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DMT and the Birth of Consciousness: The Birth Echo Hypothesis: A New Theory of Psychedelic Consciousness
21 Plays1 month ago
What if your first psychedelic trip wasn’t in adulthood, but at birth? In this episode, we explore the Birth Echo Hypothesis, a bold new theory proposing that DMT acts as a neurochemical interface between the brain and consciousness itself, triggered during life’s greatest transitions: birth and death. Drawing on neuroscience, developmental psychology, psychedelic research, and evolutionary biology, we ask whether the classic DMT "breakthrough" experience is more than a hallucination, could it be a symbolic memory of our own emergence into the world?
We dive deep into how DMT may shape early sensory development, the strange parallels between neonatal brain states and psychedelic brain scans, and the possibility that this molecule has been guiding consciousness since life began. Featuring ideas inspired by cell assembly theory, the entropic brain model, and archetypal psychology, this episode blends hard science with deep wonder. Whether you're a psychonaut, a scientist, or someone curious about where consciousness comes from, this conversation might just change how you see birth, death, and everything in between.
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Transcript
Introduction to DMT
00:00:01
Tony Montgomery
So today we're going to talk about the psychedelic molecule DMT, NN-dimethyltryptamine. It's one of the most precarious molecule psychedelics out there for for so many different reasons.
Is DMT a gateway to another dimension?
00:00:16
Tony Montgomery
It's also gained a lot of notoriety and um and in fame over the last couple of years, ah mostly for this hypothesis of that it is a a gateway to another dimension of extreme intelligent beings that are ah trying to pass down information.
00:00:35
Tony Montgomery
And although absolutely love that hypothesis um and I hope that it stands the the test of time. And that is the hypothesis that that we work with because that is extremely extremely interesting and and very cool, much cooler than the hypothesis that I am going to present today.
00:00:53
Tony Montgomery
um But the only big issue i have with that is that it's it's not really testable. And it also just doesn't make um that much sense from an evolutionary perspective.
00:01:04
Tony Montgomery
and
Exploring DMT through science and experience
00:01:05
Tony Montgomery
And what we'll go over today within this talk is the idea of the the neuroscience, evolution, um origins of life, ah all these all these things that we have foundational research on can start to build the premise of what DMT, the molecule, um is, does ah for for humanity, for for the world, um and just kind of exploring that through a very scientific lens, but also through a lens of um being an experienced user of of DMT and and psychedelics and understanding the
00:01:44
Tony Montgomery
um symbolism and the entities and and what's going on and just trying to bring all these ideas together in a very symbiotic science-backed way um so that we can study these things. that's That's the one thing I really like about my hypothesis is that um it is it is something that we can actually have tangible, objective, and subjective research on to kind of um either disprove it and shift our attention more towards the alien intelligence hypothesis or or prove it and turn it into a theory that we continue to test and test and test.
00:02:22
Tony Montgomery
um
Hypothesis: DMT as an interface to consciousness
00:02:23
Tony Montgomery
So the the hypothesis that that I've come up with is um that DMT is an interface from birth um to consciousness.
00:02:33
Tony Montgomery
And Jeff Lerner, M.D.: And i'll go through the research of of DMT during the birth process um during near death experiences all the research that we have to kind of back that up and also how the entities um align with this theory Jeff Lerner, M.D.:
00:02:54
Tony Montgomery
DMT being released ah and through birth and how that kind of turns on the conscious experience um for for us. So, you know, that's one of the things, the the hard problem consciousness remains a central challenge to to neuroscience. And um there's so many things like dream states, imagination,
00:03:17
Tony Montgomery
are still incompletely explained, even psychedelics and near death experiences for, for the reasons of not being able to do the research on those and and maybe not having the tools um are hard to explain as well. and And we need to dig deeper into the neurochemical substrates um that can bridge the biology and subjective awareness.
00:03:39
Tony Montgomery
Um, so one of the things with DMT is that it's both one of the most potent naturally occurring psychedelics and an endogenous compound found in in mammals and including human beings and decades of speculation, it's biological function remains unclear.
DMT and foundational consciousness
00:03:57
Tony Montgomery
So what we're going to propose today is a novel theoretical model called the birth echo hypothesis, which posits that DMT acts as a biochemical interface, enabling the brain to access a more fundamental layer of consciousness, particularly during transitional moments such as birth and death, um and even...
00:04:18
Tony Montgomery
to get a little bit more philosophical, maybe that it is the switch of of consciousness. And we'll kind of dive into that um a little bit more. So again, this is highly speculative, theoretical, but we're gonna go over the the science and try to try to back that up as much as possible.
00:04:37
Tony Montgomery
So the um the hypothesis suggests that the archetypal features of the DMT experience, intentional visual symbolism, entity encounters, ego dissolution, ah sensation of return in are not hallucinations in the conventional sense, ah but symbolic reactivations of deeply encoded neurodevelopmental patterns.
