Kimberly Steele

I've been poking around at the literature on consciousness again (I mean, if I can't sleep anymore, may as well), and perhaps in the future, after a LOT more reading, there will be an article out of it, or a series of them. Who knows? This is still the find-out-what-others-have-said-already phase, and I now have a year's worth of recommended reading from the JMG commentariat. I've never been happier to be overwhelmed by homework. Until that day of magical synthesis does or doesn't arrive, I'll keep my reading notes on it here. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763426001636
...

"Here, we use the term NSCs to reflect states beyond ordinary waking consciousness, and focus on a specific class of NSC: trance."

I'd love to have the full list of other states they think fall under the umbrella of "non-ordinary states of consciousness." Alas, they don't go into it in this paper. 

This study has some great discussion of alternate states of consciousness, trance, and the difficulty of defining these things clearly. It notes two possible types of trance state: I'm tempted to label them cataphatic and apophatic, but let's not go there yet. The study authors note that there are two well known ways of achieving some kind of ASC: one by sensory overload in music, dance, intoxicants, drumming, synchronized group movements, etc. and the other in sensory deprivation, whether that's in a monastic environment, a sensory deprivation tank, or maybe just solitary confinement.  Silence and immobility. These are regarded as different states by French ethnographer Rouget, but the study authors note that subsequent work does not always regard these states as mutually exclusive, and then they note that Becker, another researcher, "approaches trance as a wider category that includes contemplative states, possession, shamanic and communal trance, as well as isolated moments of transcendence."  So we have at least a partial list here of the other NSCs!  

"we adopt the concept of trance as a dynamic process rather than a state"

Do tell! 

"This framing accommodates both low- and high-arousal expressions of trance as points along a continuum rather than separate phenomena."

Ok, but does this mean that instead of focusing on just trance states like they promised up top, we are now going to lump all NSCs into 'trance' for convenience? I'm confused. 

"Trance thus encompasses diverse states characterized by heightened absorption and dissociation, often with a spiritual dimension, involving loss of executive control, altered emotional expression, body image, and reality perception, alongside increased suggestibility"

Ok, I can live with that definition. 

This paper looks specifically at music and its use to modify consciousness, zooms in on rave culture and neo-shamanism (whatever that is), so... sounds like they're going the hardcore overload breaker-tripping route to NSC. But also: it's a meta-study (my least favorite kind), meaning they didn't do any experiments or observations of their own, they're looking instead at other people's work, and doing some sort of meta-commentary on it. Do they get paid to not-do their own research?

Anyway, now they get into some interesting descriptions and assertions. They posit that high hypnotic suggestibility or absorbtion (that spergy tendency to become deeply engrossed) "predispose some individuals to accepting ideologies that support religious rituals and to experiencing non-ordinary phenomena" ... and while I have no trouble at all with the idea that those traits predispose people to entering NSCs and experiencing weird stuff, I'm not at all sure what the "accepting ideologies" has to do with it. 

Then they talk about shamanism and shamanic trance: people deliberately entering trance state using traditional methods like drumming, chanting, and dancing. The "neo" shamans have abstracted it from traditional context and training (which seems reckless, unless you start from a premise of atheistic materialism: "there's nothing out there, so nothing can hurt me: I'm just exploring my own subconscious"). They mention trance serving as a bridge to the spiritual world, but they don't really believe that, falling back on traditional function of shamanic trance as: contributing to "cognitive and social evolution by fostering analogical thinking, visual symbolism, and group-bonding rituals"-- a utilitarian and materialist take. They think it's one of the earliest spiritual practices serving an "essential function" for humanity, but decline to state what they think that essential function is. 

They further comment on the reasons for (traditional) trance induction: to "gain knowledge from other realms, and provide healing, protection, and guidance to their communities " as well as "promotes cooperation between group members and social solidarity, binding individuals together with the common goal of group prosperity" (group function of shared ritual state), plus the performance aspect, which bolster's the shaman's legitimacy, allowing him to facilitate group cohesion by administering rites of passage. 

