is that you really need to maintain a high level of alertness. It's not just relaxation is actually your mind is fully alert um and Your whole body is so is actually very alert too. You can't just drop and start falling asleep or you know, it's you just I think it's the the image of the you know, a cat that is, it looks like it's sleeping, but actually it's ready to pounce at any time, you know, it's just this level of readiness and also relaxation. So that's this tension here between, um yeah, between a alertness and and relaxation. It's just, at at that there is a sweet spot that every Zen practitioner aim to to achieve, to to be fully present in the moment.
00:32:52
Speaker
Because if you if you if you go too much into the relaxation, then you you you lose your level of engagement with with the experience. And on the other hand, if you are too much into the the alertness, then you you you are just in um you lose your your self-regulation ability and you're just too much on edge to just reflect what's happening. So basically that's...
00:33:22
Speaker
that's the idea and I think it's not only in Zen meditation it's probably in every forms of contemplative practice I think you find that everywhere but it's probably a misunderstanding of some some of the and way people tend to to to to approach to meditation as something that's going to calm people down or something like that that's
00:33:54
Speaker
I really like the way you're thinking about that. That's a really interesting way of describing what's going on during a ah successful meditation session, I suppose. and And it strikes me that this might also apply to, say, a state of flow, too, where, I mean, the whole idea is you're not too excited and not too relaxed. You're sort of hitting that middle ground, and that's where a lot of optimal experience takes place.
00:34:20
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think we yeah, what you're saying is is really interesting in in the sort of
00:34:29
Speaker
day-to-day pop psychology view of meditation, we think of it as like a way to relax. When in fact, the goal of meditation is to achieve a state of awakeness, alertness that can transcend into something that goes beyond the ordinary into some some of these altered states of consciousness and non-ordinary experiences.
00:34:56
Speaker
And... it requires a level of attention and tension as well as relaxed state. So those things are not necessarily the opposite. They are not the opposite ends of a spectrum.
00:35:13
Speaker
There are, in fact, interrelated processes that can coexist. And so that's where the relationship between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system is also like that.
00:35:27
Speaker
We think of you know the sympathetic nervous system when when it's activated, so-called fight or flight response. So you see a threat and you your heart rate goes up.
00:35:39
Speaker
You become highly alert to the threat and vigilant. And that's that's the the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Your heart rate goes up. The parasympathetic nervous system,
00:35:52
Speaker
is the so-called rest and digest axis of the nervous system, the peripheral nervous system. But they are not just one against the other, right? I think the way we commonly think about it is sympathetic nervous system goes up and it's like excitatory and then the parasympathetic nervous system goes up and it's inhibitory.
00:36:19
Speaker
But really they are... interacting separable separate systems and that's really important and crucial to understand and what you're suggesting is you want balance and activation in both systems to achieve these interesting states optimal states yeah optimal i would call them optimal states that it's not because it can be very ordinary it doesn't it doesn't um It can be just simple presence, you know, it's that it's not, it doesn't mean for outer states, it's it's ah it's just an optimal level of of being able to respond to a situation and and to engage with the external environment and also be able to regulate your your your emotional experience. So that's, yeah, it's a state of resilience
00:37:14
Speaker
And then um you can you can go further around on this on this axis of of balance where both become ah more activated. And that's the theory I had is that that's where you can you can gate to go to states of high activation that could be normally slightly overwhelming. If if you go like if you have very stressful experience, normally you're going overwhelmed and that's not very pleasant. But if if it's met with a healthy level of parasympathetic activity, then you can go into these states of peak experience, mystical experience that are super intense, but also very blissful and and actually peaceful.
Sympathetic-Parasympathetic Balance in Experiences
00:37:58
Speaker
That's probably a good entree into the results of the study. Do you want to talk a bit about what you found?
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think I should explain first what's happening with... with
00:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, maybe let's explain what, because it's part it's part of the same thing. So what I found is something that we sort of ah knew already based on um um the physiological phenomenology of psychotic experiences is that initially there is a stress response that is associated with this state. So ah cardiac activity increase and there are all other signs of ah sympathetic activation.
00:38:42
Speaker
um And ah so that we knew. What we didn't know is how does that relate to the content of the psychotic experience itself. And what was quite neat here is that the increase in cardiac activity, so in sympathetic activity actually ah following DMT injection, ah mapped exactly onto the participants' reports of the intensity of the experience.
00:39:08
Speaker
like it was exactly the same profile. um So ah that was super interesting in itself. I think it's interesting to note at this stage that iss there are other ah ways to achieve and
00:39:28
Speaker
non-ordinary states of consciousness that's that involve directly manipulat manipulating the state of the sympathetic nervous system. So for instance, through breath work, you can start, you know, breathing hyperventilating like that, or practices that have been used for millennia, like sweat load or fast or things that put your body under intense stress.
