Bidirectional alpha collapse, not forward wave increase, under N,N-DMT: A reanalysis of cortical travelling waves
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 2, 2026 David M. Remmer
Reanalysis of a prior study on DMT's effect on brain waves shows that the drug does not selectively increase forward (bottom-up) traveling waves. Instead, DMT causes a collapse of both forward and backward wave power at alpha (8–13 Hz) and broadband (2–100 Hz) frequencies in all 12 subjects. The backward collapse is slightly larger (2.3–5.1 percentage points). The earlier reported increase in normalized forward power was an artifact of the surrogate baseline dropping faster than the signal. At the peak effect, forward and backward alpha power were statistically indistinguishable, and the forward signal did not significantly differ from zero. The brain's directional wave structure under DMT is lost rather than reorganized.