00:04:58
Tony Montgomery
um Specifically, going to argue that DMT experience may recapitulate the perceptual and effective environment of the birth process during which the infant's brain is flooded um with DMT.
00:05:14
Tony Montgomery
That can
Psychedelic and neonatal brain comparisons
00:05:15
Tony Montgomery
create this novel sensory input prior to the consolidation of of selfhood and autobiographical memory. And and This interpretation is is also supported by compelling neurophysiological parallels between the neonatal brain and the brain under psychedelics. Both exhibit increased entropy, um reduced integrity of the default mode network, elevated cross-modal connectivity, suggesting synesthesia, and minimal narrative self-structure. The implication is that DMT may serve as a neurochemical threshold molecule, um biologically timed to modulate transitions in and out of structured consciousness.
00:05:53
Tony Montgomery
um So building on this framework, we're going to incorporate insights from cell assembly theory, the origins of life literature, that if life is best understood not as a property of individual molecules, but systems capable of storing and transmitting information than DMT due to its structural simplicity, ah ubiquity and live in living organisms, and capacity to modulate high-level cortical integration may have served an unprecedented evolutionary function.
00:06:22
Tony Montgomery
um Synthesize in just two steps from from tryptophan, DMT could have acted as a print a primitive signaling molecule in protocellular assemblies, scaffolding chemical complexity in the same way modulates neural network entropy in the human brain today.
00:06:38
Tony Montgomery
um its role in mediating transitions between order and chaos between unconsciousness and awareness may reflect an evolutionarily conserved interface between molecular structure and conscious experience um so rather than proposing that DMT creates consciousness, I'm suggesting that it may facilitate access to deeper, possibly fundamental layer of reality in which consciousness is a primary feature, um whether viewed through the lens of idealism, um neutral monism, or a complexity science, the hypothesis invites new empirical and philosophical approaches to studying these altered states um and unite in psychedelic neuroscience, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and and
00:07:22
Tony Montgomery
um conscientious theory.
DMT experience and birth correlation
00:07:25
Tony Montgomery
We're trying to reframe DMT not simply as a hallucinogen, but as a bridge biochemical symbolic and ontological between life, death and and mystery of awareness.
00:07:35
Tony Montgomery
So when we're thinking about the the trip in and of itself, um one thing that always comes up is that the ubiquity of everybody kind of having the same trip.
00:07:48
Tony Montgomery
um and And we want to ask ourselves, well, why why is that? Why is that the case? And um the alien intelligence hypothesis says that because we're um getting...
00:07:59
Tony Montgomery
kind of pulled into a dimension and it's the same dimension for everyone where they're giving us these technologies. But my pushback on that is um there's there's two things that happen in every human's life that is ubiquitous around the world, um regardless where you came from. That's birth and that's that's death.
00:08:22
Tony Montgomery
And when we think about birth, we want to think about within the DMT trip is that it starts off very dark and then you start to get pulled into these fractals and and geometries and then you get this breakthrough experience.
00:08:38
Tony Montgomery
um So with the idea that when we ingest or inhale um or intravenously consume DMT, I propose that DMT is taking us back to the memories of birth, of those first initial moments of birth, and then also um until our brain starts to develop the default mode network and our sense of of self.
00:09:04
Tony Montgomery
And we'll get into all that neuroscience and why that's supported. um But from the experience itself, right starts off dark and then it starts to build and then you get this breakthrough experience which is very equivalent to this idea of um in utero and then going through the burden process and breaking through and then when you break through we have these entities that that come about um and before we get into the entities um let's kind of take a step back and think about
00:09:37
Tony Montgomery
birth and and death and how DMT plays a role and how evolutionarily like this starts to make sense. um So. Research has shown that the the enzyme that synthesizes DMT um Indole, thiamine, and methyl transferase, INMT for short, um is something that is elevated in the activity, and the it has elevated activity in the placenta.
00:10:07
Tony Montgomery
um Research has been done to to show that, and some research has also been suggested that it may be um necessary to have these high levels for pregnancy success. um So if you can imagine, as the birthing process takes place,
00:10:22
Tony Montgomery
um You get this big flush of DMT and this is something that we could potentially study in in the mom. um Obviously, for ethical reasons, it would be very hard. But um my my theory behind it is that um there's going to be a ah huge release of DMT um potentially from the mom.
00:10:43
Tony Montgomery
into the placenta. And then that's when you start to get this experience of dark going to light and fractal patterns. And um then you get to this breakthrough. So you're flooded with DMT and um and you break through and then You get held by the doctor, the nurses, um which I think is these entities um that are these insect entities that are kind of cold, um somewhat benevolent, but never really do you harm. They're the ones that are operating on you. They're the ones that are um operating on your brain, operating on ah this or that, the
00:11:25
Tony Montgomery
tearing you down and and bringing you up to rebirth. um Sounds very similar to ah doctors, nurses, midwives. And some of the pushback you'll get is you know How does this transcend through through time?
