Visualizing biological molecules on the scale of atoms and molecules is a significant challenge, owing to their structural complexity and dynamics. Alongside work aimed at constructing perceptual environments whose phenomenology can elicit effects which appear to be similar to psychedelics on some key metrics, we are also doing work to visualize the molecular and structural mechanisms which are associated with psychedelic function.

A host of biomolecular evidence suggests that classical psychedelic molecules (LSD, psilocybin, DMT) bind to human serotonin receptors. This video shows a first person perspective as two researchers co-habit the multi-person Narupa VR environment to inspect the crystal structure of an LSD molecule bound to a membrane-embedded HT2B human serotonin receptor. In future work, we aim to use this approach to carry out real-time simulations of the system’s molecular dynamics, in order to understand the time-resolved mechanistic details for how different psychedelics bind to target receptors.