Well this explains the buddha-nature of cats..given their habit of noming on rats and all

The traveler had posted a link to an article about some research that found it promising and likely that DMT could be produced in the lungs. Don't have a link I can share but it was mostly speculation but still promising.

I think, as far as the belief goes of what the pineal/third eye is, it's more likely that the pineal utilizes DMT rather than produces it. This is also just speculation. I'm afraid that this article, which is spreading like fire across the vast networks that make up the Internet as I type this, will lead to more speculation and misinformation. I think it's funny how people take this info and run with it as a confirmation rather than needing further study to conclude anything.

Either way this is very interesting and has atleast uncovered a very common idea that most people wanted to be true. DMT in the pineal. What's next? This could lead to new and exciting ventures into science and possibly some day combing certain psuedoscience and science together in one neat little package. Can't wait.

iirc that was about the fact the lungs had INMT and the brain didn't.

or was thought not to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyOJ8GfRgI4

but this study joe posted suggests otherwise.

This is really interesting. I think that if DMT has been found in the pineal gland of live rats then it is HIGHLY likely it will be present in ours' too. I'm not making an argument for its formation there, that's a different kettle of fish, just its presence. The pineal gland is an extremely ancient structure in terms of vertebrate evolution, found in the vast majority of vertebrate species bar the most primitive and a few evolutionary exceptions. The rodent and primate evolutionary lineages only branched away from one another on the tree of life around 70 million years ago, which in evolutionary time isn't actually that long ago looking at the history of life in this planet, with the dinosaurs on their way out not long after this time. All placental mammals evolved from a creature that resembled a rat, and I have heard that 97% of human genes are compatible with mice...i.e. this isn't a measure of pure genetic relatedness, rather mice have similar equivalent genes to ours, and the vast majority of the time the mouse can adopt the human version of a specific gene without problems. This hints that biochemically, and by extension neurochemically, we have a vastly great deal more in common than we do different, it is likely our cells work physiologically in very similar ways, which is what makes rodents such important model animals. Great to see another piece of the puzzle fall into place! I look forward to reading more...

http://www.researchgate.net/pub...ets_the_sigma-1_receptor
i am fairly sure endogenous presence in the brain is confirmed.

Ah sorry, when I said brains I meant pineal gland.

all arguments aside, we still need to see the paper and whether their data support their conclusions...plus the authors do not say they demonstrated production of dmt in the pineal in their press release, they specifically said they detected dmt in rat pineals.

I can "detect DMT" by smell pretty reliably.

(Though I´m not that sure about being able to smell it from a pineal)

lol. That's awesome. All the people who thought that was just a crazy theory will feel silly now.

We still haven' t seen the evidence of dmt being produced in the pineal and the author's didn't claim that they have evidence of dmt being produced in the pineal but ratehr of its presence there...I see people easily confusing these two words as of the recent press release.

Present in the pineal is not the same as being produced in the pineal, just as presence of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone (add all the hormones you can name here) in the brain does not mean they are produced there; in fact they are produced elsewhere.

Even the presence of INMT in the pineal does not mean that dmt is synthecised in the pineal, in all fairness.

I kinda got the vibe that the author was claiming evidence for both the presence and production of DMT in the rat pineal. From the press release:

"Research at the University of Wisconsin has recently demonstrated the presence of the DMT-synthesizing enzyme as well as activity of the gene responsible for the enzyme in pineal (and retina). [This being the previously linked paper at the start of this thread]. Our new data now establish that the enzyme actively produces DMT in the pineal."

I guess we'll just have to wait for the paper to be published before drawing any conclusions.

I think you were misinterpreting things.

Many people stated that there was no evidence that DMT is produced in the pineal gland, and until that is proven/disproven people should not state it as a fact that it does or does not produce DMT.

Also many people expressed the theory that the enzyme to produce DMT was not found in the pineal gland and therefor that the production of DMT on the pineal gland was unlikely.

We do not have the full paper yet and until that time all that remains is yet again, speculation. People should never feel silly for not knowing the facts yet, people should feel silly for stating things as fact without evidence.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Oops, I missed that part -

I am definitely amped to read the paper as I'm interested to see how they demonstrated that part.

you and me both.
it's been stated several times that detecting in vivo/in situ production was the challenging part; it's just not as simple as injecting serum into a mass spec.

as we know, DMT is a small molecule, which would be bound to proteins in serum, and rapidly metabolized. other papers have shown the presence of INMT in proximity with sigma-1 receptors found in lung epithelial cells. I seriously doubt the pineal gland has a greater concentration of said protein, but if it has any at all, than the possibility of production there cannot be discounted.

