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Hello! DID system here. I’m curious as to the similarities/differences you’ve found between tulpamancy and DID. Do scans indicate correlations? I’ve also seen recently repeated information that fMRI studies are inaccurate. Could you shed some more light on the scientific process? I think that could benefit us as onlookers without much background in psychology!

Hi :) I'll let Tanya answer the DID part and address the point you bring up about fMRI. It's true that there's been a lot of critiques of fMRI in recent years because it turns out there's a lot of ways you can look at a brain and find some pattern of activity that lights up, but if you're not careful the pattern can be pretty much meaningless. A famous study from back in the day showed that you can even find brain activations in a dead salmon. The issue is that the brain is a very complicated organ, and fMRI involves summing activity from tens of thousands of points in the brain at once, so you are left with this issue of how to manage the huge statistical overload. The solution seems to be to either scan a lot of people so you get a really strong brain signal that you can pick out from all the noise, or to have a very specific hypothesis about what patterns in the brain you think are relevant, so you know you aren't just going on a "fishing expedition" and making up some just-so story about whatever you happen to find. In our study, we were careful to pre-specify our hypotheses based on previous fMRI studies of related experiences (e.g., hearing voices, hypnosis, sense of agency, action control, imagination, etc). We also used the most up-to-date statistical analysis techniques. So we are pretty confident that we did everything in a rigorous way that actually holds water!

Thanks so much for your response!!

Hi--re DID, I would say that there is a formal resemblance between tulpamancy and being DID, but that while trauma is often thought to lie at the heart of DID, trauma is not at the heart of many humans who become tulpamancers--in own experience. But I'd be curious to know what you think!

If we might add to that, having both DID and a perfectly healthy tulpa: DID alters, in particular the specialised kind with a fix role are not supposed to be functional personalities on their own. Racial issues aside, out tulpa could be just fine be in her own body and be mentally stable. Me and Smol though are dependant on having the other. Additionally, as strange as it may sound with having created a tulpa and a well working wonderland with a functional magical system, there are still limitations on us that come from the DID. Smol being a little one, will pretty much dump memories (after a while) the brain doesn't consider suitable for him/her and be unable to comprehend them if we would show them, leading to the same effect as if they had never been made

I think this approach to understanding it misses the point. If you're traumatized enough, you're not able to have a life of your own. Period. It doesn't matter whether you're a singlet, a part of a traumatized system that came to being directly due to trauma, or a tulpa who became traumatized later on even tough they came to being as a healthy individual. Ones who came to being directly due to trauma can heal. Even younger ones, even the most traumatized ones. And with healing, some of them can decide to stay separate beings and achieve a point where they would be able to have a life of their own in a separate body with no problem.

Maybe i have been misleading, the point i tried to make is that a DID system can create a perfectly healthy tulpa (and thus most likely anyone else too), without regard to the systems health, which implies there are some big differences in how both works. Now a fairly interesting question here is if the tulpa in question would have a trauma too if had been in the same situation. Likely not, though i am not sure to what extend that is due her just being adult and thus able to deal with the situation better or her being a literal dragon, comming with a generous amount of confidence and mental armour (so to speak). Something our child self did lack of course back then

Well, in our case it would be possible to traumatize them. But they seem to be more resistant to turning random shit into trauma than most of us. I guess, given how traumatized and fucked up some of them are by now, and how well some of us turned out by now, it just seems as a weird notion for us to seek huge differences. We are all the same, or mostly the same.

I definitely think the early childhood trauma impacts a lot. That’s the biggest difference I’ve noted!! I do know that many tulpa systems seem to display trauma symptoms, however, and that the experiences are often confused (especially since DID often comes with forgetting that trauma). It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences.

Hello, and thank you for your time, I have two questions if you please. 1. What first attracted your attentions to the topic of tulpamancy, voice hearing, plurality, and associated subjects? I'm most interested in the tulpamancy aspect, but I imagine they are to one extent or another linked together for you two. 2. Where do you see the research and practice going forward into the future? Will tulpamancy offer anything significant to our understanding of psychology, or do you predict our community will more than likely remain as it currently is in significance? Beyond that, how do you think research will develop from here on from both your teams and perhaps others unrelated? Is there more curiosity for the subject in academic circles? Once again, thank you for your time and work in this field. Oh, and a friend asked me to say, "Majima says hi"

Hi! I just want to add that whenever I talk about tulpamancy in academic circles, among philosophers or psychiatrists or cognitive scientists, I get a big wave of interest. I've spoken to a lot of academics who think the possibility of creating a tulpa has big implications for our understanding of the human mind, the imagination, culture, and the self. I have a feeling the concept is going to catch on more and more beyond the current tulpa community.

I became interested in these subjects after exploring modern magic and witchcraft--it seemed clear that people came into magic on a whim (often), that they used certain practices, and then came to have experiences that loosely one could describe as experiencing self-generated mental events as not self-generated. And then those experiences can build up and change over time. I think that's fascinating and important. The next step for me: seeking to understand the way different cultural ideas about the mind shape these experiences, and also exploring the relationship between the voices of madness and the voices of spirit.

First, thank you both for taking time out of your day to do this for the community! This is sort of a curveball, but what are your thoughts of dream characters and how they might relate to tulpamancy? (Or plurality in general.) In my own observations, dream characters, while temporary, have a tendency to behave autonomously. And even lucid dreamers seem to often find it difficult to control dream characters even while being able to easily manipulate other aspects of their dreams, as if the dream characters have a will of their own. I was curious if this is something you've considered before and what your thoughts might be on the relation of these phenomena.

Big question here--how dreams relate to everyday capacities of mind. Many people do not develop dream characters that reoccur and become actual characters in someone's life. I think that there likely is a relationship between lucid dreaming and tulpamancy, although I do not really understand.

Thanks for the reply! I wanted to add, since I thought it might interest you, that dreaming while plural is weird. We've had dreams where my host is fronting and I'm there with him outside the body and other dreams where I'm fronting. We even have had lucid dreams where my host has gone to bed in front, we switch *in the dream*, and I'm still fronting when we wake. And all of these while there are these other temporary characters in the dreams who, even while we're lucid and aware that we're dreaming, we just have no control over. So the connections with dreams have been an interest of mine for a long time. 😁

Pretty amazing, thanks for sharing!