00:11:38
Tony Montgomery
Because you know we've had ah people having their subjective experience historically documented, talking about the the little people and talking about the insects.
00:11:51
Tony Montgomery
um But we know that the burden process has been the same um since we became bipedal humans. um And there's always going to be a shaman There's always going to be a deliverer. There's always going to be midwives, um ritualistic experiences around the birth.
00:12:11
Tony Montgomery
um So this idea that these entities, it it makes sense because everyone has that same experience of birth and and having these processes. And
DMT's role in sensory integration at birth
00:12:23
Tony Montgomery
then Research has also found that DMT is is found in developing rat brains up to at least 40 days of age throughout the whole brain and speculated that DMT's um neuroplastogenic effects may be involved from birth for neuronal development, maintenance, and and repair.
00:12:44
Tony Montgomery
So so So when we look at the the birth process, right the onset of of light responsiveness in the womb comes late into the third trimester, and that may represent a ah sensory first contact experience of the for the fetus, possibly modulated or enhanced by endogenous neuromodulators like melatonin, DMT, monoamines,
00:13:08
Tony Montgomery
um And then if the DMT release coincides with or facilitates sensory integration at birth, um visual processing may become a key component of the archetypal DMT imagery.
00:13:21
Tony Montgomery
right So the thing that you have to put aside is that we put the the vision and the brain of the baby into our physical and perceptual world, and we just expect it to see exactly what what we're seeing.
00:13:40
Tony Montgomery
um But you can imagine if it gets flooded with DMT and it has and it has through fmri and eeg research it has the same kind of brain lighten up um and neural connectivity that people have on psychedelics that when you come out um you're gonna these crazy visions of who's taking care of you they're not gonna look like humans they're not gonna look like um people you know they're they're not gonna look like
00:14:13
Tony Montgomery
regular um nurse beds or things that they're going to look crazy through these DMT release. um And, and because of that, because of the intensification and emotion sensory data, um the, the intenseness of um coming out that,
00:14:38
Tony Montgomery
the idea that we're going to be able to reconstruct that memory um is is just not going to be there. Right. It's like if when you go to the DMT state, the the fact that you think you're going to remember anything that's in there is because everything's coming at you, right? So you're you're born, you're pushed into this world, and everything you see in this DMT state is all new to you. So you're trying to figure it out. You're trying to figure out what another human is. You're trying to figure out what this medical device is. You're trying to figure out what these shamanistic experiences are, right? So you have to put yourself in in that situation and you're getting inundated.
00:15:16
Tony Montgomery
which means that your memory consolidation is just gone. There's no way you're going to be able to remember that. And the research shows that like between the age of 18 to 24 months,
00:15:27
Tony Montgomery
that kids lack that memory, that capability to store those memories. um And that's because as the default mode network starts to form um and you start to um lose that DMT sense, you start to get a realistic idea of the physical world.
00:15:47
Tony Montgomery
um Then you start to consolidate a sense of self and you start to consolidate these memories because it's not being flooded in at you anymore. um So that kind of goes over the burden process and and why DMT relates to that.
00:16:05
Tony Montgomery
um But also to to bookend this, right we we want to talk about these near-death experiences. and um One of the features that have been reported in these experiences, subjective, obviously, is that if these feelings of inner peace traveling through a dark region or a tunnel-like experience, bright lights, out-of-body experience, communication with sentient beings, and entering into another realm of existence, you also get the idea that you're getting inundated with all your memories, um which has been shown in
00:16:37
Tony Montgomery
You know, theologian times when you look at like the Bible and they talk about when you go to heaven, you have to look through your book and answer for the things that you've done. Right. That's the idea of these memories being flooded back into you.
00:16:52
Tony Montgomery
um And when we talk about that, right from that near death experience, even though DMT is there and we do get, we also get these structures of of actual memories.
00:17:03
Tony Montgomery
um And that's because we already have this physical world in mind and imprinted. So that's the difference between the DMT experience towards death and the DMT experience at birth is at birth. We don't have any idea of what this physical world is physical structure looks like. We have to create it through um prediction errors of what the brain does.
00:17:24
Tony Montgomery
um so So these experiences are very similar to experiences induced by DMT. And there was research conducted um by Dean in 2019, where they monitored DMT levels in rat brain um following induced cardiac arrest and discovered a significant rise in DMT levels um with and without the pineal gland.
00:17:45
Tony Montgomery
So
DMT interaction with sigma-1 receptors
00:17:46
Tony Montgomery
the idea is that as we get into these say intense catastrophic states of ah birth and of of death we get this release of dmt and why would that be the case why would we get this release of dmt um and and one of the very unique things about dmt that is different from all the other psychedelics is that it binds to um the sigma one receptor which is an intracellular protein located at the endoplasmic reticulum that modulates calcium signaling and cell survival pathways so dmt is an endogenous ligand for sigma one receptors in mammals indicating a potential use of dmt to naturally activate this receptor under certain conditions like
00:18:30
Tony Montgomery
um, asphyxia like, um, birth, like, et cetera, right? These, these extreme conditions. And what it does is it's been shown to active its activation has been identified to protect cells from oxidative stress, um, regulate neuro inflammation, facilitate neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.
