methylethyl

This is from 1979 when they were still doing real research instead of meta-analyses. I have high hopes.

"For many years ethnographers have returned from the field with intriguing reports of unusual behavior by participants in rituals. These reports, although far from agreement in their labeling, interpretation, or rigor of observation, point to the impact of patterned, repetitive acts on the human nervous system. The purpose of this chapter is to bring neurobiological data to bear on the observed phenomena, which | collectively term ritual trance."

Off to a promising start!

"aim to demonstrate that ritual trance, known by many names and manifested in numerous forms, arises from manipulation of universal neurophysiological structures of the human body, lies within the potential behavior of all normal human beings, and functions as a homeostatic mechanism for both individuals and groups"

Goodness! The other thing that's great about older studies is they still knew how to write in English!

"emetics stimulate the vagus nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system by inducing vomiting, and, as will be demon- strated later, the parasympathetic nervous system mediates re- sponses in the viscera and in the striated muscles, as well as in the brain."

Already we are into a whole body approach rather than just the brain. I like it! It then brings up nausea again in the context of seasickness, pointing out that this affects your whole self, not just your stomach. This is about the whole system, not the brain in isolation.

"rit- ual behavior (by definition) consists of a sequence of repetitive acts. Although not all rituals evoke states of trance, rhythmic stim- uli and fixed interaction tend to produce these states. As will be demonstrated, such factors entrain? biological rhythms, synchro- nizing these to respond to environmental exigencies. By eliminat- ing, correcting, or avoiding dysphasias, entrainment enhances survival opportunities in all species"

Now we have a theory of the function of ritual trance. What are dysphasias?

"dysfunctional, disparate emo- tional states among members of a group—what he terms “emo- tional asynchronies’—cause disequilibria. Ordinary events, as well as life crises, disrupt usual, basal patterns, evoking dyspha- sic emotional responses. Repetitive, evocative sequences of be- havior in the separation, transition, and reincorporation phases of rites of passage and rites of intensification establish similar emo- tional states in participants, restoring individual and group equili- bria"

Aha. We have a group. The group needs to be in tune with each other for survival. Individuals getting out of tune with the group is remedied by reattuning. This is the function of ritual trance. If emotional synchrony is the goal of actions in rituals, then exhibition of behaviors attainable only when one is experiencing the appropriate inner state overtly at- tests to the existence of such a state. Emotional synchrony. So the group can function as a unit. One is reminded of military units and their marching cadences. Does this serve the same function?

The paper goes on to note some ways people achieve ritual trance, same as previous paper: through both sensory hyperstimulation and through ascetic lack of stimulation: isolation, fasting, quiet. And of course hallucinogenic drugs. I'll try to suppress my personal bias there and stick to reading the paper.

It then goes on to talk about "driving behaviors" which is a new one to me. Basically, this is guided trance state, where a coach directs the entranced person in imitating the desired behaviors, whether that's speaking in tongues, or demonstrating a target emotional state. This seems like a "fake it till you make it" process. Imitate the desired state until you can do it for real.

Then it talks about repetitive stimuli, synchronizing groups of people through muscular movement (dance), and then, a bit that catches my attention because it's about flashing lights: my most reliable migraine trigger, and the bane of my life.

"
Entrainment of brain
rhythms via a rhythmic photic stimulus is quickly established and
spreads throughout the brain, so that changes in the frequency at
which the light is flashed alter the frequency of the brain waves "

Boy does it ever! Getting stuck behind a blinky towtruck in nighttime traffic and having my brainwaves commandeered can easily wreck half my week.

"In seizure-prone individuals photic stimulation evokes the characteristic spike waves presaging an epileptic episode, but even normal persons experience unusual sensations, strong emotions, pseudoperceptions, or myoclonic jerks. Auditory stimulation emanating from drums, producing innumerable frequencies and harmonics, elicits similar results, including temporal distortion "

OK, at least I don't have seizures. For that I'm grateful. But look at that again: "even normal persons experience"

Can we please, as a civilization, take a closer look at what all the blinky lights in our environment are really doing to us?

I get the purpose of those things on emergency vehicles, railroad gates, construction barriers, dangerous intersections... but why do we need to screw with everybody's neurology to decorate Christmas trees, illuminate shop windows, show us our score in the bowling alley, or advertise bars?