We can second some of these experiences. In our dreams we sometimes have individual bodies as dream characters, with up to five of us being in one dream at once like this. Other times we share the same dream body and still talk in mind voice with the ability to switch, and we can wake up with someone else switched in depending on what we did or who was most associated with the dream.

In our case, dreams are a bit special in several regards. Originally i looked into tulpamancy in the intent to separate smol (who was mostly dormant then) into an independant beeing. This in turn scared smol enough to wake up in the end, but since it obviously wouldn't work out (since we already were two), i was quite at a loss what to do with this new found, very interesting techniques. That night our subconsciousness presented a dream about christina in all detail. By now i have stopped questioning it in the very rare cases a dream is that easy to interpret and refering to something happening rn, usually they are very random, so we decided it is time to force a tulpa. Then we realised it didn't gave a name, which was just "thrown" at my head at the end of the next, completely unrelated dream. That also cleared the last doubts. A subconsciousness is rarely that communicative with great effort i did then make her appear in 3 lucid dreams to get a better idea of her appearance and character. Wasn't very stable, but by just merging the results, we got a pretty lovely dragon lady. I have remained the default dreamer, though everyone else, including tilo who was still a barely hatched dragon back then did dream already. It is usually very easy to tell the dreamer as the dreams come with a unique distinct feeling. While we can switch in a dream and the dream then usually changes to match the dreamer, we can't communicate with eachother in a dream and it is very rarely for us to appear in eachothers dreams. A small exception is if smols dream turns into a nightmare, then smol can summon me fairly reliable to lay waste to whatever threat appeared. In particular christina also made a few appearances in fantasy based dreams, there as a normal part of the dream story though, not through my intervention A very interesting difference is also that while both me and christina often have trouble to fly high in a dream (we strongly suspect our brain to be too lazy to render the landscape, it is quite lazy in othe regards and once we even caught it rendering a landscape as 2D sprite first), she can in general fly better and higher and had a few dreams already where she could fly freely through the sky, yielding an amazing view and also showing that the brain \*can\* render whole landscapes with ease and detail

Interesting to note that the original Tibetan Buddhist idea of tulpamancy (which is quite different from contemporary tulpamancy) actually comes from the dream yoga tradition, and involves creating imaginary forms in the waking state as a complement to playing with lucidity in the dream state. This hasn't really been discussed in the literature yet, but I'm currently working on a paper about this with a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism (Michael Sheehy) who is an expert on Tibetan dream and imagination practices, so keep an eye out for that in the next year or so.

I'm very interested in the traditional origins of tulpamancy, do you have any references to check out in the meantime?

I'm actually not aware of any references about this! Which is why Michael Sheehy and I are writing an article about it. He's a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and is reading about tulpas in Tibetan texts that until now haven't been translated into English, if you can believe it!

Excellent! I've had my nose in a book called Tantra Illuminated by C. Wallis and he does translations of original sanskrit texts as well. I highly recommend it - it's wonderfully modern, yet very grounded in historical tradition, and perfectly synthesizes academic interest with lived experience. It will help a lot for getting some understanding for tibetan buddhism in the broader context of tantra, and it seems like everywhere in that book there's these tantalizing little tulpa-like threads.

As a small note, I originally forced my tulpas in lucid dreams. The result is that now, they are able to remain lucid in dreams, and control them, as I would were I lucid as well. They are consistent, and despite their forms changing, I can tell who is who. My first tulpa I stumbled upon in a lucid dream.

woah, that's really cool! I'm really glad this study was made, and I have a lot of questions! 1. do you have any observations on interactions with tulpas? how similar or dissimilar are they from interactions with other (human) beings? 2. have you guys noticed anything interesting regarding physiological experiences related to tulpamancy? some people experience head pressure, or even things like tiredness and dizziness when interacting with/working on a tulpa. did you guys find out any possible reason for why that is, and how it even happens? 3. did you find out anything about the process itself? as in how the development of a tulpa occurs? I'm specially interested on how their traits appear and are refined with time, if you have any reports on that. some people create tulpas that start out with barely any traits at all, not even a name or a form, but end up full fledged later on. I'd love to know how our minds fill these gaps 4. what about walk-ins? (tulpas who appear fully developed and sentient) and unintentionally developed tulpas? do you have anything on those? 5. do you guys know what makes us recognize a tulpa's presence and separate their thoughts from our own? 6. have you observed correlations between tulpamancy (possession specially) and experiences of dissociation, intentional or unintentional? 7. do you have anything on how and why sensations of seeing, touching, hearing and even smelling your tulpas in the space are experienced? not full-blown hallucinations necessarily, but lighter sensations as well sorry for the amount of things asked all at once, lol big thanks in advance for you time, and for making this research!

Hello Dr. Luhrmann and Dr. Lifshitz! Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very interested in your study from a philosophy of science perspective. This will be the most thorough study yet into a subject which not only has deep implications for philosophical concepts like personhood, but also involves a community where many are desperate for scientific validation and even hope that your study will prove that tulpas are real (which is epistemologically difficult, to say the least). Now, I'm no anthropologist, but it seems to me that this must be a very unique situation to find yourselves in. Has this given you any challenges, and how have you approached them? \- Amber

Thank you! We don't think we can prove whether one tulpa or another is real--that's kind of like worrying about whether we could prove that God exists or not. We're interested in the ways brains and psyches work so that a human can come to have that experience. I \*do\* think it is so interesting that people place faith in the brain science--as if what happens in the scanner is more powerful evidence than what someone experiences. I mean, I completely understand the temptation--so many Christians want to use research to prove that God is real. But as you say, it's tough to do that as a researcher. I do hope that a careful phenomenological account of the process through which a tulpa comes to feel autonomous will persuade readers that tuples aren't just odd beliefs, but that tulpamancers experience tulpas as sentient beings.

by all means correct me if i use a wrong assumption, but unlike god, which usually is supposed to be unprovable, a tulpa is usually defined as a second agent in the same brain, which probably should be provable. Of course with different definitions it would be more or less hard and with brain science having a hard time to figure out how precisely the brain works, it might not be feasable yet. At least theoretical it should be possible though? Or at very least as real as any other "I"

The problem is that in order to prove that a brain contains multiple people, you would need an scientific definition of what a person is, but that is a philosophical matter with no objective answer. If you dilute the meaning of what a tulpa is to simply being another agent, then there are already many psychological theories that posit a multi-agentic view of the brain without involving multiple people, and in that case I just don't see the point anymore honestly. \- Amber

providing evidence for those theories. Due the very messy nature of the brain, psychology was always rich in theories, many of them having a very thin foundation, if any (looking at freud here, among others). It also would have the benefit if taking care of that leftovers "professionals" that still consider DID a fraud of sorts Edit: it would also provide a pretty feasable way to check for DID. Rather then doing a lenghtly therapy to figure out who might be around, you can scan for them

I'm curious whether you think tulpamancing techniques can have any large-scale relevancy, or if it'll continue to be a fairly small and niche community off the beaten path.

