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Conference on Music and Consciousness, University of Sheffield, 17-19 July 2006, Fachner
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International Conference on Music and consciousness
17th
-19th July 2006
University of Sheffield, Department of Music
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Oral presentation
Tuesday 18th
July 09:00 A.M.
Session 2: Music and Altered States
Music and drug induced altered states of consciousness - an overview
Jörg Fachner
Overview1
Background
Drugs have different action profiles that may be theoretically categorized
according to Julien (1997) as mainly euphoric, sedative, or psychedelic.
Euphoric drugs, like cocaine and amphetamines, and sedative drugs, like heroin
and tranquilizers, primarily alter the quantity of emotional states. Psychedelic
drugs (from Greek ‘psyche delos’ – enhancing consciousness or soul) (e.g. LSD,
Mescaline, Psilocybin) produce qualitative changes in the conceptual-cognitive
evaluation of sensory input data. Sedative drugs may help to keep sensory
reality in its emotional relation to the perceiving individual at a distance,
1 Underlined indicates a mouse click in the corresponding Powerpoint presentation
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whereas euphoric drugs eliminate distance almost completely. Psychedelic drugs
flood the brain with sensory data and weaken sensory brain functions through
contradictory associations of sensory reality (see Emrich 1990).
A common quality of all psychoactive drugs is that they alter the evaluation of
sensory input, its conceptual comparison with known contents and the
assessment parameters of (not) relevant information. This happens through drug-
specific individual activation and inhibition of the interaction between midbrain,
cerebrum and cerebellum.
The limbic system of the midbrain that changes the evaluation parameters
through emotional colouring of sensory data plays a specific role in this context.
Music and intoxication appear to have forms of emotional processing in
common, at least in regard to reward processing in the limbic system of the
brain. Blood and Zatorre’s study (2001) demonstrated that highly preferred
music that induces chills on the skin of the listener activates the same brain
regions as euphoriant drugs like cocaine. Our favourite music interacts directly
with structures associated with reward and emotions. These reward processes
are physiologically also mediated via endogenous neurotransmitters and their
corresponding receptorsystems, which can be target and activated throughout a
consumed drug as well.
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Music, culture and drugs
Walter Freeman (2000) discusses connections between music and dance and the
cultural evolution of human behaviour and social bonding of relationships. He
assumes that the knowledge of the induction of altered states of consciousness is
connected with chemical and behavioural forms of induction. The trance states
produced this way serve to break through traditional customs and concepts of
reality but also to heighten susceptibility to new information (De Rios and Grob
1994). Such intended changes lead to the formation of ‘initiated’ groups and
confidentiality in passing on significant findings. Initiation rituals and rites of
passage are mostly employed for adolescents (Blätter 1990). Musical skills in
particular appeared to be important for an efficient trading of knowledge. What
is the function of music and drugs in such rituals?
Studies on music and the psychedelic drugs Psilocybin by Weber (1974), on
Ayahusca by de Rios and Katz (2006) and on Iboga by Maas & Strubelt (2003)
suggest that psychedelic drugs induce cross modal intensification, trigger
regression processes and lead to more vivid association and vision correlated to
the music in a guided therapeutic or shamanic context. Certain traditional
melodies like the Icarus songs in the Amazonian Ayahuasca healing sessions,
polyrhythms and the action of the African Iboga plant help the traditional healer
and their clients to get in contact with personalised cultural means i.e. plant
spirits, ancestors and associated cultural cosmologies. The Music structure and
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the drug action functions as an entraining and guiding framework (‘jungle gym’)
for the healing ceremony.
Techno
Studying the interaction of MDMA and Rave music Hutson (2000) showed that
music and dance combined with the ingestion of MDMA intensified the
experience of the party event but that the drug is not essential to the appreciation
of parties and Techno music. In a cyber ethnography of internet forums Hutson
extracted various means of spiritual experiences connected to the
technoshamanic setting of music, dance and exctasy, as carriers of an intended,
evoked altered state. Mitterlehner (1996) discusses the trance-inducing function
of accelerando and crescendo, de- and increase of volume, polyrhythmic
patterns, sudden breaks and other features which were already discussed by
Rouget (1985) as being important in movement orientated trance music, here
evoking crisis and peak experiences in party goers. In a recent study the
interaction of drug effects and volume was discussed based on an experiment
involving rats. Iannone (2006) concluded that loud music intensifies the effects
of MDMA, meaning it produces more intense, but also adverse drug effects.
