1968 discovery of brain enzyme producing DMT and its link to schizophrenia research

CHAPTER 5: SOME ENTHEOGENIC ENTROPIES In the spring of 1968, members of my laboratory team were looking for new brain metabolic pathways of the essential amino acid tryptophan, the dietary precursor of the human mood, sleep and libidinal neurotransmitter, serotonin. After struggling for several months to identify an apparently new compound, which turned out not to be new but only new in the brain, we collected evidence for a human brain enzyme that could catalyze the production of an LSD-like hallucinogen, dimethyltryptamine, DMT. Tracing its metabolic origins, we found that DMT was derived from tryptamine, a common metabolite of the essential and omnipresent amino acid, tryptophan. This enzyme and its metabolic product were located in highest concentrations in brain stem systems that influence the neural regulation of the heart, blood pressure, temperature, breathing, vomiting and primitive approach- avoidance behavior. It was also found in limbic brain nuclei thought to modulate the emotional coloring of perception and thought. Richard Wyatt, working at the National Institutes of Mental Health found DMT in the urine of schizophrenic humans. He also showed that DMT increased significantly if tryptamine’s normal pathway for degradation was blocked by monoamine oxidase inhibitors, such as 87 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013587