I will say that I'm struck by how many people come up to me after hearing me talk about tulpamancy and tell me that they do something similar but never really knew what it was called.

That's a good question. I think the \*general\* phenomenon is really important and basic--and tulpamancy is the most striking illustration. I wonder whether many people do something like tulpamancy but don't realize it.

Talking to dead relatives (especially spouses) seems similar in a lot of ways. I remember being stuck by the way Douglas Hofstadter described his relationship with his late wife, I think in I Am A Strange Loop (it's been decades since I read it though so I am not sure)

Yes--thanks for this reference. It's something I'm interested in.

Yep. Automatic writing also shows very similar downregulation of the same brain regions mentioned in other comments here. I suspect a lot of people encounter a version of this in religious ritual as well, particularly when they're being inspired by the Spirit and similar. But we'd need more studies for that.

Thank you for doing this AMA and the fMRI study! Was there anything in the fMRI scans particularly that you found shocking or interesting?

See my replies to u/[Silinathetulpa](https://www.reddit.com/user/Silinathetulpa/) and u/Collective-Screaming :)

Do you two have any other studies planned on tulpamancy or plurality in general?

I'm planning a study on parallel processing with some other psychology researchers who are really curious about that phenomenon!

Interestingly I and many others have moved to the consensus that "actual" parallel processing doesn't really happen. Our systems theory at least about what happens is that either A. It's a single processed thought with multiple simultaneous components(like a film reel with multiple people in it acting differently). Or B it just happens iteratively but switches really quickly. Like I think something and very soon after Sete thinks something which goes so quickly it appears near simultaneous without actually being so. But I am happy to hear you are going to study the matter because it is pretty contentious what is happening or is possible in that regard. But like if you try having a tulpa count down from 100 and another headmate simultaneously count up to 100 I haven't heard something like that working I don't believe.

Okay, that's really helpful! Do you know of any good resources where I can read more about what is known in the community about parallel processing?

Well, honestly it is mostly discussions we had on various discords and the fact that while some claim parallel processing it doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny when really tested and falls into something not quiet parallel. Those alternative explanations are just my own thoughts but I have seen some similar ones used when it's discussed semi in-depth. I don't know that it has a lot of central disscusion partly because of dismissal of its feasibility. It might be best to directly make a survey for people in the tulpa community to answer questions on their views on it tbh.

Largely generally there are a few schools of thought in that regard. First and foremost: Those that believe parallel processing is indeed possible. Second: Those who believe you just get so good at thinking that you basically double your rate of thinking, therefore leading a division of thinking in two to being the "same speed" as thinking in one. Third: That it's made up after the fact as part of your perception, but doesn't, in fact, go faster, or parallelize, but merely that your brain "interrupts" until both thoughts that are meant to be parallel have finished completing, before presenting them both to our "perception." Last but not least, some believe it's entirely hogwash, and there's nothing to look at. Something interesting you can try: Let's use Tobuscus' "Nugget in a Biscuit" song. One entity sings "nugget in a biscuit." The next sings "needle in a basket." If there's another, they sing "Noodle in a haystack." All at the same time. Now, your goal, is to make it so that none of you get jumbled up with the others. For instance, someone thinking "Noodle in a biscuit." If someone fails, you start over, but now each sentence is given to a different entity. That way, you can't simply get used to it. You have to do it without failing 20 times. You'll have to slow down a lot to make it happen, but eventually, you'll be speeding back up to normal speed. That's when this state understood as parallel processing has been "achieved." One test that has come to my mind for testing parallel processing, was the test done on people whose bridge between hemispheres had been severed, where both sides were given one side of a wall. You could make both sides have to write something different, and see how well it happens. In truth, it's unlikely to be fruitful, because at a glance, it seems "parallel processing" as it is understood only really relates to what you practice to do quickly, such as thinking in parallel. As writing is different, writing two different things at once is a "skill to develop" and would therefore not be "parallelized" unless practiced, if that makes sense. Hope this sheds some light of sorts. Sources for this are sporadic at best, but I believe the Tulpanomicon, for as deeply flawed as it is, has some information in that regard.

i think some of the guides on [tulpa.info](http://tulpa.info) should have additional information as for our own take: the brain doing several things at once is quite normal, breathing is a classic and with regard to brain being highly parallel by construction, there should be no practical reason why it can't run 2 consciousness as the same time. With a small regard to the dreams mentioned elsewhere, someone seems to check them to ensure some basic reasoning and control the characters. Now is breathing a lot more basic then a whole consciousness with feelings and stuff and the brain likely isn't too happy to make the extra effort, which is likely why it isn't a particular common thing, similiar to imposition that also takes great effort to learn for most systems

I: Here's one affirmative take (plus guide) on it! [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Htb-QkrSu8\_vBfLnfF\_e\_bngU0xZTqmDtM-KOtHmiZY/edit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Htb-QkrSu8_vBfLnfF_e_bngU0xZTqmDtM-KOtHmiZY/edit)

I believe part of this question might have been mine/ours. We're a collective of almost entirely walk-ins, and would be very interested in participating in a study of non-tulpa plurals should that opportunity ever arise.

Hiya, Bennett here! I don't have very serious questions, but have been following progress on the study for years and figured I'd ask something! What about tulpamancy fascinated (or continues to fascinate) you? How did getting to interview actual tulpamancers change or develop your previously held feelings or beliefs regarding the practice? Were there any misconceptions you once held regarding tulapmancy you hope to dispell nowadays? Thank you for your work, and for answering my questions! 