In the 1960’, highly publicized creations by artists, music and movie stars of the
so-called counterculture (Taqi 1969; Taqi 1972) provided a fertile social ground
for ideas about heightened, expanded consciousness, altered perceptions, and de-
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conditioning of behaviour (Carey 1968; Kupfer 1996a; Kupfer 1996b; Nixon
1999).
Taeger (1988) proposed that the combination of music and drugs in the pop
culture was not just born from a contempory wish to make cash, but that the
music and texts of pop artists revealed a serious spiritual search or longing.
Taeger explored interpersonal correlations between psychedelics and religious-
mystical aspects in the counterculture of the 1970’s. He found many indications
of spiritual experience and attitudes of musicians and artists on the covers of
albums and in texts by pop artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Psychedelics
provided access to the collective subconscious. Many images and symbols
described in texts revealed a mystical experience produced by psychedelics, as
already described by Jung in his theory of archetypes (Taeger, 1988, p.131ff).
Sheila Whiteley (1992) analysed music by Pink Floyd, the Beatles and other
groups of the 1960’s and 1970’s and developed the concept of ‘psychedelic
coding’ that described symbolic and semiotic codings of elements of
‘psychedelic culture’ in composition. On the basis of text and material analysis
she discusses metaphorical links between cultural semantics and drug effects in
music and socio-cultural environments of the groups analysed who differed in
the production of a specific sound from other groups (Whiteley 1997).
This figure elaborated by Böhm (1997; 1999) shows the degrees of acoustic
sound alterations by modulation, echo and reverb effects.
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Shapiro (1998) suggests that every popular musical style was the expression of a
life style that should also be seen in relation to the habits of the artists and the
artistic scene marking that style. From a socio-pharmacological perspective, the
predilection of a sub cultural scene for a certain drug was always a kind of
fashion to get ‘turned on’, that is, to enter certain physiological states in order to
experience the normal and the unusual, events and moods more intensively and
from a new perspective (Lyttle and Montagne 1992).
Interestingly Kerr (1992) interviewed 82 artists on drug habits and found a
significantly higher tendency to consume cannabis in musicians compared to
other artists.
Studies on drugs and music
Cannabis
Cannabis can have a variety of effects in the state of intoxication, either
stimulating, psychedelic, or sedating. This depends on dose and experience and
also on the mood and environment of the user (Baudelaire, 1988; Julien, 1997).
High doses may produce synesthetic experiences: „ Sounds dress themselves in
colours, and the colours contain music“ (Baudelaire, 1988: 43).
Curry (1968) interviewed and observed musicians and music listeners using
drugs in clubs and at concerts in the 1960s. He interpreted drug effects of
cannabis, psychedelic substances and amphetamines on music perception as a
change in cognitive style, in the sense of a hyper-focussed perception of sound
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and an inner trip into acoustic space. „…a reorientation of perception takes
place, the limited visual space disappears, and the acoustic space is perceived as
a sphere, with the corresponding reaction“ (Curry, 1968: 214). Charles Tart.
asked 151 cannabis comsumers to evaluate given statements on a rating scale
according to dose and subjective effects on auditory perception (Tart, 1971: 75).
Aldrich and Reed demonstrated slight improvements with the Seashore Rhythm
Test. Melges et al. explained the impact on time perception as a reciprocal
relation of subjectively slowed-down time, in the sense of an expansion of time
and a cannabis-induced acceleration of the „inner“ clock. In auditory tests,
cannabis changed the auditory (intensity) metrics of test persons and induced
frequency preferences in favour of higher frequencies.