Anyway, back to the study: they explicitly connect photic stimulation that induces seizures, and photic stimulation that induces brainwave entrainment, speculating that this is what dancing, particularly in the context of a ground-level light source, is doing in ritual contexts.

"in rituals not only does rhythmic stimulation often occur simultaneously in several sensory modes, but also adjunctive aids—such as fasting, breathing vapors, or hyperventilation—contribute to alterations in the
biochemical environment of the body. All of these physiological manipulations, complexly combined in the context of a ritual, effectually generate stimulus bombardment of the human nervous system. "

"As Lewis observed, absence or blocking of stimuli, as in sensory deprivation or some meditation techniques, also perturbs the equilibrium of ordinary life situations"

This repeated (in more than one paper now) pairing is interesting. We can get there by overstimulating everything. Or we can get there by understimulating everything. I'm Orthodox, so I have a preprogrammed bias toward the ascetic approach here. Interestingly, there's no obvious way for the ascetic method to entrain individuals to the group. It has to serve another purpose. Arguably that purpose is to entrain us to God.

The paper then touches on some right-brain-activation/dominance theory.

"right-hemisphere activity is usually characterized by the alpha frequency and that tasks specific to that hemisphere only proportionately reduce alpha output. Neher’s work strongly suggests that one significant effect of auditory driving is enhancement of the alpha rhythm, especially in the right hemisphere, with consequent entrainment of cortical rhythms at that frequency. "

It then notes that this may be a biased finding due to test subjects all being white male college students, so take it with a grain of salt.

There follows some discussion of the autonomic, parasympathetic, and sympathetic nervous systems, and what characterizes their normal function, as well as over-functioning states.

Sympathetic: excited by cold and fear, triggers release of adrenal hormones, epinephrine, norepinephrine. At normal levels you get alert wakefulness, at high levels fear and anger: ready for emergency. Continuous mobilization is bad.

Parasympathetic: excited by sweatbaths, emetics, and purgatives. Releases serotonin and acetylcholine. Up to a point, activating this system results in pleasant things like sleep, digestion, grooming, and relaxation. Overstimulation results in frequent urination, fainting, voiding of the
bowel, peptic ulcers, and other visceral disorders. Inhibits sympathetic reactivity.

(PNS counteracts excesses of SNS-- they balance each other)

Autonomic: overarching system of which sympathetic and parasympathetic (and enteric) are subsets.

We then talk about ergotropic and tropotrophic systems: energy expending and energy conserving, and the necessary oscillation between them.

Ergotropic: Orienting reflex,
Tropotrophic: Modulates this, helping weed out unimportant details to avoid deluge of irrelevant sensory information.

The paper asserts that ritual trance is used to help "tune" the central nervous system:

Driving behaviors employed
to facilitate ritual trance are actually elaborate methods of tuning
the CNS.

It then lays out three stages for this:
1) response in one system increases, while response in other system decreases.
2) reversal: after some threshold is reached, we reach complete inhibition of the decreased response; system, and things that would normally evoke a response there, now evoke a response in the sensitized system instead.
3) If stimulation continues, we can reach a third stage: mixed discharges: this is a state found in extreme prolonged stress, orgasm, REM, psychosis, ecstasy states. Reciprocal relationships between systems fail, and simultaneous discharges result.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that all of these states share certain physiological features in the nervous system, but I want a clearer delineation of the steps leading to each, as these are clearly not the same endpoints, and equally clearly: the same processes don't lead to all of them. The stepping stones that lead up to orgasm are not equally likely to lead a person to psychosis or REM.

This is addressed at least partially in the next paragraph:

"Superficial resemblances have engendered much confused but needless debate about cor-
respondences between trance and sleep, trance and sexual activity, and trance and various pathological conditions"

Not done reading, but clipping here and putting subsequent notes in a separate post.

It seems like we could do with a much more nuanced set of definitions and subcategories of trance states. There are some interesting things to see here, but also a lot of unnecessary confusion. We seem to be taking any and all deliberately-induced ASCs and lumping them all together under "trance" as sort of a garbage-can term for everything, and then not doing a great job even of highlighting the very few things all these ASCs have in common. Even the EEG studies do this. Like "well, this is an alternate state of consciousness, it's different from being awake and alert" but also "and here are a whole bunch of brainwave patterns that are different from normal awake states, I guess we'll call them all trance."

Which seems a bit like referring to all canids as "dogs" without really figuring out what differentiates them from cats, and without really going into what makes a wolf different from a chihuahua or a fox.