DIPT, THE SYMPHONIA OF EMOTION
Music has always been present from the early stages of history, although its beginning remains unclear for our human understanding. Biblically, the first appearance of music can be traced to the book of Genesis, where Jubal played the flute, or Amphion, a son of Zeus, who was given the Lyre.
Historically speaking, the so-called “creator of music”, is said to be the Greek Philosopher Pythagoras, according to a Middle age writer named Johannes Keck in his book “The Introductorium musicae”.
This idea of a “creator” can be debatable and there’s a constant doubt of who might have created the first sort of music, historians believe that the first signs of music were found at early age, with the constant banging of stones and sticks during hunting and creation of new nomad housing.
Ever since, music has been in constant evolution, with new melodies, compositions, rhythms, tones, beats, etc.
The constant evolution and “addiction”, as well as the common phenomenon of uniting people despite their nationality, race, or culture have brought light to the psychological question “How does music impact our brain and how can it manipulate our emotions?”.
This question has been answered throughout time by several researchers, according to the results obtained by Anne J.Blood and Robert J.Zatorre, pleasant music activates the dorsal amygdala, an important factor to our “positive emotions”, this research was then complemented by Salimpoor et al., the results have shown that pleasant music, releases dopamine in the striatum.
On the other hand, according to Huron D. and Margulis E.H, sad music increases the response of the right occipital lobe as well as the production of the hormone prolactin, a hormone associated with crying and grief.
The discovery of these musical interactions with the brain has since then opened doors to various forms of therapy using music as its main tool for mood lifting and improving mental health in patients with anxiety and depression.
The general effects of psychedelic substances are reported as visual effects, emotional behavior, and relationship towards music. Users often claim to have a better relationship with music while listening to it under a psychoactive compound as well as a correlation with the emotions passed on by the artists in certain parts of a song, whether their lyrics or their melody, however, there are exceptions.
DiPT (Diisopropyltryptamine) the structural isomer of DPT with branched nitrogen atoms is an orally active psychedelic substance first reported by Alexander Shulgin in his book TiKHAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved), the substance has little to no visual effects, making the effects majorly auditory.
The sounds were described by having a lower bass tone when it came to voices and the musical notes were described as distorted and out of pitch.
This effect was attempted to be reproduced by a user going by the name TheAppleCore using the software SPEAR (short for Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis). The artist broke down the traditional harmonies of tonal music by layering together the samples and applying a global frequency shift lowering the frequencies and ratio in sound. The artist published these samples in the music sharing platform SoundCloud.
Despite its lack of popularity, DiPT has brought up an inner connection between music and emotion, in several reports users have described straightforward hate and anger towards their favorite music, artist or even spokesmen after listening to them while under the effect of the substance. Users were never able to like the music again as they recall the auditory dysmorphia caused by the psychedelic.
The reasoning behind why DiPT solemnly acts as an auditory hallucinogen remains a chemical mystery until today. However, there are a few hypotheses.
A common side effect in DiPT, tinnitus, which has effects such as alteration of the perception of external sounds, such as hissing, humming, clicking, and in some cases distortion.
The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) has been proposed to be involved in generating tinnitus, this cochlear nucleus has a dense cluster of serotonergic fibers, 5(HT) 2A/2C and 5HT7, which cause depolarization leading to enhance sensory input. (Tang and Trussell 2015).
Salicylate treatment has been used in animal models to explore the induction of tinnitus successfully. These experiments showed to activate serotonergic neurons in DNR (Dorsal raphe nucleus. Salicylate-induced tinnitus is associated with anxiety, this action can be reversed with 5-MeO-DMT, which reduces anxiety associated with tinnitus in young mice, this may be an explanation of the feeling of peace caused by tryptamine psychedelics, as well as the development of tinnitus in withdrawal.
In addition, glycine, an inhibitory neurotransmitter executes tonic inhibition in subcortical regions which play a role in processing sound perception by grouping acoustic features. Luo et al. demonstrated the reduced glycine receptor after culturing the auditory cortical neurons with DOI, a 5HT2A/2C agonist psychedelic, giving us the possibility of contributing to the central hyperexcitability as well as the region affected by DiPT, opening further hypothesis for the cause behind this lost chemical mystery.
References:
Emotional Responses to Music: Shifts in Frontal Brain Asymmetry Mark Periods of Musical Change by Hussain-Abdulah Arjmand , Jesper Hohagen , Bryan Paton and Nikki S. Rickard
Johannes Keck- The Introductorium musicae
Dr. Valorie Salimpoor – The Brain and New Music
Huron D., Margulis E. H. (2011). “Music expectancy and thrills,” in, Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications, eds Juslin P. N., Sloboda J. A., editors. (New York: Oxford University Press; ), 575–604
Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion by Anne J. Blood and Robert J. Zatorre
Distortion of Music by Alexander T.Shulgin
TiHKAL- Alexander and Ann Shulgin
Carbonaro, T. M., and M. B. Gatch. 2016. Neuropharmacology of N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Brain Research Bulletin 126 (Pt 1):74–88. doi:10.1016/j.brainresbull.2016.04.016.
Tang, Z. Q., and L. O. Trussell. 2015. Serotonergic regulation of excitability of principal cells of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience 35 (11):4540–51. doi:10.1523/ JNEUROSCI.4825-14.2015.
Felix, R. A., 2nd, B. Gourevitch, and C. V. Portfors. 2018. Subcortical pathways: Towards a better understanding of auditory disorders. Hearing Research 362:48–60. doi:10.1016/j.heares.2018.01.008
Caperton, K. K., and A. M. Thompson. 2011. Activation of serotonergic neurons during salicylate-induced tinnitus. Otology & Neurotology : Official Publication of the American Otological Society, American Neurotology Society [And] European Academy of Otology and Neurotology 32 (2):301–07. doi:10.1097/MAO.0b013e3182009d46.
Luo, B., L. Hu, C. Liu, Y. Guo, and H. Wang. 2016. Activation of 5-HT2A/C receptor reduces glycine receptor-mediated currents in cultured auditory cortical neurons. Amino Acids 48 (2):349–56. doi:10.1007/s00726-015-2086-y.
Persistent Tinnitus after Inhaled N,Ndimethyltryptamine (DMT) Heba Diab & Benjamin Malcolm To cite this article: Heba Diab & Benjamin Malcolm (2020): Persistent Tinnitus after Inhaled N,Ndimethyltryptamine (DMT), Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, DOI: 10.1080/02791072.2020.1847366