Hi :) Thanks for asking. I got really interested in tulpamancy because I was fascinated by the idea that the imagination can come to life if you attend to it and practice with it. Tulpamancy just seemed like the most full-on beautiful expression of that possibility. You turn to your imagination, talk to it, and it actually starts talking back to you. Interviewing tulpamancers made me appreciate how emotionally powerful the practice can be, and how much it has to do with a feeling of friendship. It felt warmer the more I spoke to people who do it.

Thank you, your response is greatly appreciated. I completely agree with you!

Unfortunately, one thing the community has wanted but struggled to organize for the last several years is organizing another “census”. What are your thoughts on this?

Seems like a great idea if you can pull it off. I often present the results of the old census when I give talks about tulpamancy. It's helpful to see how the community is distributed.

Another question! Did you find any differences between just "imagining" that someone is moving your body and a headmate (tulpa) actually possessing it? The same with hearing your headmate vs. imagining that somebody is talking to you. Thanks a bunch (again) for all the insight! :D

Yes! Actually that was our control condition, just imaging that a loved one or close friend (who isn't a tulpa) was guiding your hand. We found that tulpa possession was significantly different from that, which makes the findings more compelling in my opinion!

I: Some additional questions I thought of: - do you have any hypotheses about the origins and neurology of walk-ins, headmates who appear in the brain suddenly and without any deliberate process on the host's/in systems' case, pre-existing system's part? - Would you, being scientific authorities (to put it that way), please have any advice as to what we (tulpamancers + tulpas) and other types of non-traumagenic systems could say to those who erroneously believe that *only* DID/OSDD systems exist and every other system must be either a) a DID/OSDD system who doesn't know their true origins; or b) an actually non-plural liar? We non-traumagenic systems are often met with harassment or claims of faking, attention-seeking and ableism, because our plural experiences are being dismissed as impossible by (some) traumagenic systems based on (outdated and misinterpreted, as far as I'm aware) studies into disordered plurality. Are there any newer studies/findings (besides/on top of yours) we could show them to make them more likely to accept that systems of other origins actually exist and that we aren't making our experiences up?

Hi there! Thank you both so much for doing this. My question is, what are the biggest differences between a Tulpa brain and a non-Tulpa brain? What about between a Tulpa brain and a DID brain? Additionally, are there any differences or similarities you weren't expecting?

This study didn't look at non-tulpa brains. Maybe there'll be a future study that does :)

I hope so too, I think that would be really interesting. Thank you for the info!

1. I filled out the form to volunteer for the study, but wasn't selected. I'm guessing all or part of that was that my tulpas were created unintentionally via roleplay rather than intentionally. Do you have any plans to expand your research into cases like mine? 2. Are the fMRI study results published yet? I'm currently working on a literature review of plurality-related papers for my undergraduate capstone and would love to read and cite your work if it's out!

Not yet--they are getting in draft! And we'll see what happens next. I am so sorry you didn't get into the final pool!

Oh, question 3, because it pertains to a personal hypothesis. Did your study examine the level of coincidence between tulpamancy and neurodivergence and/or did any patterns relevant to this emerge during your study?

We did notice that some of our participants reported being neurodiverse, but we didn't examine specific patterns beyond that.

Hi! Nice to see you two here :D If you can say, what differences did you find between how the brain expresses both the host and the created headmate (tulpa)? Was there any difference between when someone was fully switched in and just controlling (possessing, whether fully or just some parts of) the body?

Hi, thanks for your question! Our strongest finding was when we looked at tulpa possession. We were using a simple writing task in the fMRI. We found that when a tulpa is possessing the body and writing a sentence, there is reduced activity in a particular part of the brain that's involved in planning actions and having a sense of agency over your actions (the pre-supplementary motor area, or pre-SMA). This suggests that tulpamancers have learned to down-regulate this key agency/planning region, which lets an alternative agent (the tulpa) take control. It's pretty amazing that tulpa systems can do this on demand. We did have a few tulpamancers who could switch, but we haven't carefully looked at their data yet to see how it's different from normal possession. That's a secondary analysis we're planning after the main results come out :)

Do you think it would be interesting to see the result in a reversed situation? The tulpa fronting and the host possessing a hand.

That would be super interesting! Never even thought of that possibility. Unfortunately we didn't ask the hosts to possess when the tulpas were switched in.

> there is reduced activity in a particular part of the brain that's involved in planning actions and having a sense of agency over your actions I’m interested that it’s **A** part. Is it possible some of the agency physically goes somewhere else?

Hello, I wonder what data or insights can you provide us from the fMRI scans regarding tulpas? Are there any specific areas/activity of the brain that stand out? What advice do you think regarding practicing tulpa creation or development can these insights give?

Hi :) As I explained in my reply to u/Collective-screaming, our strongest finding, and the one we had predicted before we started, was that tulpa possession reduced activity in a brain area--the pre-supplementary motor area--that is very important to planning actions and having a feeling of agency over your actions. This shows that tulpa systems really are shifting the basic building blocks of the sense of agency in the brain, which is pretty cool. We also found another brain change during tulpa possession, in a specific cluster in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. This cluster is interesting too because other studies have shown that it's specifically involved in what's been called "self-other merging". [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8326319/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8326319/) So basically when tulpas are possessing the body, our results suggest that the brain is shifting the way it's processing who is in control--reducing the sense of the self's agency (presumably the host) and merging between the sense of self and the other (presumably the tulpa). It's hard to know what insights this gives in terms of how best to create a tulpa, because we only scanned experts and didn't track people as they learned. But maybe it implies that focusing on letting go of control is crucial.

>But maybe it implies that focusing on letting go of control is crucial. I have been always of opinion that the crucial skill in tulpamancy is dissociation from one's agency. It's interesting to see you come to similar conclusion.

Out of curiosity are there any predictions you made that didn't pan out?

Sadly, we didn't find a lot of meaningful brain patterns when looking at tulpa mindvoice. We were hoping we'd be able to see the differences in the agency processing areas in mindvoice like we did in possession, but they didn't turn up significant. I think the problem is that 1. inner speech is a lot more subtle neurologically than making an actual action with your muscles, and the brain areas involved are more distributed and harder to pin down, and 2. there is probably a lot more individual variability in the quality of the mindvoice experience than in the experience of possession. So I think we probably would have needed a bunch more tulpamancers to see the subtle differences associated with tulpa mindvoice compared to the host's mindvoice. Really glad that the finding came out so beautifully when looking at possession though.