Now we get to three distinct types of shamanic trance: 
1) ecstatic: "the shaman's spirit purposefully leaving their body to communicate with spirits, creatures, or animals from other realms."
2) possession: "the shaman’s body being taken over by such entities"
3) dreamlike: "allows the shaman to remain connected to their body and self while interacting with spirits"

We then get a detail about neoshamanism and how it's different from tradshamanism:  "Instead, they focus on personal empowerment, self-exploration, and psychological well-being" --  so, basically the religion-without-God thing, but for shamanism. Psychotherapy dressed up in beads, bells and masks. Measurable things associated with "neo" forms in studies are: reduced parasympathetic activity, tremors, and rapid eye movements, and self-reported stuff that could be placebo like "enhanced creativity". Authors assert that both trad and neo flavors share "altered sensory, temporal, and spatial perception; dissociation and absorption; vivid inner imagery; and shifts in the sense of self and body" and participants report un-measurable emotional, psychological, and social benefits. 

Section 4: Music: 

"music helps synchronize the phases of group rituals, with stages of intensity and symbolic content being "phase-locked" to musical elements. The temporal organization of musical elements, from millisecond-level rhythmic intervals and accents to longer phrasings that span seconds or minutes, fosters participants’ collective experience of time, enhancing group coordination and emotional alignment."

On to specifics, 

"In high-arousal trance scenarios, such as spirit possession ceremonies, music often operates at fast tempos and high volumes, stimulating emotional arousal and bodily movement "

This dings my confirmation bias bell hard: I am both very oversensitive to stimuli like these *and* regard spirit possession as an unequivocal bad thing. If you tell me dance-club conditions make it easier for you to become demon possessed, I'm inclined to believe that. Stay away from there, kids. 

"In other cases, instruments such as gongs or low-pitched drums may produce sustained tones or drones that create a hypnotic soundscape, supporting slower, immersive trance"

Does that imply that entering trance in this way does not predispose to spirit possession?

We then get specific examples of high-arousal trance induction in trad contexts (africa, plains indians, bali). Rouget is cited as saying music may or may not cause trance, but it's essential to maintaining the state. The drum is the most common instrument used for this purpose. We get a research factoid "Early electrophysiological studies suggested that repetitive drumming at frequencies ∼4–7 Hz might entrain brain rhythms [of] similar frequencies"  

The suggestion that a consistent drumbeat leads to entrainment of brainwaves jumps out here. 

It's then followed by a lot of mushy subjective measures that aren't useful here: college student subjects reporting on their feelings. Oi. We get a paragraph on use in psychotherapy contexts and...  no measurements at all. How do they determine that subjects have even achieved a trance state? Self-reporting?  Three paragraphs on the low-arousal version...  no actual data. oof. 

Now: Raves: 

We define raves, and then define electronic dance music, techno, and trance. Finally, we're gonna talk neuroimaging studies!

Big chart: thing that immediately jumps out here is the association of increased theta activity with possession. Huh. Some other differences shown in chart might be due to differences in what was being measured at the time, rather than differences in activity. 

Beyond the chart, we finally get some measurements to define NSCs: 

"Early studies suggested that NSCs are associated with a shift in neural activity from the left to the right hemisphere, dominance of limbic and emotional systems, and decreased activity in the frontal lobe regions responsible for executive functions and cognitive control"

"More recent EEG and fMRI studies that compared NSCs and ordinary states have identified brain activity at specific frequencies and patterns of connectivity that characterize NSCs. Regardless of the induction method (e.g., drumming, chanting), NSCs were associated with greater activity in lower frequency (<≈11 Hz) bands. High power in these frequency bands (delta: ≈0.5–4 Hz, theta: ≈4–8 Hz, and slow alpha: ≈8–10 Hz) is associated with internally directed attention and attenuated processing of the external environment. Furthermore, brain imaging studies of NSCs suggest high functional connectivity between three interacting brain networks: the Default Mode Network (DMN), which is activated during self-referential processes and is disrupted when experiencing of loss of self (ego dissolution); the frontoparietal network, which is activated during cognitive control and attention; and the salience network, which is activated when detecting salient behaviorally relevant events and directs neural resources accordingly. For example, visionary experiences across NSCs suggest a shared mechanism involving disrupted top-down control from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and diminished self-referential processing in the DMN, enabling the emergence of processes typically regulated by lower-level brain systems"

