What New DMT Research Reveals About How the Brain Creates the Sense of Self
A new neuroscience study is shedding light on one of the most puzzling features of human consciousness — the sense of self — by examining what happens in the brain when people take the psychedelic compound DMT (dimethyltryptamine). Researchers from University College London and the University of Miami explored how DMT alters brainwave activity, why this leads to what many describe as ego dissolution, and what these findings might mean for our understanding of consciousness.
This research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, takes a straightforward scientific look at how the brain’s usual balance between order and disorder shifts under DMT. The goal was not to analyze the subjective experience alone, but to understand the neurological mechanisms that support or disrupt self-awareness. What they found offers compelling evidence that certain brain rhythms — particularly alpha waves — play a major role in maintaining our familiar sense of being a continuous, time-anchored self.
DMT’s Quick, Intense Effects Make It Useful for Science
DMT is known for its fast-acting and powerful psychedelic effects, typically lasting only about 10 to 20 minutes. Because of its short duration, researchers can capture a clean before-during-after snapshot of brain activity. That makes DMT uniquely practical for investigating rapid and dramatic shifts in consciousness.
Participants in the study received controlled doses of DMT while researchers recorded their brain activity using EEG (electroencephalography). They also gave detailed ratings of their internal experiences, including how strongly they felt their usual sense of self weaken or dissolve. This pairing of real-time brain measurements and subjective reports allowed researchers to look for very specific relationships.
Alpha Waves and the Sense of Self
One of the central discoveries is that DMT causes a significant drop in alpha wave activity. Alpha waves are associated with thinking about oneself, recalling personal memories, planning, and maintaining an internal narrative. In everyday life, alpha rhythms help create a stable sense of “me” existing across time — past, present, and future.
Participants reported feeling like their normal narrative self disappeared, and this experience closely matched the degree to which their alpha waves were dampened. In other words, the more their alpha activity quieted, the stronger their sense of self dissolved.
Researchers frame this in terms of criticality, a concept used to describe how the brain operates between order and chaos. A healthy brain typically hovers near a balanced midpoint, allowing flexible thought and stable identity. Under DMT, the brain moved away from that balanced state, showing increased randomness in its rhythms and lowered long-range structure. This measurable shift correlated directly with how intensely participants felt ego dissolution.
The data also showed that this wasn’t a case of the brain becoming overly excited. Instead, researchers found evidence that the brain shifted toward a more inhibition-dominated, subcritical state, which is an important nuance. It challenges older ideas suggesting psychedelics simply “increase chaos.” Here, DMT created a different kind of disruption — one that weakens the continuous self rather than amplifying uncontrolled neural activity.
Why Losing the Sense of Time Affects the Sense of Self
A unique aspect of the findings is how they relate to our perception of time. The researchers noted that people under DMT often lose their sense of a flowing timeline. Instead of experiencing a narrative stretching from past to future, everything feels intensely present-focused.
This aligns well with the changes seen in alpha waves and criticality. If the brain can no longer rely on its usual patterns that help tie moments together into a coherent story, then the time-extended self naturally collapses. What remains is an immediate awareness without the usual anchoring of personal identity. This perspective helps explain why people describe DMT experiences as profound or unbounded — the brain’s machinery for maintaining the everyday self momentarily loosens.
What the Study Suggests About Consciousness
Both scientists involved in this work emphasized that these results support the idea that psychedelics can serve as powerful tools for studying the neural basis of consciousness. The relationship between measurable brain changes and subjective experience offers rare insight into how identity forms moment by moment.
The key takeaways include:
• Alpha waves appear closely tied to maintaining a coherent self.
When they quiet down, the sense of being a separate, continuous person weakens.
• The brain’s balance between order and disorder is crucial.
Shifting away from this balance disrupts normal cognition and self-awareness.
• Altered states can reveal mechanisms of normal consciousness.
By studying how the brain breaks from its usual patterns, researchers can better understand how those patterns work when intact.
This research does not claim to answer every question about the self, but it offers a very specific and testable pathway: the sense of self depends on stable temporal dynamics in brain activity. When those dynamics are disrupted, so is the self.
Broader Context: DMT, Psychedelics, and Neuroscience
DMT belongs to a group of psychedelics known for producing profound changes in perception and consciousness. Unlike psilocybin or LSD, DMT acts extremely quickly, which is why it is useful in controlled scientific settings. Researchers can track the rise and fall of its effects with precision.
Psychedelics have been under renewed scientific interest for over a decade. They interact with serotonin receptors — especially 5-HT2A receptors — which play a role in mood regulation, sensory processing, and cognition. Many labs are investigating how these compounds could help treat depression, PTSD, and other conditions where people experience rigid, negative patterns of thought or identity. Understanding how psychedelics temporarily loosen the boundaries of the self could inform future therapeutic approaches.
Another broader area of study is the idea of brain entropy. Some theories propose that psychedelics increase entropy — the randomness or unpredictability of brain activity — and that this expansion allows for more flexible thought. This new DMT study complicates that picture by showing that the brain may not simply “heat up” into disorder, but instead may move into a specifically subcritical state where certain rhythms lose structure.
This distinction matters, because it suggests the brain under psychedelics is not merely destabilized, but reorganized in a measurable way tied to self-perception.
Why This Research Matters
The sense of self is one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience, yet scientists still debate how it emerges from brain activity. Studies like this bring us closer to understanding that relationship. Instead of relying purely on philosophical reasoning, the research combines quantitative brain data with subjective reports, creating a scientifically grounded picture of how the self can change.
These findings also invite deeper questions:
• Is the self a stable construct or a dynamic process?
The brain activity under DMT suggests the latter.
• Could altering alpha rhythms have therapeutic potential?
Future research may explore this for conditions involving rigid self-concepts.
• How does the brain reconstruct the self after the psychedelic fades?
Understanding the recovery process may reveal how the brain knits identity back together.
Overall, this work provides valuable evidence that the self is not a fixed thing, but a pattern maintained by the brain’s ongoing rhythms — rhythms that can be disrupted, studied, and eventually understood.
Research Paper:
DMT-Induced Shifts in Criticality Correlate with Self-Dissolution (JNeurosci, 2025)
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0344-25.2025