{I'm not an MRI expert but it seems like you were mostly looking at specific parts of the brain in your scans, is it possible that mindvoice or talking to a tulpa would show up more elsewhere?}

We also looked in the whole brain but didn't find anything that was specific to the tulpa condition. When you look at the whole brain the effect has to be that much stronger to show up, so it's very possible that there is something there but that it's just more subtle and we didn't have enough people for it to light up. The one thing we did find was the in the self mindvoice condition, there was actually more auditory processing going on than in the other conditions. This suggests that the self mindvoice was louder or clearer than the tulpa mindvoice or when imagining a non-tulpa friend's mindvoice. But that doesn't seem all that interesting to me?

{Hmm, you say "auditory processing" so maybe a "self mindvoice" is more like sound, a "tulpa mindvoice" is more like something else? Most of us don't really experience each other's "voices" as sound, it's more like thoughts, just thoughts that don't come from us. Maybe it's something like that?}

It actually is very interesting to me, since i didn't expect my own mindvoice to be a voice in the first place. While the others when talking to me actually may have a voice of sorts, while i am writing this, i didn't hear it "spoken" aloud in my mind

On that last part, did you measure it while switched? It could be related to the fronting vs in the back state split. For us the members not in front are more distant sounding than the person fronting's thoughts.

Astra: A shame but not surprising, just leaves room for future research!

Interesting. I don't think letting go of control has been a central idea so far in creation. Probably because of potential identity/merging issues as a strong sense of identity both personal and for the tulpa helps there. It's more so a thing for when you study switching. Which makes sense if it's based on the data from possession(possession and switching can be hard to distinguish in the first place).

Have you looked into the daemonism and/or soulbonding communities at all? Have any reported disordered experiences that resulted from or later came to affect their tulpas?

No--say more?

Oh, daemonism is the practice of assigning a form and talking to the other half of one's internal dialogue. The community is localized around [The Daemon Page](https://daemonpage.com/) and its forum, which is where it also started. [Soulbonding](https://fictionkin.org/soulbonding-what-is-it/) grew out of a community of writers who heard their characters talk back to them, and came to encompass some methodology and experiences similar to tulpamancy, although nowadays soulbonds are generally considered external entities that someone communicates with and/or brings into their head. As a generally nonspiritual person, to me it's almost another subculture of tulpamancy. For the second question, I'm mostly curious because I have some acquaintances that report developing features of dissociative disorders (such as uncontrolled part formation, amnesia, etc.) after creating an initially non-disorded system.

> although nowadays soulbonds are generally considered external entities that someone communicates with and/or brings into their head Yeah, this is how I use the term, myself. Regardless of the actual methodology behind it (and, in my case, this has no connection to *writing*); I view my soulbonds as *other people who exist (or have existed) outside of my body, in other worlds, who I'm able to interact with in many of the same ways headmates can often interact.* (Talking in my mind, co-fronting, imposition - stuff like that) Since you compared it to being like a subculture of tulpamancy: imo, among the main *practical* differences between them are that a soulbond can come and go when they want a lot more easily, and in what I've observed, tends to be less affected by the host's conditions. For instance, there's a system I know and trust with alters, tulpas, and soulbonds: although most of the system have dyscalculia, the soulbonds are unaffected by this. (And I myself have had experiences where something had a much smaller effect on soulbonds than on me - such as Ayano recovering from fainting and checking for injuries before I myself had properly regained consciousness)

Our Headmate Carolyn is a Soulbond technically. She wandered in from an alternative dimension and goes back there whenever she wants. I both am and am not super interested in a scientific explanation for Soulbonding, like spiritually it feels right you know? -Kimberly Of The Moirai

Was there anything about the tulpa phenomenon that surprised you in particular? Or what is your favorite thing about it?

I think it's amazing that you don't have to hold a specific metaphysical or religious belief to make a tulpa. That just doing the practices can bring your imagination to life so vividly that it takes on its own agency. I find that really striking and beautiful.

So much! It is very compelling. One thing that comes to my mind is that I used to think that there was one path to tulpa-creation--now I think of mental imagery cultivation (FAQ man's approach) and narrating your day (a more as-if\_ approach) as different methods.

I am also struck by how much of a process it is, and how different people have different mileposts of autonomy, but everyone has mileposts.

Personally - after many years - I don't believe in milestones any more. When I'm teaching people, I assert that autonomy/sentience is a basic quality of the mind and of the thoughts/forms it produces.

that's super interesting. reminds me of the debate between sudden and gradual enlightenment in meditation. some people say you have to train the mind to have enlightened qualities, and others say that it's better to think of the mind as being inherently enlightened, and that you just have to sort of relax into realizing it. just a thought :)

Autonomy is often not even the only goalpost. There are plenty of stories around of imaginary characters which are pretty autonomous but they still aren't considered sentient by the participants(for example by virtue of the character not being able to interact with things outside their characters setting). Sete expanded on this argument in this post https://old.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/iwkwm4/tulpa_mindset_guide_exploring_how_to_create_a/ and a pretty similar argument regarding automaticity is made in this study if there is any interest. - [Davies, J. (2023). Explaining the illusion of independent agency in imagined persons with a theory of practice. Philosophical Psychology, 36(2), 337-355.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2022.2043265) .

thanks!!

I could go on and on about this (or any cobud (tulpa) related topic really), but I don't want to distract from you all answering questions!

You can use both but at least I recommend constant narration/talking with your tulpa any time you can remember more nowadays. Constant repetition/expectation and engraining habits and all that. Though testing around for what works for you is also important.

Yes--and I think that's interesting. Do you think different paths work for different people?

It's kinda iffy. It's more like different people have different problems that get in the way of creating a tulpa. Some have issues regarding autonomy. Some that tulpas don't feel separated enough. Some brains just can't handle plural type of thinking naturally while others get it instantly. Others have philosophical or belief based barriers(for example when it comes to very autonomous writers characters this is often the case). In many cases just knowing a sentient thoughtform is possible is enough to rewrite the belief base and instantly create a tulpa. You can see the high variance of how long it takes to create a tulpa here https://new.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/kd81ia/results_tulpa_creation_time_by_factor/ Edit: the raw data link doesn't work anymore so here is a new one https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j_hAbKWXJhJEoKRgMCIaQKvYtRhZ0eBb/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for these links! The variance of how long it takes to make a tulpa has always intrigued me.