00:18:51
Tony Montgomery
There's been speculation that dying brains may produce a rush of DMT that may be um neuroprotective and ameliorate in the damage of oxygen deprivation while also bind into five HT two a receptors causing a profound conscious experience. Right. So evolutionarily speaking, right.
00:19:10
Tony Montgomery
This would be beneficial at birth to protect the brain, um, to protect from the extreme, um experience of going through a black tunnel and then all of a sudden coming out. Right. So it gives you a different conscious, a profound conscious experience.
00:19:29
Tony Montgomery
So you don't have that trauma built in. Um, and the same thing with near death experiences, right? It's, it's our last protective mechanism that can keep the brain alive. So if we do not pass away, then it is, it is a neuroprotective savior of sorts. Right.
00:19:46
Tony Montgomery
Um, so The massive bursts um of DMT can trigger that hyper associative memory retrieval, like we talked about. um And it's that essentially it's like a fractal expansion of memory circuits resulting in a, in a life review.
00:20:03
Tony Montgomery
And from a neuro science perspective, extreme stress and neuromodulation possibly via DMT and other neurochemicals like endorphins might push the brain into a state where memory traces fire rapidly.
00:20:14
Tony Montgomery
globally and given the impression of seeing one's life flash before one's eyes. um Psychedelic science has documented that under drugs like psilocybin, personal autobiographical memories can surface with remarkable vividness and novel emotional context facilitating therapeutic breakthroughs.
00:20:32
Tony Montgomery
And so that's kind of the idea of why DMT evolutionarily could be um advantageous for us and and also why DMT is something that creates these same experiences over and over again for everyone, regardless of of where they came from.
00:20:50
Tony Montgomery
um So that can explain that can explain that concept as well. Can explain the darkness, get into the geometry, the fractals, and then push and breaking through and then all the entities. And that's what we're going to get into to next, right, is is these entities.
00:21:05
Tony Montgomery
um So we have these insect-like entities that are kind of malevolent kind of, they're they're more as standoffish, right? So you think of a doctor, right? A doctor is there to receive, is there to do whatever it has to do to get the baby to be alive, healthy, everything.
00:21:28
Tony Montgomery
Not a lot of emotion, not a lot of excitement, right? um So that could be this supreme intelligence that they they talk about this. and and then And then why would it be insects? And we know that archetypally insects, reptiles, that's something that gets passed down as a protective mechanisms um so that we don't and so that when we do see them ah we know that okay the poisonous or they could be dangerous or they could be right and and research kind of backs that up if you look at research in in mammals or in in rats right they can put cat hair in a rat cage and the rat can smell it and the rat knows that like okay this is a bad hair this could be our death because and when they put a dog hair in there they don't have the same reaction right so we have this
00:22:17
Tony Montgomery
internal, Jung said, archetypes of um good and bad already built in as survival mechanisms for us, um which is extremely evolutionarily important.
00:22:29
Tony Montgomery
right um So then we talk about these these elves. right what can these What can these elves be? um but we Before we do that, the insects, we also have insects that are kind of putting us back together. right Nurses, midwives, all those things make sense.
00:22:47
Tony Montgomery
Then we have the elves. And the elves... from when i When I did, when I've done DMT, I always thought of the elves as like, these guys are just distracting me, right? They're distracting me from like the information that I really want to see.
00:23:02
Tony Montgomery
They're distracting me. and They're just showing off. They're just showing off continuously, showing me like all these things. Like, look at this. Look what I can do. Look what I can do. um And the way I interpret that with this birthing process is that these these elves, they're um can be can be toys that the parents use. So imagine birth, the the dad, the nurses, whoever, they have these toys that they're already putting out.
00:23:27
Tony Montgomery
And we know that prehistorically that we found As far as 30,000 years ago, um children's toys and and artifacts, miniature figurines.
00:23:38
Tony Montgomery
um So we know that this childhood experience of getting in small figures waved in front of us to make them happy, to make them laugh, um which is...
00:23:49
Tony Montgomery
why we have this benevolent feeling towards them. um And then we talk about like the elves going into the chest, right? Think about like, what's one of the most common things that parents do to the babies, right? They they wave their fingers and they go in and they try to make it laugh. They try to make them, um you know, parents are, and everyone around the baby is always trying to make the the baby laugh.
00:24:12
Tony Montgomery
And if it's a retrieval of of memories from that situation, that could explain why about 95% of the DMT trips are positive benevolent ones and very, very small percentage are negative induced ones.
