Eugene Catrambone

Psychedelic tryptamines such as N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) reliably produce profound alterations in subjective time, including dilation, compression, timelessness, and disruption of ordinary self-world continuity. The mechanisms underlying these effects remain unresolved. This paper proposes a theoretical framework in which DMT-induced temporal distortion is interpreted as a perturbation of scalar-clock record stability mediated by microtubule coherence and awareness-tensor compensation. The original scalar-clock model treats conscious time as a scalar temporal process modulated by an awareness tensor, where increased informational complexity can slow or reorganize experienced temporal flow. Recent developments in the Trinity/STO framework sharpen this ontology by distinguishing three coupled layers: scalar-clock advance, awareness-tensor registration, and observable record stabilization. On this view, stable conscious experience is not produced by static neural states, but by dynamically maintained record classes arising from ongoing scalar-clock advance. The awareness tensor acts as a selective and compensatory layer that constrains changing substrate dynamics into stable observable records. DMT provides a candidate biological perturbation of this system. Through 5-HT2A and sigma-1 receptor pathways, DMT may influence cytoskeletal organization, dendritic dynamics, mitochondrial coupling, and microtubule vibrational coherence. We introduce microtubule coherence, Q, as a mesoscopic order parameter summarizing phase-correlation structure within microtubule-associated oscillatory modes. More precisely, available coherence structure may be represented by a coherence matrix C(t), while the awareness tensor acts as a selector A(t), producing a functionally selected informational load I(t) = Tr[A(t)C(t)]. DMT is hypothesized to alter Q and thereby change the selected coherence available for higher-level neural and experiential organization. The central proposal is that DMT does not merely “slow time.” Rather, it perturbs the record-stabilizing relation between scalar-clock advance and awareness-tensor compensation. Ordinary waking consciousness maintains relatively stable temporal records: body continuity, world continuity, narrative sequence, memory ordering, and self-location. Under DMT, increased coherence, entropy, or altered phase organization may reorganize the awareness tensor’s selection of micro- and meso-scale structure, loosening ordinary temporal record closure and allowing alternative record configurations to emerge. Time dilation, timelessness, ego dissolution, and hyper-associative imagery are therefore interpreted as altered record-stability regimes rather than hallucinations alone. This framework generates testable predictions. DMT exposure should produce measurable shifts in microtubule or cytoskeletal vibrational spectra in vitro, organoid, or cellular models, with receptor antagonists reducing the effect. In humans, DMT-induced temporal distortion should correlate with changes in EEG/MEG complexity, traveling-wave directionality, phase coherence, and interval-timing performance. Cross-compound comparison should reveal differences among DMT, psilocybin, and LSD according to the degree and temporal profile of record-stability perturbation. The framework remains theoretical and does not claim that DMT proves quantum consciousness or the Trinity/STO ontology. Its narrower contribution is to offer a coherent bridge between psychedelic neuropharmacology, microtubule coherence, scalar-clock dynamics, and the phenomenology of altered time-consciousness.

Eugene Catrambone is an independent researcher developing the Scalar Clock / Awareness Tensor and Trinity/STO frameworks, which explore consciousness as a scalar-temporal and record-stabilizing process. His work connects time perception, awareness, information structure, and observable record formation across physics, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. He has published numerous papers and technical notes on Zenodo, including work on scalar-clock consciousness, awareness-tensor compensation, microtubule coherence, altered states, and AI awareness classes. He was invited to present his DMT/microtubule research at The Science of Consciousness conference before the earlier conference was cancelled and rescheduled. His current research examines DMT-induced temporal distortion as a perturbation of scalar-clock record stability mediated by microtubule coherence and awareness-tensor selection.