James, E., Keppler, J., L Robertshaw, T., & Sessa, B. (2022). N,N-dimethyltryptamine and Amazonian ayahuasca plant medicine. Human psychopharmacology,, e2835 . doi:10.1002/hup.2835
[Abstract]Objective: Reports have indicated possible uses of ayahuasca for the treatment of conditions including depression, addictions, post‐traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and specific psychoneuroendocrine immune system pathologies. The article assesses potential ayahuasca and N,N‐dimethyltryptamine (DMT) integration with contemporary healthcare. The review also seeks to provide a summary of selected literature regarding the mechanisms of action of DMT and ayahuasca; and assess to what extent the state of research can explain reports of unusual phenomenology.
Design: A narrative review.
Results: Compounds in ayahuasca have been found to bind to serotonergic receptors, glutaminergic receptors, sigma‐1 receptors, trace amine‐associated receptors, and modulate BDNF expression and the dopaminergic system. Subjective effects are associated with increased delta and theta oscillations in amygdala and hippocampal regions, decreased alpha wave activity in the default mode network, and stimulations of vision‐related brain regions particularly in the visual association cortex. Both biological processes and field of consciousness models have been proposed to explain subjective effects of DMT and ayahuasca, however, the evidence supporting the proposed models is not sufficient to make confident conclusions. Ayahuasca plant medicine and DMT represent potentially novel treatment modalities.
Conclusions: Further research is required to clarify the mechanisms of action and develop treatments which can be made available to the general public. Integration between healthcare research institutions and reputable practitioners in the Amazon is recommended.
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section 7 | MECHANISM OF ACTION
Subsection 7.3 | Models of consciousness used to explain N,Ndimethyltryptamine and ayahuasca phenomenology
Subsubsection 7.3.1 | Consciousness as an internal biological process model
* The model that relies on an intimate link between consciousness and biological processes has a long tradition in the scientific community (Place, 1956; Smart, 1959). In the more recent past, several subtypes of this interpretative approach have evolved, according to which consciousness is assumed to be associated with synchronously firing coalitions of neurons (Crick & Koch, 1990, 2003), with a dynamic core forming a transiently stable functional cluster of neurons (Tononi & Edelman, 1998), with recurrent processing (Lamme, 2006), with a dynamic process that can be quantified using measures of complexity (Seth et al., 2006), with a particular biological level of organisation that is realised in the brain (Revonsuo, 2006), or with the operational architectonics of brain organisation (Fingelkurts et al., 2013), to list some prominent representatives. Although this list is not exhaustive, it may be summarised that most neuroscientific approaches can ultimately be divided into two main camps. The first camp posits that consciousness is the final outcome of complex neural interactions, as reflected in the view that phenomenal states emerge from specific neural activity patterns, while the proponents of the second camp argue that phenomenal states are identical with specific neural activity patterns. Both schools of thought are founded on the conviction that the activity patterns constituting the NCC are not just observable concomitants of subjective experience in highly complex animals but, rather, the ultimate foundation of consciousness (Keppler & Shani, 2020).