00:24:29
Tony Montgomery
um And then we also know that through ritualistic experiences, but also through common day, modern experiences that as soon as a baby's born, everyone floods, everyone floods, everyone's dancing, everyone is trying to look at me, look at me and watch what I can do, trying to get the baby's attention, right?
00:24:53
Tony Montgomery
Elves do the same thing. And then we have this idea of this mother spirit, this thing that's guiding you along throughout the whole process. And that can be simply explained as as your mom. right as soon as you As soon as all the chaos, all the elves, your mom's always there. Your mom's always holding you.
00:25:13
Tony Montgomery
Your mom's always protecting you, feeding you, everything. right So that explains potentially, remember, this is all potential, that mother spirit feeling. And then this idea of been her before, realer than real.
00:25:28
Tony Montgomery
um Well, it's because we have been there before. If it is an expression of our memories of birth until we form this sense of self, um until we form this solid, rigid, um start to create order in our brain, it makes sense. And then supreme intelligence, like, again, think about it. If you're flooded with DMT and it can potentially stay in you for days, weeks, right?
00:25:55
Tony Montgomery
what are What are the parents constantly doing? What are you constantly doing? You're learning the world. You're learning, oh, this person has a square. It's showing me a square. What is a square? It could be this. It could be this GMAT. It could be all these things. So you're constantly being inundated with this learning process of absolutely all all I knew was this dark hole. And now I'm trying to figure out this world. And it just seems way beyond any intelligence that I could even muster.
00:26:25
Tony Montgomery
So that's kind of my thoughts on on the entities. And I think that... um From a symbolic representation perspective, babies have long been a part of human culture life. The creation of small toys indicates that adults recognize their capacity for a symbolic play and sensory engagement.
00:26:43
Tony Montgomery
um The archetypal resonance, right, the artifact suggests that early humans created objects to evoke sensory joy and imaginative interaction parallel the symbolic with the archetypal imagery seen in dmtx DMT experiences.
00:26:58
Tony Montgomery
And then the universality of it, the ubiquity of infant playthings ranging from rattles to miniature models to the birth and process. it all It all makes sense. um And then we touched on this a little bit, but like why don't we have clear memories until 18 24 months?
00:27:17
Tony Montgomery
and The thought process is that during birth, you get this surge of DMT and it promotes a state of synesthetic, unfiltered sensory consciousness. So um and it's it's a necessary necessary mode for the first contact with embodiment.
00:27:33
Tony Montgomery
And it is hype. So the early state is is hyperconnected, multisensory. um There is research that proposes the theory that um all kids um are born with this ability to have this synesthesia where, and if you've done a psychedelic trip, you know that this occurs as well, where music has, um you can see music, you can can hear color, you can do all these things, right?
00:28:02
Tony Montgomery
And what the research kind of hints at this theory is that um all kids are born with that. But as we as we create this reality, everything gets pruned away and pruned away. um But some adults still have synesthesia, and some adults still have this ability to to see those things. So it doesn't always get pruned away. But The majority of it gets pruned away because if you think about it, we have to begin to start interacting with this physical word as it is.
00:28:32
Tony Montgomery
so But we do get this hyper-connected, multi-sensory, syntheesthesia-like, which is shown in ae babies, and it's also shown in people that are having the psychedelic experience.
00:28:44
Tony Montgomery
um Symbolically rich, fractal, chaotic, um Purely suited, poorly suited for memory consolidation due to its high entropy, right? So we know that psychedelics, especially DMT, um but pretty much all psychedelics create this high level of entropy, which is uncertainty within the brain. And because DMT is so fast acting and so much entropy that the idea that we're going to be able to consolidate memories from that experience is is ill-fated unless we tap back into it by
00:29:16
Tony Montgomery
um smoking or intravenously consuming DMT. So these babies, they end up developing neural pruning, myelation, and the default mode network maturation gradually filters um this unstructured perception into the constrained linear social adaptive model of the world we call ordinary consciousness, right? This transition could involve pruning of excess synaptic connections, um reduction in 5-HT2A expression and sigma-1 signaling, loss of access to the DMT-like state under extreme conditions, right?
00:29:51
Tony Montgomery
um And the plausibility, like the scientific plausibility of it is that
00:29:58
Tony Montgomery
um the theory is that all infants are born synesthetic. um And the evidence would say that the strong connectivity between sensory cortices, infants' responses to cross-modal stimuli link in brightness and pitch, gradual pruning of cross-sensory connections by two to four age ah years of age,
00:30:20
Tony Montgomery
And DMT may facilitate early synesthetic states, right? Visuals turn to tactile, auditory to spatial, emotional to symbolic.
00:30:30
Tony Montgomery
It induces fractal synesthetic and archetypal experiences in adults, suggesting that its ah early presence could amplify intramodal neural signaling in neonates. And the high entropy state hinders our ability to create episodic memory.
00:30:44
Tony Montgomery
um so poor self-other distinction unconsolidated time perception immature hippocampal function and low theta coherence high plasticity but low declarative memory fidelity and if if the mt contribute contributes to this um that's why we have the lack of early autobiographical memory um dream-like qualities of early perception And ah the pruning comes around like two to three years.