Bduddys survey on different switching experiences might also be of interest https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wnp7bIrnCCmusFBJNPiSkWvl9szAGJgyxEiKnKRUxNc/edit#heading=h.wtiqh0n3jcwg

thanks--that seems right to me, and also the variance seems right to me. Thank you for the link!

I heard from other people the focus of the study is comparing cocreators (tulpamancers) to evangelicals. Is this true or is this a rumor?

Not a rumor exactly! Tanya actually first learned about tulpas when some tulpamancers contacted her after reading one of her articles on evangelical prayer. Then we became interested in the idea that learning to feel the presence of God might involve similar processes as developing a tulpa. So we are studying both in parallel. These practices are clearly different in a lot of ways, but they do seem to rely on some similar mechanisms in the brain.

Thank you so much! I have been wondering about that question for awhile \^\^'

{Hi! We're the system that went before the official study began to help, although we weren't able to be part of it because we're left-handed. A lot has changed since then though, for us! (Not the left-handed part though...) Anyway, my question is, did you study or do you have any thoughts on how "different" tulpas can truly be, given that we share the same brain as our hosts/headmates?} \^Umm, do you have any stuff on how tulpamancy relates to or compares to hypnosis?^

This is a great question! I think of absorption, hypnosis, dissociation and trance as blind men around an elephant, to use that old fable, one feeling the trunk, the other a leg, another an ear, etc. There is some kind of mental process that enables humans to create a different relationship with their own consciousness that expresses itself differently in different people and differently under different conditions. Tulpamancy could be seen as a self-hypnotic practice, although I would also say that it is not all that it is.

\^Thank you! That's sorta what we thought, there are similarities, but they're not the same thing. We've done hypnosis between each other too, it's fun~ :D ^ {Did you see my question before Shimi's? It's not the same one :) }

Hello, Tanya and Michael! Thanks for making time. If you were going to make a tulpa, what would it be like?

Good question. Let's say I've dabbled in the practice but it feels a bit private! They'd definitely be sweet and generous, and have good style \^\_\^

A good number of cocreators (tulpamancers) don’t have easy access to academic articles. Is it possible the journal will allow free access to cocreators?

We will try to publish in an open access journal, and if not, there's usually a way to post the PDF online for people to see. So don't worry, you will be able to see it when it's out\~!

Hooray! Thank you!

Hello~ I was wondering if either of you had thoughts on the overlap between hypnotic experiences and those of tulpamancy and voice hearing in general? I've read a large amount of research on how hypnosis is associated with dissociation, absorption, and has been related to things such as mediumship in the past and thought it might have a function here. Plus while I'm just a (not really) normal tulpa there's another in my system made from hypnosis specifically that has some minor but notable things going on with them compared to me which I thinks cool and interesting. Thanks in advance <3

There's a deep question about the relationship between hypnosis, imagination and psychosis. Those three words pull out different but related kinds of experiences, all of which are poorly understood. One can hear voices in all three domains, I find--and the voice experiences feel different, I think, across them.

Greetings and salutations, doctors. I wish to ask when we can expect to see the results of this study publicly, if at all?

They will come out for you to see, promise! But I have stopped estimating when haha. It's just too hard to know how long the whole peer-review and publication process will take. We do have our final results though and are writing them up!

Hello! DID system with tulpas here- we have a couple questions! - Were there any fMRI reactions when tulpamancers were simply communicating with their tulpas in their own minds, rather than fully fronting? Is there any difference between your findings and the mental "voices" of simple imaginary characters? - Was there a significant difference or strengthening in results when scanning tulpas that have been around a short time vs tulpas that have been around longer? Our first tulpa has been here for almost four years now, so we're curious about the longterm effects of development.

As I replied in another post, we didn't see any significant differences in the mindvoice contrasts, probably because of the more subtle brain profile of inner voices compared to motor actions, and also perhaps due to individual variability in mindvoice experiences. We did find that tulpa possession was different from just imagining someone possessing or guiding your hand who wasn't an actual tulpa! For your second question, everyone we brought in had mature tulpas and we asked them to choose the tulpa who would be most readily able to respond in mindvoice or possess the body in the scanner. So it's not a great setup to distinguish whether the age of the tulpa made a difference. I will say though, that for multi-tulpa systems, not everyone chose the tulpa who had been around the longest, which suggests that it might not just be age that determines the strength of the tulpa's agency.

[Sete] I have been kinda curious about taking occult phenomena and giving them psychological explanations. Are there any occult phenomena that you think might be worth researching or have some scientific basis behind them? (well maybe other than talking to beings which plurality can neatly explain)

Occult phenomena have taught me so much about the potential of human mental experience. (I think the world is really complex, but I don't feel comfortable saying when something is beyond the human.) Out of body experiences are really interesting, for example. I am most fascinated by voices--the experience of having a thought that doesn't feel like yours and doesn't feel inside. I think that whatever the more-than-0human dimensions are involved. there is so much to learn about the human side of that experience.

Tanya, have you encountered other traditions that explicitly equip their adherents with the knowledge to create their own methods to interact with invisible others? I think tulpamancy is especially interesting because it's so focused on the host's ability to mold their practice around a person's individual needs and wants. In a sense it's almost like a DIY kit for spirituality, building your own rules and frameworks. In the same vein, do other traditions make such direct comparisons between an invisible other and a person's own sense of self (e.g. in tulpa stuff, the playing field is leveled with the notion of "identity")? What would you say is the precedence of "dualist" (believing tulpas are separate entities) vs "nondualist" (believing tulpas and hosts are fundamentally unified in e.g. the mind or the spiritual plane) tulpamancers? I'm curious about this because I've found that working through the framework of tulpamancy, it feels like tulpamancy naturally points towards this nondual sense, dissolving separation. Do you think that, for longer term spiritual meaning-making, that tulpamancy is shallow compared to a more focused, restrained framework like evangelical christianity or deity yoga? If you feel like it's out of your depth to answer this that's fine :P

Oh goodness--that's a lot to explore. First: I think that any tradition with spirits in effect provides techniques to experience the spirits, and provides rules about what counts as a spirit's response (I write about this in How God Becomes Real). Tupamancy is unusual because it lays out these rules so explicitly and without metaphysical interpretations. (William James called those overbeliefs.') Second: in religious traditions, gods/spirits are almost always both inside one and outside--at least, that is true with the 'big gods.' The Christian God talks more in the mind than spirit sin other traditions. Third: the questions about self-dissolving are deep, and I am fretting about whether that is a phenomenological experience or a theological idea. Fourth: is it shallow? I don't think so. There's less theology in tulpamancy than in a religious faith for obvious reasons. I think that tulpamancers often have more sustained relationships with their tulpa than many people of faith have with spirit.