00:39:53
Speaker
um And so three you sort of hijack you you hijack your natural stress response to go into these states of altered state of consciousness.
00:40:04
Speaker
And um what's what's happening that is actually interesting and and that's really, I think that makes the most of the this article, is what's following this initial peak of sympathetic activity, is that there is a phase of recovery that's called, ah that has been referred to as vagal rebound. So vagal is another name for parasympathetic activity.
00:40:34
Speaker
And ah so basically after this initial peak, as this initial stress response, the parasympathetic activity bounce back to a higher level than than baseline. And there is a period, a window where you end up having both states of, ah dual activation so you are your sympathetic activity is still quite high and your parasympathetic activity has also kicked in so you are in a state where both of them are activated and my theory was that under this state if you can find this right balance between the two if if between the two branches and the two are activated and that's when
00:41:18
Speaker
pick ah mystical experiences can happen basically because the physiology you is is ripe to to to lead to this state basically. um You've got the intensity of the emotional experience that is carried by the sympathetic nervous system and you've got the ability to experience that in a way that is safe and sort of ah you you can engage with that level of intensity without freaking out basically you can that's the sort of counterpart of yeah the letting go process i suppose it's this you can only do that if you feel safe right and that's this notion that's the sympathtic parasympathetic nervous system brings this sense of or is associated at least with the sense of of safety
00:42:09
Speaker
And have you personally noticed other, because you you're alluding to other sorts of experiences where you're activating sympathetic and then and then later an activation of parasympathetic, have you noticed um circumstances in which, ah since you've kind of had this theory in mind, in which you can kind of see this happening? So you know I'm imagining even something like going into a hot sauna for a period of time where you're initially activating, and maybe that's not a good example, I don't know what,
00:42:38
Speaker
I don't know exactly what makes the best example here, but just imagining sympathetic activity first, right, and then and then later on a surge in parasympathetic activity. And that during that window is when you're seeing sort of most a state of mind that's sort of more receptive to
00:43:03
Speaker
extraordinary kinds of experiences. Mm-hmm. Are there other, and and I guess I'm asking, are there other situations where we might see this in, maybe not as potent does as with DMT, but you might see this in smaller measures in everyday life?
00:43:21
Speaker
So actually we've wrote a review, a narrative review with Martha Heavenith and one of her colleagues and that's now available as pre-primed so I don't know if we can put a link somewhere. Anyway, it's and and it's and it's discussing the the the similarity with what's so this state in psychedelics but also what I said so with breathwork they've so this particular group have been studying holotropic breathwork which is a practice of hyperventilation to reach outer state of consciousness and they've started to measure cardiac activity and they see um exactly sort of what I've observed with with with DMT that people who is who go into the states of of
00:44:13
Speaker
blissful or mystical experience have this increased vagal activity. In everyday life, I was tempted to choose think that maybe like the runner high is something that I find quite interesting. You know, you go into this ah like running and and then people report often that they feel so good and great. I mean, I know it's also to do with the release of endorphins and stuff following the um intense activity but all that think is is connected to the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system actually a recovery process following intense stress so all the endorphins and all that that's part of the recovery process
00:44:53
Speaker
um ah and so yeah I think i think we there's a lot of a everyday life situation where where this happens I think it's also why some people get hooked up on on high intensity experiences and because they yeah they feel good afterwards and that's what's happening is that probably the the recovery process that is that feels good.
00:45:22
Speaker
So as you're thinking about other ways to engage this balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity in the nervous system, um you have talked a bit about a meditation practice called Tonglen and how that might be a good practice to support this kind of tone between these two systems. do you want to talk a bit about that and what you're thinking there?
00:45:54
Speaker
So the thing with Tonglen is I find it quite fascinating because that's a meditation that's about um so training or our ego to revert its not normal function of trying to achieve ah like positive experience for for oneself and try to avoid ah being hurt and avoid pain at all costs. And basically you train your your your your mind to to engage with pain and suffering, to bring it to yourself and to give out support and and and care and all that. so
00:46:35
Speaker
So it's a complete inversion of our natural logic. it's It's a Buddhist practice, I should i should say, Tibetan practice.
00:46:46
Speaker
And it's just the breath. um So on the in-breath, you connect to pains that can be your own or that can be someone else.
00:46:58
Speaker
something that is difficult, something that makes you feel ah quite, you know, it's uncomfortable, maybe vulnerability and stuff like that.