00:31:14
Tony Montgomery
The default mode network comes online. So you have the sense of self. Everyone talks about kids develop the sense of self by two years old. And that's when the memories start to form and and their identity starts to form. And it starts to create more order in our life. Right. And that's why um if you look at the entropic hypothesis by Dr. Robin Carr Harris, where The reason psychedelics work is because they try to create more uncertainty in a brain that's trying to constantly always be be ordered.
00:31:44
Tony Montgomery
And too much order can create mental health disorders. um And then language acquisition skyrockets. Ego emerges, right? And this aligns with the loss of access to the chaotic synthetic DMT mode, um increase in filtering of sensory experiences into narrative selfhood, better memory formation.
00:32:04
Tony Montgomery
All right, so the and like I said, the the fun thing about this hypothesis is that it is it is testable right so certain certain things we can do we can measure cross modal cordial activity and neonates versus DMT adults.
00:32:17
Tony Montgomery
We can track. um I am empty DMT levels across development see if endogenous DMT declines as pruning and myelation increase. ah We can compare subjective DMT experience to infant behavior, qualitatively map themes, chaos, lights, tactical visual blending on the neuroscience of the trip. Right. So what does the neuroscience say? FMRI, EEG data on newborns and infants. It's limited and methodologically constrained.
00:32:48
Tony Montgomery
um due to ethical, technical, and physiological challenges. um But it does provide important insight, right? So fMRI data on newborn and infants, um rest in state fMRI studies have shown that newborns exhibit structured functional connectivity in the brains within days after birth.
00:33:05
Tony Montgomery
um One of the first um fMRI studies in newborns showed early emergence of default mode like network connectivity at rest. although immature compared to adults.
00:33:16
Tony Montgomery
um Longitudinal studies demonstrate progressive maturation of large scale brain networks. um So while newborns don't have a fully developed default mode network, proto-default mode network structures are observable and strengthened with age, especially after one year.
00:33:33
Tony Montgomery
um Sensory process and fMRI studies at neonates have shown robust auditory and visual cortex activation in response to sound and light stimuli, even in sleeping infants.
00:33:44
Tony Montgomery
um So matter sensory response are also observed in newborn and fmri using touch stimuli. And then what does the EEG data tell us that Delta brushes burst of high frequency activity nested in Delta waves. These are dominant in the later fetal and early neonatal period and are thought to reflect immature, um the Lamo cortical connections.
00:34:07
Tony Montgomery
um spontaneous activity, transients, right? Discontinuous bursts that gradually become more continuous and synchronized as the infant matures, right? So that synchronicity is that order of the brain.
00:34:20
Tony Montgomery
And then sleep wakes states are detectable within the first week with active REM like and quiet sleep, dis, distant, uh, and quiet sleep, dis distinguishable conscious and related EEG patterns.
00:34:35
Tony Montgomery
So EG and in five month olds are found and found neural markers of perceptual consciousness, similar to adults, including late cortical potentials and response to mass images um studies, born studies and newborns as young as two days old show.
00:34:51
Tony Montgomery
um Event related potentials to speech and emotional prosody indicating rudimentary auditory recognition and effective processing. um So how is this relevant to the echo birth hypothesis? So the existence of functional sensory networks and early proto default mode network patterns support the idea that newborns are already in a state of rudimentary unfiltered consciousness, perhaps more entropic and multi-sensory than than adults.
00:35:19
Tony Montgomery
The delta brushes and SATs might be electrophysiological signatures of high entropy, chaotic neural state consistent with the model of DMT-associated sensory flooding at birth.
00:35:32
Tony Montgomery
And the absence of strong default mode network coherence and immature hippocampal cortical circuits aligns with the lack of memory encoding and fluid sense of self possibly mirroring the DMT state.
00:35:48
Tony Montgomery
So... some of the the neurodynamics of this entropic brain hypothesis that we that we touched on. is it is trying to create more entropy in the brain, um which helps with the mental health disorders.
00:36:03
Tony Montgomery
um So it's this kind of like uncertainty, spontaneous activity. ah So there's less prediction and top-down control, more bottom-up sensory and emotional process and more flexible, chaotic and associative cognition.
00:36:16
Tony Montgomery
So this description also applies to to newborns. Frontal cortex is underdeveloped. Thalamic cortical feedback loops are immature. Brain dynamics are exploratory and unfiltered. So both the psychedelic brain and the neonatal brain exists in a low order, high entropy state where meaning is fluid and the ego is either under undeveloped or deconstructed.
00:36:38
Tony Montgomery
So when we're looking at um DMT consumption and and the hippocampus, um Because one of the pushbacks that we get with the alien intelligence hypothesis is that um there's no way that this could be coming from from memory or hallucinations.