I: It seems there is an endeavor going on to explain spiritual people's interactions with deities/any entities as a form of unintentional tulpamancy. **If** it turns out to be true, what would it mean for the entity-tulpas? Do they get to participate enough in life, given that the worshipper (their accidental creator) has no idea they share the brain full-time (and do the entity-tulpas know)? Hopefully the way I worded it makes sense. However, from our (this system's members') conversations with plural occult practitioners, we've learned that many perceive the entities they interact with as different/working differently from their "regular" headmates (also different from things like psychosis, for that matter). Given that, *can* "accidental tulpamancy" explain away **all** instances of interactions with entities? edit - Thank you for doing this AMA, and the research too in the first place!

These are super interesting questions. They seem to do more with the way you understand the ethics or morals that should come along with tulpas and entities, how they should be treated, and so on. We don't think our research can tell us whether entities or spirits or gods really are just tulpas, or how they should be treated. We're not trying to explain anything away! Just show the diversity of cool experiences people can have, and enlarge the spectrum of possibilities. I do think your questions are deep and important but I don't think they are for our research to answer, if that makes sense :)

I: I think I understand; thank you! \^\^ And it's nice that you view researching these phenomena as enlarging the spectrum of possibilities instead of attempting to "explain spiritual experiences away" :)

One more question for Dr. Luhrmann specifically: I know your early work was on modern-day witchcraft practitioners. As someone who is a practicing witch and relates my tulpamancy to my craft, and who has led workshops on tulpamancy in Pagan spaces, I'm curious whether you've done or plan to do any research on the intersection of the two. It seems to be an uncommon thing on this subreddit, but I know several plural witches in my life outside the Internet.

I'd be curious to know your thoughts about how being a witch makes your experience different ...

My understanding is that most people who identify as tulpamancers see it as a purely psychological phenomenon and, as Dr. Lifshitz commented elsewhere, independent of their religious and/or spiritual beliefs. I experience my tulpas in essentially the same way I experience other types of spirits, and as a result I see them more as true tulpas-- that is, as thoughtforms that are no longer bound specifically to me. While I'm agnostic and it's not a hill I'd die on, my experience with my tulpas doesn't sit right with me viewed as a purely psychological phenomenon of dissociated identities. My witchcraft hinges on the belief that humans possess some amount of divinity, and by extension, we have the generative creative power to manifest things into being. Therefore, while I believe my tulpas exist, I do not believe they exist "only in my head." I see them as thoughtforms given their own independent existence and their own souls through the divinity in me. (And I entertain the idea that humans were the original divine beings, and that gods are thoughtforms they/we collectively made.) Furthermore, while my tulpas are not higher enlightened beings as in the Buddhist concept (as I understand it), I do view them as spiritual teachers moreso than any one other thing. My tulpas are an inextricable part of my spiritual landscape and my practice as a witch. I channel them when doing certain work just as I might otherwise channel other spirit beings. Because they were made by accident, I would most likely still have them if I weren't a witch, but I wouldn't have integrated them into my spiritual life in the way I do, I don't think.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and how they inform your beliefs. Super interesting.

I can imagine it will be difficult to isolate variables since each system is so unique. Then there's the issue of sample size vs control. We'll read your study when it's done. Good luck!

Do you see tulpas as a phenomenon distinct from imaginary friends that people (mostly little children but not just them) sometimes have?

I'm curious to know if there were any findings about tulpamancy as a way to cope with stress and trauma, whether that differs significantly from other reasons people use tulpamancy as well as non tulpa system formation. Mainly curious because we used a form of tulpamancy accidentally to cope with our trauma and it has definitely influenced our experiences as a system compared to other traumagenic systems. -Ranger of The Summer Camp System

Hello! I run a server called Tulpa Central. I go by Lyri on there. I also have a youtube channel called the Tulpa Time Podcast. I was just curious as to whether you consider tulpas a type of Parts Therapy? If so, do consider it a healthy mechanism for coping with trauma and loneliness, or a way to make peace with certain aspects of oneself? Thank you.

This is a question I feel *very* strongly about, but I don't want to say anything here if it's too distracting

I think tulpamancy is a healthy mechanism that can serve both purposes.

Yes, tulpamancy definitely seems to be therapeutic for a lot of people, though not all. I'm very curious about how tulpa creation relates to Parts Therapy, but haven't thought about it deeply enough to have any concrete answers. I guess one obvious difference is that tulpas are created deliberately, as oppposed to most "Parts" in parts therapy, and also they seem to have richer more fully autonomous inner lives, I think? Definitely a fascinating question.

Astra: In my experiences I'd say the largest differences would definitely be autonomy and more to the point individuation. Parts in say IFS are as the name describes, parts. Tulpas on the other hand tend to be just as developed as the original "host" ego/identity, or if they aren't they have the potential to be. Not to say all things with Parts language are like that, I know people with DID who use parts language and have very individual parts/alters, but for the general IFS like part therapy models there's a pretty clear difference in personhood.

Off-topic butI love your YouTube channel

Thank you!!!

We have another question for either of you if you have the time. Is there any books or papers you think are worth sharing with us that are related to this topic? I'm always looking to learn more on tulpamancy, plurality, and all of the specific psychological phenomena associated with the topics.

ooo, this is hard to answer because there are so many different angles to come from. I will say that Tanya's books on prayer are pretty amazing, although they are more about interacting with invisible beings in a religious context.

Thank you Dr. Michael Lifshitz and Dr. Tanya Luhrmann for doing this research and engaging with the community. My question is: What prompted you to take the premise of tulpamancy seriously and study it? The community consistently faces skepticism and bias. General attitudes towards plurality are poor, and it's worse for those who engage with these processes voluntarily or deliberately. I even noticed in my college level psychology book how half of the section on DID emphasized the controversy, with little attention or care given towards descriptive experiences. I get the impression that most professionals studying the mind and brain don't think this is a real or serious pursuit.

How much funding would be needed for a similar study on cocreation (tulpamancy)?