Descriptions of synaesthetic effects in Baudelaire and Tart, weakened
censorship of visual depth perception in studies by Emrich, more creative
interpretations of Rorschach test patterns and a transition to divergent modes of
thinking suggest an intensification in individual cerebral listening strategies, a
perceptive hyper focus on acoustic spatial sound and the (time) structure of
music. The above mentioned studies (in Fachner, 2000; 2002) therefore indicate
that cannabis does not so much affect music perception itself; it induces changes
in the perception of time, frequencies and space, comparable to an enhancer,
exciter or compressor in studio techniques, and thereby influences the perceptive
focus of spatial-temporal sound gestalts, it’s sound staging and in this way may
be perceived as an improvement in psychoacoustic quality.
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It seems to be part of the evaluative strategies for a number of musicians to
listen to the mix of newly recorded music once again under the influence of
cannabis, as confirmed by some members of the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac
(Boyd, 1992). For someone with experience it is possible to shape the musical-
acoustic temporal space of sounds, their „sound staging“, in listening,
composition and improvisation, due to the drug-induced changes in the metric
context (Fachner, 2000).
EEG studies by Hess and Fachner illustrate that the process of listening is
intensified and focussed temporarily and that individual listening strategies
change. Hess (1995) analysed the effects of cannabis and their correlations in
the EEG under conditions of flickering lights, music and a phase of
hyperventilation. He detected frontal and parietal increases of alpha and a
decrease in the frequency in correlation to the contemplation phase induced by
cannabis. Listening to music revealed the „most obvious signs of hashish
smoking“ (Hess, 1995:32), and it was possible to control the altered state
through music. Music was perceived as more intensive, details were perceived
better, and the sense of time changed markedly while listening to music.
- Brainmaping
Fachner (2002) analysed the EEG brain maps of test persons listening to music
with and without cannabis; listeners without Cannabis revealed stronger, those
with cannabis revealed weaker amplitudes and frequency quantities across
nearly all brain regions compared to rest. But the parietal lobe that coordinates
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alertness and perception revealed a marked increase in alpha amplitudes while
listening to music after cannabis consumption. The literature on EEG discusses
alpha increases in reverse relation to cognitive performance („reverse alpha“) as
an indication of facilitated mental processing (compare Fachner, 2002:28ff).
Theta changes in the right temporal lobe and on the alpha band in the left
occipital lobe were significant (p.
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Benzodiazipine and Propofol
Music studies on the sedatives Benzodiazepine by Harrer (1991) and Propofol
by Heinke (2004) have shown that cognitive processing in the cerebrum will be
hampered. Propofol evokes a decreased ability to process chords and tones
correlated with decreased amplitudes and higher latencies in auditory event
related potentials. Benzodiazipine induced a short-term decoupling from
vegetative and psychic processes resulting in an increasing indifference and
disinterest of emotional and aesthetical apperception of music.
Summary
Chemically induced altered states of consciousness together with music can be
studied as psycho-physiological models of altered states of consciousness and
might help to understand altered states of consciousness processes in vivo.
Electrophysiological studies of music and altered states have revealed theta
changes as indicative of altered states of consciousness. Music and drug action
are processed in the same limbic brain areas, a region associated with low-
frequency generations. Drug rituals with music are used as initiation into a
codified legacy of knowledge enabling access to archetype symbols. Artists
often use drugs creatively to vary their perspective on conditioned perceptive
patterns. Psychedelic drugs act on time and space perception, induce changes of
cognitive-emotional valence and therefore induce temporarily changed audio
metric scales of psycho acoustic qualities, melody, rhythm and intensity of
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acoustic events. Drug induced cross modal intensification leads to more vivid
association and vision correlated to the music in a guided therapeutic context.
References
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Contact:
Dr. Joerg Fachner, (M. Ed.)
(Senior Research Fellow at the
Chair for Qualitative Research in Medicine -Prof. Dr. phil David Aldridge-)
Faculty for Medicine
University Witten/Herdecke
Alfred-Herrhausen Str. 50
58448 Witten
Germany
Tel:0049 2302 926762
Fax: 0049 2302 926783
http://www.musictherapyworld.net
http://notesweb.uni-wh.de/wg/medi/wgmedi.nsf/name/qualmed_profil-DE
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