00:36:57
Tony Montgomery
um but What we do know is that DMT does interact with the hippocampus 5HT2A receptors, and it's a potent agonist, which is expressed in the, especially in the CA1 and CA3 regions.
00:37:10
Tony Montgomery
Um, and they modulate memory encoding and retrieval pattern completion, contextual association. Uh, this means that DMT consumption can modulate the hippocampus ability to retrieve deep emotional significant patterns, potentially include in pre-verbal or sensory motor memories.
00:37:28
Tony Montgomery
So this is something that we see with, with all psychedelics, but I think due to the intensity of the DMT state and the fact that it can potentially be, um, what we get through, through the burden process that when we do DMT, those memories, those really deep memories due to the intensity of it.
00:37:45
Tony Montgomery
And due to the expression of DMT throughout the body, I think that allows us to tap into those. It brings us back to that state.
00:37:55
Tony Montgomery
So.
00:37:57
Tony Montgomery
Under DMT, the hippocampus could retrieve these deeply buried sensory modern patterns, um could amplify or reconstruct archetypal imagery based on early sensory memory templates, um and especially in conjunction with limbic structures.
00:38:12
Tony Montgomery
um And these fragments might then be interpreted by the brain as as elves, gestures, symbols shaped by both early memory and current cultural contexts.
00:38:24
Tony Montgomery
So, just based on the neuroscience, um we know that DMT interacts with the the hippocampus, the thalamus, the amygdala, the default mode network, and speculatively the pineal gland.
00:38:41
Tony Montgomery
And we see that same reaction in neonatal imaging, which I think is very interesting and should be explored even more.
00:38:55
Tony Montgomery
so how can we how can we test this, right? We can measure DMT-induced hippocampal activity via EEG and fMRI, which we are doing. ah We can use patter completion tasks or memory priming pre-post DMT.
00:39:09
Tony Montgomery
um We can explore overlap and hippocampal activation during DMT states, dream recall, recall, infant memory encoding via infant EEG studies. um We can correlate subjective reports of birth-like imagery with hippocampal activation strength or BDNF levels.
00:39:27
Tony Montgomery
So one thing that gets talked about is the peculiarity of a DMT um the ubiquity of it um and how how simple it is.
00:39:39
Tony Montgomery
um So DMT is just two enzymatic steps from from tryptophan, which is a amino acid um readily available in the body. um Tryptophan, do decarboxylation goes to tryptamine and tryptamine via that INMT enzyme turns to DMT.
00:40:00
Tony Montgomery
Right, so. Very, very simple molecule. um found throughout the body, um not just the brain, lungs, um placenta, retina, like just everywhere throughout the body.
00:40:17
Tony Montgomery
DMT is found in plants, fungi, marine life, mammals, suggesting it's nearly ubiquitous across all organic life.
00:40:28
Tony Montgomery
So this could potentially mean that DMT is a strong candidate for a primitive signaling molecule, um much like serotonin and and ATP, but simply but functionally potent.
00:40:42
Tony Montgomery
Right. So how does this connect with um origins of life, um consciousness and and things of that nature?
00:40:52
Tony Montgomery
so Sarah Walker has and Lee Cronin have developed this theory called cell assembly theory, and that suggests that life emerges from systems capable of storing and propagating information, um not just in genetic material like DNA, but via chemical reaction networks capable of memory and and computation.
00:41:12
Tony Montgomery
So could DMT act not merely as a neurotransmitter or a signaling molecule, but as a chemical glue or integrator, ah molecule tagging, coordinating, and amplifying complexity in early biological systems?
00:41:27
Tony Montgomery
um Some of the parallels that support this idea are DMT readily crosses membranes and the blood-brain barrier. It modulates 5-HT2A receptors, which are central to cortical network integration, plasticity, and perception.
00:41:41
Tony Montgomery
um It induces neural network entropy, increase in informational complexity, possibly mirroring early prebiotic chemical exploration, right? So in short, DMT may encode or amplify complexity in the brain and hypothetically in early protocellular systems.
00:41:58
Tony Montgomery
So the idea of, um, Jason Kuznicki- theory and neuroscience and the entropic brain hypothesis is that consciousness is associated with increased informational richness entropy in cortical networks psychedelics, especially DMT elevate this entropy possibly tapping into lay in or fundamental neural states.
00:42:24
Tony Montgomery
So if consciousness requires high network complexity and DMT helps instantiate this, it could be seen as a complex catalyst, um not just in brains, but but in life.
00:42:36
Tony Montgomery
right So the the big picture here. Um, how DMT could function in cell assembly, theory of life origins, right? So one it's chemical simplicity, easy to synthesize prebiotically.
00:42:52
Tony Montgomery
tryptophan is, is ancient, um, membrane permeability bridges, compartments in cells and organelles, uh, receptor interaction modulates systems that encode perception, emotion, self, uh, ubiquity in life found across phyla, not limited to one biological kingdom.