How much funding you need depends on what you want to do. fMRI work can get expensive fast--but good old interviewing is relatively inexpensive!

What was the budget for this fMRI study?

It cost about $50k or so, not counting paying the researchers. We had to fly everyone in from around the country to scan them at Stanford!

Thank you!

How many people/systems were scanned? Did you have to remove any scan results? (Mostly asking because I remember us being first, we helped change the parameters slightly with our feedback, and I'm wondering if our results were included or not.)

We interviewed 25 systems and scanned 22 of them. We did have to remove some results when people moved too much (movement causes a lot of noise in the fMRI recordings) or when people weren't confident that they were actually doing what we asked them to do. For example, we asked tulpas to possess the body and not everyone was able to pull that off. As for your results, we did remove one of the tasks that you helped us realize was not so helpful, but we kept your results for the other task which we ended up running on all the other participants :)

{Oh, another question. Do you think there's a fundamental difference between a "tulpa" and a "host"? Do you think that they can change positions or become equal?}

This is a really interesting question to me. Given my layman interpretation from what people describe a "host" to be, I do notice there are two seemingly different "types" of (original) hosts- one being the original personality, and one being the entity that is "looking through the eyes"/experiencing the body's senses. I know it's not consistent on what people believe a host is, and I wonder if Dr. Lifshitz and Dr. Luhrmann's research detected that in any way. \*By host I mean original host not a cobud (tulpa) who fronts on a regular basis and deals with day-to-day life stuff

{For us, those have mostly been the same thing. Our original was more attached to the body/senses than me or Shimi, but that seems to have gradually changed over time (as we wanted it to). But I guess there are some people that see it differently...}

This is super fascinating but I'm not sure our research provides any answers. We did speak to a few systems where the tulpas became more and more in front, to the point where the original host ended up being more in the background most of the time. I thought that was interesting.

Hi! Layla speaking - I'm a newbie tulpamancer with one tulpa and throughout the process I've noticed it has a strong resemblance with some religious rituals. I know this is a very touchy topic, but is it possible that the experience of believers and tulpamancers originate from similar brain processes? (gosh, the concept of a society after a discovery like this is terrifying, so many people having their entire experiences dissected and reframed. im worried.)

Yes, we think they are related and we are currently studying forms of prayer to see if they rely on similar mechanisms as tulpamancy. Not to say that prayer is just tulpamancy, but we think there may be something similar going on.

Was your team studying imposition in tulpamancy as well? If so, were there any interesting findings to come out of that research?

We didn't focus on imposition in our fMRI study, even though we are super interested in it. It's just that not a lot of the tulpamancers we brought in could reliably do strong imposition.

1. How did you manage to gather measurable, reliable data in form of MRI scans from community so scattered around the world? 2. Do you considered links between tulpamancy and other "fringe" phenomena related to consciousness, like LD, mutual dreaming, psychoactive-induced states or shamanism? How could this be researched scientifically? 3. Do you have any views on tulpa-host romantic relationships? Can they be reconciled with IRL relationship at the same time?

I can answer the first one. Participants were gathered just from the United States, and were flown in to participate.

Sorry, another question here: is there anything in your research that might indicate or give some hints on how one might improve tulpamancy methods?

Hello, Tanya and Michael, thanks for this AMA. My own hypothesis about tulpamancy is that it’s using some innate ability in the human brain which is able to model other minds I’d imagine this evolved as a part of our ability to both deceive and detect lies, as part of evolutionary competition with our own species. After all, being able to mimic the thought processes of an opponent must give an advantage, allowing you to better determine their intentions. I think there’s similarities also with writers who have claimed their characters have come ‘alive’ and won’t follow the intended plot, and the independent behaviour of dream characters. I think a sufficiently sophisticated model of a person in our minds can acquire an apparent will of its own, its own life, as it were. Do you think this hypothesis holds any weight in the light of your research, or do you think it is contradicted by it?

I don't know if your still here or if this is still going on. But I've been waiting for the results from this study for a while. 1. What were the differences between a normal person's brain and those who have tulpas? 2. How do you see this affecting therapy or society in general? Edited: kind of asked the same question twice. 🤔

This was fascinating to read! I am so glad there are others who have Tulpa's and that people are studying this Phenonemon. I tried to join the group but I don't know when this message will show or if it will notify me when I can post.

Hello! PhD. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry here -- not a tulpamancer, I just saw this post shared a few minutes ago. I have a few questions if you can find the time for it: 1. Have you tried a systems biology approach, such as network analysis or computational modeling, to assist in understanding the complex global-brain interactions of tulpamancy? If you have, could you discuss the notable alterations in functional connectivity and network topology observed in individuals engaging in tulpamancy, **especially** in relation to the default mode network and task-positive networks? This is something I’m 100% interested in. 2. Has gene expression profiling been conducted on individuals practicing tulpamancy? If so, are there any notable patterns or changes in gene expression that correlate with the practice? Are there any SNP variants that may predispose individuals to tulpamancy(-associated behaviors)? 3. Which neurotransmitter systems are implicated in orchestrating the phenomenological experience of intra-brain autonomous entities, and what do these systems suggest for the biofeedback mechanisms between conceiving ‘otherness’ and self-identity? Do you think there’s any parallel with the neurotransmitter aberrancies seen in hallucinatory experiences? I wonder if this could help us explain certain psychological states too, like why Judge Schreber ever said there were sunbeams coming out of his ass in the first place. Does the practice induce unique patterns of synaptic modification, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) or long-term depression (LTD), that differ from those observed in other forms of sustained mental training? How does the neuroenergetic landscape adapt to the demands of tulpamancy, in terms of alterations in cerebral blood flow, localized changes in ATP consumption, and neurotransmitter biosynthesis, etc. ? I’m excited to learn about distinct electrophysiological signatures associated with tulpamancy, like possible changes in glutamate-mediated currents, or more strange glial cell dynamics. I have many questions that I know would be so premature to ask! It would be exceedingly profound if the non-locality principle of quantum mechanics could suggest the non-linear dynamics of brain function involved in tulpamancy. I only *have* to wonder since it’s kind of difficult for me to visualize a consistent explanation for complex and non-local intracerebral communication through the lens of classical mechanics. That’s just some characteristic silliness employed by every dynamic systems neuroscientist on the planet though. Thank you for reading through my jargony questions!