Dense but useful!  Now we have some terms to look up, at least. Three brain regions of "high functional connectivity" in NSC imaging studies: 
1. Our old friend the Default Mode Network: traffic cop of brain function. 
2. Frontoparietal network
3. Salience network

NSCs involve drugging the traffic cop. 

"Because states of consciousness emerge from large-scale structural and functional brain organization, whole-brain models are an important tool for studying NSCs"

This is, IMO, a speculative statement. The authors probably don't see it that way. But the underlying assumption here, which I don't buy, is that consciousness originates in the brain and is a physical phenomenon. Certainly you can measure things like brain activity and brainwaves, but I don't think we know a whole lot about how the brain relates to consciousness, thought, memory, learning...  we know what gets broken when various parts of the brain are injured, but... I'm not sure we can conclude anything so bold as "language is located here" or "memory is there". I don't know anything, but fall on the side of the physical brain being more of a throughput device, or an antenna. Satellite dish. The mind, memory, thinking, and consciousness are not physical phenomena-- what if the brain is just the receiver for that stuff? You can still damage the receiver, but the implications are different: perhaps the consciousness remains whole, but now the radio can't pick up some of the signal. This does not mean studying the receiver is silly-- it tells us *something*. I'm not sure we can be certain what it's telling us. 

We will not give our opinion on the next paragraph which involves computer modelling of brain activity. 

Then it talks about EEG studies, recapitulating the chart in prose, and noting, basically, that it's hard to interpret what these EEG findings mean. 

Some specifics pulled from the studies they meta-ed: 

"Shamanic practitioners displayed increased gamma power during shamanic drumming listening, which positively correlated with self-reported elementary visual alterations, and decreased signal diversity in gamma frequencies, which negatively correlated with insightfulness. Furthermore, practitioners exhibited increased criticality in low beta and gamma bands—a brain state thought to reflect heightened susceptibility to internal and external stimuli and greater metastability. These neurophysiological findings were exclusive to the drumming condition, indicating that they reflect trance-specific neural activity."

As always, there's some irritating subjectivity here that probably can't be got around. How do you measure insightfulness? If you're relying on self-reporting here...  eh. I mean, when was the last time you talked to someone self-reporting about their marijuana use, and how it gave them all those great ideas?

"it seems that drug-induced (psychedelic) and non-pharmacological (shamanic trance) NSCs have overlapping phenomenological traits but are distinct states of consciousness in terms of underlying neurobiological correlates "  

This is interesting. Does this mean that people who get into trance states with drugs have different measurable EEG patterns than those who don't, despite having similar reported subjective experiences?

"As far as we know, no EEG study has examined brain activity during rave parties"

:D

Backing up a little, I followed the first dumb link I found to a basic layman's something-about-different-kinds-of-brainwaves explainer. Theta waves, it says, "occur during deep relaxation, visualization, and the transition between wakefulness and sleep."  So it makes total sense that increased theta activity is associated with possession. That's also the hypnogogic state where the sleep paralysis monsters get you. If instead of looking at the brain as the source of consciousness, you regard it as a receiver for consciousness, which is on some other plane, what might increased theta waves indicate here? A place in between channels where foreign shortwave signals sometimes crackle through?

"current evidence does not yet support a single electrophysiological signature of trance but instead suggests that different forms of trance may engage partially overlapping neural dynamics."

Different studies find different things. We don't really know if it's because we used different equipment, if the studies were not replicable, or what. 

Then the authors move on to fMRI studies. 

But I'm going to go over that part in another post.