Sounding Psychedelia

Psychedelic Music and visuals, created using brainwave rhythms from a Psilocybin therapy session. Mushrooms, Modular Synths and Neuroscience

Can Music + Neuroscience…
get you high?

We think so
Sounding Psychedelia is concert and immersive experience in which the energy rhythms of a psilocybin therapy session are transformed into electronic music.

This music is created from EEG Brainwave data recorded during the psilocybin session and processed by Dr. Ying Wu and her team at the UC San Diego Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience.

The data are then mapped to musical parameters that preserve and amplify the frequency and amplitude of bioelectric signals produced in the brain during the psychedelic experience.

These vibrations are actuated on Modular Synthesizers, Electronic Percussion, Live Instruments and Voice, by members of the Harvard Music Department and its interdisciplinary research collective: Creative Practice & Critical Inquiry (CPCI).

The goal: To recreate aspects of the psychedelic experience for the performers and audience, as their brainwaves “get on the same wavelength(s)” as the music – a phenomenon also known as auditory neural entrainment.

This is part of an ongoing investigation of music, entrainment, and the potential of neuroaesthetic ritual interventions for mental health and socio-emotional wellness.
Sounding Psychedelia is supported by the Mahindra Humanities Center as part of the Psychedelics in Society and Culture initiative.
It is free and open to the public
because science and music are fun when they’re accessible
and accessible when they’re fun