00:43:10
Tony Montgomery
um Neuroplasticity and entropy promotes adaptive flexibility and informational integration. Subjective symbolism invokes archetypes, suggesting universal neural templates.
00:43:22
Tony Montgomery
So kind of like the information, one of the things that um Dr. Walker talks about is that and the the human human being in time, when you look at the complexity and the information, um all our information goes back to, you know,
00:43:39
Tony Montgomery
four billion years ago and we have all this information in us. um So the idea that these archetypes, these things can continue to um go through and and um she kind of likens it to this idea that like when you get this idea that comes up, right? A lot of times you get the idea long before you come up with the relevance of it. And a lot of that could be due to this idea that information is is stored through complexity. And then once you get to that complexity, we all have access to that information through conscious and unconscious, mostly unconscious experience.
00:44:20
Tony Montgomery
um The idea that uh special relativity general relativity einstein thought of that long before we could actually test it um flying like all these things right so so what's the what's the implication here is that dmt could be a candidate um molecule that both stores and activates fundamental information structures in living systems uh philosophically um what's the what's the implication here so If consciousness or proto-consciousness is fundamental, um as in idealism, the DMT might be the biological switch or the interface molecule that enables matter to participate in awareness.
00:45:06
Tony Montgomery
Again,
DMT as a consciousness gateway
00:45:07
Tony Montgomery
extremely speculative. Uh, this would elevate DMT's role from neurotransmitter to cosmological molecule, a kind of consciousness key embedded in the machinery of life.
00:45:17
Tony Montgomery
Um, therefore consciousness is not created by the brain. Instead, it's something the brain access or filters, particularly at existential thresholds like birth, death, psychedelic states, uh, which echoes Aldous Huxley is reducing valve model.
00:45:33
Tony Montgomery
Um, So consciousness is is primary, matter is derivative. DMT is a gateway, not a hallucination amplifier. So again, it could be a gateway, maybe not to um these highly intelligent extraterrestrial dimensional states, but a gateway to to consciousness.
00:45:53
Tony Montgomery
um So it removes the brain's ordinary filtering and opens access to more universal and symbolic field of reality. um And again, the treats it treats the archetypes not as cultural byproducts, but as built-in templates of of consciousness. This reflects the Jungian influence idealism.
00:46:18
Tony Montgomery
um So that's philosophically, it's not necessarily that it's it's only idealism, but that it actually blends idealism with empirical neuroscience, a kind of neuro-phenomenological idealism.
00:46:32
Tony Montgomery
um just kind of reframing what it means for a molecule like DMT to reveal rather than generate certain states.
00:46:43
Tony Montgomery
So
00:46:46
Tony Montgomery
just to kind of wrap things up and and kind of gather my thoughts here what i'm proposing um in this birth echo hypothesis is that endogenous dmt acts as a biochemical interface between the brain and a deeper possibly fundamental layer of of consciousness synthesized naturally in the human body and found across diverse life forms dmt may play a central role in shaping early neurodevelopment and transitional states of consciousness, particularly birth and death, when the boundaries of self perception and time are most fluid, drawn from the the neuroscience, developmental psychology, psychedelic phenomena, we we
00:47:27
Tony Montgomery
are stating that DMT experiences symbolically recapitulates the burden process, reactivating latent archetypal structures encoded before the formation of the ego and autobiographical memory.
00:47:40
Tony Montgomery
um
Conclusion: Birth echo hypothesis
00:47:41
Tony Montgomery
This is supported by parallels between neo-natal and psychedelic brain states such as high entropy, ego dissolution, sensory integration across modalities, ah synesthesia. We extend the idea Further by integrating cell assembly theory proposing that DMT due to its structural simplicity, evolutionary ubiquity and capacity to modulate high level cortical activity may function as a molecular scaffold for biological complexity.
00:48:07
Tony Montgomery
um As life emerged from self organizing chemical systems capable of information storage and computation. ah DMT may have played a role not just in consciousness, um but in life itself. Its ability to promote entropy, facilitate network plasticity, engage and um engage deeply, conserved serotonin receptors suggest that DMT may serve as a but biochemical bridge between matter and mind, between molecular organization and the emergence of sentient awareness and
00:48:39
Tony Montgomery
The framework invites new directions for research, most of all, at the intersection of neuroscience, original life studies, and and consciousness science. um so So that's the hypothesis in a nutshell. I know it's ah it's a lot to take in.
00:48:52
Tony Montgomery
um But what I would love is to hear everyone's feedback, both from the psychedelic community, from the neuroscience community, from from all the communities, from I'm very interested to hear what you guys think. I'm very interested to um debate this idea ah with with anyone that wants to debate it. um But mostly what i what I really like about it is that there's a lot of testability in it.
00:49:17
Tony Montgomery
And I think in order to ground this stuff to science, we need things that are extremely um testable. So hope that you guys... Enjoy this video, and I hope that it resonates with some of you and um that we can get some good discussion going on it.