00:47:09
Speaker
And on the out-breath, you send out release and care and and um what has never been reported or or discussed or anything like that is that it maps super well on um what's happening at the level of the autonomic nervous system, right? I mentioned that on the in-breath, naturally ah um cardiac activity increase and we go into this elevation of sympathetic activity, which is to do with our, um like it would increase our ability to experience intensity of emotional intensity. So that's how you help um that basically, how to explain that?
00:47:52
Speaker
how you connect with with your emotions, you engage with with an emotion that is intense, with with a sympathetic response, right? And then on the out-breath, that's where you engage parasympathetic nervous system and ah you regulate this emotion, you learn to regulate and sense, care and and all that.
00:48:16
Speaker
And... um I found that interesting because I think that's what that's the basis of what compassion is is all about. And so Tonglen is is is a technique of training. And it's, well, it's tricky because it's coming from another story and and another research i've I've done recently where I found that people with higher level of compassion have this...
00:48:47
Speaker
natural high fluctuations in heart rate variability, large fluctuations and this ability to really engage in higher states of a um increased heart rates, reduction in heart rate. so that's so Yeah, so it's getting... I don't know if it all makes sense, but basically that's why I was interested in in approaching Tonglen because to me it's it's like a practice that is perfectly aligned with with what I've observed at the at the physiological level, but nobody else has ever met this connection, it seems. um And I think that maybe by using it, being aware of of actually what's happening, we can help train people into this practice much better.
VR and Enhanced Meditation Practices
00:49:41
Speaker
um Helping them first with their breathing, to engage in the right breathing, to have an economic balance, and then bring out ah bring the intention on top of the breathing so that they can really fully engage with this with this practice.
00:49:56
Speaker
that's see the idea i i hope that makes sense and that's yeah i mean as if i'm understanding it correctly you're you're really saying terms of the heart and the activity of the heart when you talk about balance it doesn't mean that the balance the balance is not just a steady state the balance is actually a wave it's going up and it's coming down and it's going up and it's coming down and it's an interplay between these different processes in the brain and in the body and they need to be in balance and they're not in balance in just one instant they're the the balance actually comes over time so you have to actually look over time to understand whether someone's heart and their mind and their intention are in balance and in this compassion practice could be a way to both
00:50:46
Speaker
ah support that, engage that, but also measure that and and and learn about how that these systems work and interact. Yeah, there's that. But I mean, to me, the most the most important aspect of this, and and and that's where as I suppose I've shifted a bit my my where I come from. I mean, I think I'm less and less interested in the research for the research ah and more and more into actually actually doing something that is meaningful and helpful
00:51:17
Speaker
to help build a practice that to me is so beneficial because it helps you know train a virtue that is so much needed um in the world. And and I think that I've been quite frustrated in my career as a neuroscientist so far because it seems like always the aim is about publishing and getting funding and then you publish more and and then you actually never see the effects of of your of your work in in the real world, right, or rarely. And um
00:51:47
Speaker
um so the mechanism, I mean, it's cool to understand how it works and all that, but what's really drive me is the application, is what are we doing with this understanding and how how can we actually put that together to to build an experience or a training program or something that that helps people um engage with this practice because it's a difficult practice to engage with very difficult.
00:52:11
Speaker
um So now we have I don't know if we're going into that maybe that's a bit too much for the virtual reality experience. That's maybe not. No, I think it's cool. I mean, I you know that when I started working on virtual reality stuff six years ago, more now,
00:52:31
Speaker
um The first thing I tried to do was build a Tonglen application to help support that type of meditation practice.
00:52:44
Speaker
And that was based on some advice from a couple of different people that we were talking to at the time, that that might be an interesting application in virtual reality. we did something that wasn't successful and that was just a little prototype but didn't work for a number of reasons.
00:53:01
Speaker
So I'm curious to hear a little bit about what you're imagining there and what you but you're thinking. So what I'm thinking is is, as I said, first to to to have um a program that is like um go beyond slightly the the traditional Tonglen because it would add this ah training the breath first So preparing the the the physiological states basically before the practice. And I think actually, if you think about that, that's something that is done in in instance certain traditions. For instance, the practice of pranayama, that's the yoga of the breath. And it's something that is used normally before meditation. So you do pranayama so that you can enter a deeper meditation states.
00:53:50
Speaker
And that has been understood you know, yogis in India and all that. But in our approach of meditation today, we kind of lost track of why are people doing that. and But here it's just sort of coming back together, thanks to the to the to the science, I suppose, to to show that actually we want to prepare the physiological states because that's a state that is optimal. So with the breathing, with the right breathing, getting this balance, ah this autonomic balance.