I'm curious to see the pinoline connection in all of this. in my mind, it is the more likely suspect in trancendental meditative states.

You can demonstrate synthesis of dmt by the pineal using radioactivity in an ex vivo system; that is, dissect rat pineals out (or pineal sections) and incubate them with tryptamine and a tritiated methyl donor. Either by radiography or even mass spec you can demonstrate dmt and/or NMT synthesis by the pineal.

Which is an extremely common phenomenon : Confirmation bias

Hypothetical scenario : The data indeed shows production of DMT in the pineal.

Confirmation bias : people will settle on it having had enough evidence to "confirm" their theory, that the pineal is responsible for NDE, religious and mystical experiences etc.

Without confirmation bias : Will refrain from linking all the associated theories, more research to find out if the produce is distributed in the brain, if it happens in a timely manner, degree of MAO activity during the production, if the concentrations are enough to exert psychoactive effects, and many, many more "ifs".

It takes great effort to be patient.

lol. No I know all the stuff you said. I just though it was funny that there is any evidence at all because it seemed to me like a lot of people dismiss the idea that pineal has anything to do with dmt. lol. Now we're debating how much people should infer or whatever. I just hope it's discovered the pineal makes dmt. That would be funny to me.

People dismissed it because there was no evidence... yet some new age types acted like it was scientific fact. IMO, the science minded folks who understand the distinction between speculation and fact needed to go on the offensive (and rightly so) anytime someone brought up the pineal/DMT connection because it was still all speculation.

Now, for the first time, it looks like there's hard evidence in rats. Will this translate to human studies and human DMT production in the pineal (or eye) in situ? Only time will tell. At this moment it's still too early to say.

"a lot of people dismiss the idea that pineal has anything to do with dmt."
and
"a lot of people dismiss statements that the pineal does make dmt."

are two different things. I find it weird that you think there are people here who said that "the pineal has nothing to do with DMT". Never ran across any post of the like.

Actually I've seen plenty of posts like that on the forum and chat..And while i don't enjoy the pineal/dmt connection being spread around as 100% fact just as much as everyone else here, I have to say that its almost equally silly to me to see many people in the past often taking an emotionally-charged reactionary position on the other extreme and stating flat out that "DMT is NOT produced by the pineal"...instead of both sides simply being humble and admitting that we don't know either way for sure ;]

I'm remaining open and am curious to analyze the evidence without being clingy to any position. And so with that said I don't think its unreasonable to speculate within sensible limits about this if we refrain from coming to conclusions and don't get ahead of ourselves. For example its very interesting to me to consider several factors in a broader context; We already know that it has INMT, produces MAOI, is most active at night when many of these endogenous ayahuasca/dmt-esque experiences many of us have had occur (along with night time abduction experiences that have obvious similarities to psychedelic states, which have been pointed out by Strassman and many others), countless ancient and modern reports of prolonged darkness leading to very psychedelic affects very reminiscent of ayahuasca, several people here having NDE experiences that they claim were incredibly similar to their later DMT experiences (along with broad correlations between NDEs and DMT noted by other scholars), meditation being shown to stimulate the pineals production of melatonin (a molecule that has produced psychedelic affects in many of us and can have both beta carboline and tryptamine attributes) tremendously in just one day by another study, etc etc.. And now this new soon to be published study..

As a side note, a few months ago when presenting written reports of deep visionary meditation experiences and dmt/ayahuasca experiences and placing them in a side by side comparison, I didn't tell the audience in my class which was produced by which method. More often than not, it was impossible for them to tell which were the mediation experiences and which were the dmt experiences. Almost all of the audience was familiar with psychedelics and meditation as well (It was a small and wierd class )

All i've written above obviously does not prove anything. I would never claim it does. But its still extremely interesting to me, and even moreso if this study in question holds water. I find it puzzling that many people are so resistant to contemplating/investigating this type of information, and are instead often polarized more or less to either extreme that i noted in the first paragraph