00:54:21
Speaker
And ah because then we are able to engage in an emotional state and a ability to regulate our emotion, but also to connect with our emotion. And so that's going to be the first part of the experience.
00:54:35
Speaker
um And then there will be the visualization, helping people um um because that's something that can that can be difficult to visualize. Normally in in the Tonglen practice, you visualize your in-breath as something bit aversive, dark smoke or something that is not something you would normally want to breathe in, right? That represents all these difficult emotions, like something mucky and heavy and hot.
00:55:06
Speaker
And on the out breath, you you you see something fresh and nice and lovely that comes out. And people can struggle to to just see that in their head. So the the VR ah here is is is great because you can actually help people see their breath.
00:55:22
Speaker
um so what we use is um how our motion that's people do in vr so that's they map match their motion with their breathing uh through their arm motion yeah and uh and so we use the arm motion to to to track the the breathing in vr and to uh well, it hasn't been, we haven't done that yet, is the the texture of it, but that's the next step of what what we need to work on ah to find the right texture ah in VR and help with this process. And so, yeah, I should say that also we are using this,
00:56:12
Speaker
pneumodellic aesthetic which is quite unique in in virtual reality and that's Joe you'll be so much better than me to explain what it is clearly.
00:56:28
Speaker
I don't know about that, but yeah, I mean, pneumodellic aesthetic is basically an approach to virtual reality where people are our and beings are represented as essentially like cloud bodies and breaking down the barriers between the self and other visually and representationally so that you can get the sense that You're not separate from other people in the world around you.
00:56:54
Speaker
And it's been used in ah in a few different projects. And we've shown that it's beneficial for helping people, for example, who are facing life-threatening illnesses like cancer.
00:57:08
Speaker
sort of feel a little bit less anxious and less depressed have a little bit better mental health related well-being when done in a group setting so when people come together in groups and have these pneumodellic experiences which can be
00:57:28
Speaker
give you a sense of what we refer to self-transcendence. So people have these experiences where they sort of go past their normal egoic experience and feel more connected to each other and the world around them and something greater than themselves.
00:57:41
Speaker
And people find this helpful. And it's it's always a way to sort of ah visually but also auditorily and sensorily through motion and movement get uh enter some of these states ah that you might otherwise experience and in some of these other altered states of consciousness
00:58:07
Speaker
um and the great thing is that uh what we've uh shown recently is that during these experiences um So what we did is we measured cardiac activity when people do these pneumodelic experiences and we've found that there is an increase ah and variation in heart rates viability in increasing amplitude in heart rate viability. So that's what I was referring to before, right? It's beneficial state of experience. It shows more balance in the autonomic nervous system as people ah report increased level of self transcendence.
00:58:48
Speaker
So, ah and ah what was interesting as well is that people with higher compassion traits at baseline, so which was measured with with questionnaire at baseline, showed even larger fluctuations during the the experience. So it seems that maybe it could be something that can be trained, this level of of increased amplitude in in heart rate variability, to to develop this this compassionate state. I mean, that's that's the idea um and something that's, yeah, I'm looking forward to test.
00:59:27
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, maybe that's a great place to sort of wrap things up. A question we always like to ask is, what are you really excited about in terms of what you're doing and what's next?
00:59:39
Speaker
you know You were just talking about something, maybe that's it, but or is it something else? is what What are you really excited about in terms of your work and what's coming up? Well, I'm very excited about this project and the the thing is that I really enjoy it. I should say that for the past two years now, I went on ah independent researcher mode, which is super ah rewarding in a way and and and also a bit stressful because financial issues.
01:00:11
Speaker
But ah it's such a nice thing to have this freedom of of being able to just um follow a thread and and see where it leads and and um so you know I don't have to get to have like plans and where exactly for the moment I've got this Tonglen project which is very close to my heart and i want to see
01:00:36
Speaker
I want to see that ah through and and after that we'll see where it leads I think it's um Well, actually, the next step would be group experiences of... um in Tonglen, but like shared intentions, things like that. I mean, there are so much exciting things to do in VR. ah But I think I'm going to, in the future, might get more and more into the design of experiences and maybe less and less into the science of things or maybe like a side thing because it's
Closing Remarks and Future Discussions
01:01:09
Speaker
interesting. But I'm very fascinated by developing these experiences and creating this...
01:01:14
Speaker
this container for people to have these incredible experiences. I think that's that's what's really exciting me the most right now.
01:01:24
Speaker
That's great. That's fantastic. Well, Valerie, thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it. And yeah, looking forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you. Thank you, both of you.