Is DMT made in the pineal gland? The “third eye” claim, checked

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Few claims about DMT travel as far as this one: a small gland deep in the brain, the “third eye”, makes DMT, and releases it at birth, in dreams and at death. It appears in podcasts, posters and videos as if it were textbook biology.

This fact-check traces where the idea came from, what the experiments actually found, and why the most accurate verdict is a careful one. For the wider question of whether the human body makes DMT at all, see does the brain make DMT?.

What is the pineal gland, and why is it called the third eye?

The pineal gland is a very small gland deep in the brain. The adult gland weighs less than a fifth of a gram, and its principal known job is making melatonin, the hormone that helps set the body’s daily (circadian) rhythm (Nichols, 2018). Evidence: established.

Its mystique is much older than DMT research. A 2018 review by pharmacologist David Nichols traces a “romantic history” for the gland: equated with the eye of Horus in pharaonic Egypt, and treated in various religious traditions as the seat of the soul or the third eye (Nichols, 2018). The University of Michigan’s 2019 news release on DMT in rat brains also recalled that Descartes viewed the gland as the seat of the soul, and that it is “known by some as the third eye” (University of Michigan release). Evidence: established as cultural history. These are beliefs about the gland, not findings about it.

Why is the pineal called the “DMT gland”?

The modern version traces mainly to Rick Strassman, a psychiatrist at the University of New Mexico (Dean et al., 2019, author list) who ran human DMT studies in the 1990s (Strassman and Qualls, 1994). His popular book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, was published by Park Street Press on 1 December 2000, subtitled “A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences” (Open Library record). We have not read the book, so we describe its ideas only as other researchers summarise them. Evidence: established for the book’s publication details.

Researchers summarise the hypothesis this way. A 2018 paper describes Strassman’s proposal that endogenous DMT is released in significant concentrations during the dying process, and points readers to Nichols for a critique (Timmermann et al., 2018). Nichols writes that recent versions of pineal lore suggest DMT is secreted by the pineal gland at birth, during dreaming and near death, to produce out-of-body experiences (Nichols, 2018). The Michigan release describes Strassman’s pineal claim as a hypothesis that the Michigan team set out to test (University of Michigan release). Evidence: established that it was proposed as a hypothesis.

Strassman himself has been cautious in public since. On a January 2024 podcast, describing whether DMT plays a role in non-drug states, he is quoted in the show notes as saying “the data aren’t there yet” (Psychedelic Medicine Podcast). We read the episode page and its timestamped quotes, not a full transcript. Evidence: established that he said this; the page does not record a full retraction of the pineal idea, and we do not claim one.

What has actually been measured? A timeline

2013: DMT detected near the rat pineal gland

In 2013, a team including Steven Barker, Jimo Borjigin and Strassman developed a mass-spectrometry method that could detect 23 related compounds at once, applied it to fluid collected by microdialysis from the pineal gland region of living rats, and reported “for the first time” the presence of DMT (Barker et al., 2013). It was a qualitative result. A later review explains that the samples were essentially diluted fluid from the surrounding tissue, taken at a single point in time, so no amount was given (Barker, 2018). Evidence: preliminary. A detection in rats, not a measurement of production.

There was also an ambiguity in where the DMT came from. The microdialysis probe passed through both the pineal gland and the surrounding visual cortex, so it was unclear whether the DMT came from the pineal, the cortex or both (Dean et al., 2019). That question set up the decisive experiment. Evidence: established for the study design.

2019: remove the pineal, and cortical DMT remains

In 2019, the Michigan group sampled fluid from the visual cortex of 25 rats with the pineal gland intact and 11 rats whose pineal gland had been surgically removed (a pinealectomy), confirmed by the absence of melatonin in their samples (Dean et al., 2019). The results:

• Rats without a pineal gland still had DMT in the cortex, ranging from 0.25 to 2.2 nanomolar (billionths of a mole per litre) and averaging 1.02 nanomolar. Rats with the gland averaged 0.56 nanomolar.
• The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant, and after induced cardiac arrest DMT rose in both groups. The full numbers are in the DMT rat brain study, explained.
• The authors concluded that the cortex may be one of the major sources of DMT released in the brain, and that it is uncertain “to what extent, if any” the pineal contributes.
• They could not rule out the brain making more DMT elsewhere to compensate after the gland was removed.

The same study found something that seems to point the other way: INMT messenger RNA was abundant in rat and human pineal tissue, and in rat pineal cells it sat alongside the message for AADC, the other enzyme in the textbook pathway. The authors called this a paradox, and proposed an explanation: in the pineal, tryptophan is overwhelmingly drawn into the serotonin and melatonin pathway, whose first enzyme binds it far more readily than AADC does, leaving little for DMT (Dean et al., 2019). Evidence: preliminary. The machinery is there in rats; whether the pineal uses it to make DMT is unresolved.

Researchers read the result differently. Barker, a co-author, suggests the pineal may make DMT and that its removal may trigger compensatory production elsewhere (Barker, 2022). The 2019 paper itself says only that compensation cannot be ruled out (Dean et al., 2019). Either way, the experiment shows the pineal is not needed for cortical DMT in rats. Evidence: established for that rat result; the interpretation is unresolved.

What is Nichols’s case against the pineal story?

Nichols’s 2018 review, subtitled “separating fact from myth”, states that scientific evidence is not consistent with the pineal ideas. His argument rests on the gland’s small size and its known role in melatonin production, and on the point that the very small DMT concentrations detected in the brain are not sufficient to produce psychoactive effects. He also sets out alternative explanations for how stress and near-death states can alter consciousness without DMT being involved (Nichols, 2018). Evidence: established as his published argument; we read the abstract, not the full text.

One human data point fits his side of the ledger, though it measures something different. In Strassman’s own 1994 study, giving DMT to 11 experienced volunteers raised several hormones but left blood melatonin levels unaffected (Strassman and Qualls, 1994). That says nothing directly about whether the pineal makes DMT, but it is a reminder that the pineal’s known product behaved independently in that study. Evidence: preliminary as an inference; the melatonin finding itself is from one small study.

Barker has argued back that DMT may be more than a trace amine in the brain, pointing to rat cortex levels in the range of established neurotransmitters (Barker, 2022). Note what that argument is about: the brain in general, mostly the cortex, not the pineal gland as the special source. Evidence: unresolved.

Has the DMT pineal gland idea been disproven?

It is tempting to swing from “the pineal makes your DMT” to “the pineal myth is debunked”. Neither matches the evidence. Here is what each word would need:

• Supported would need a measurement showing DMT made by, and released from, the human pineal gland. None exists.
• Disproven would need evidence that the human pineal makes no DMT. That has not been shown either: human pineal tissue carries INMT messenger RNA (Dean et al., 2019), and INMT protein has been found in monkey pineal tissue (Barker, 2018).
• Unsupported is the accurate word: the rat evidence shows the pineal is not needed for brain DMT, and no human measurement exists. As a 2018 review notes, no study had looked at DMT release from the pineal across the day (Barker, 2018).

The enzyme question adds another layer. In 2023, INMT-knockout rats turned out not to need INMT for tryptamine methylation in the brain, and rat INMT on its own could not make DMT (Glynos et al., 2023). So finding INMT messages in pineal tissue says even less than it once seemed to. See our INMT enzyme explainer. Evidence: preliminary.

Which pineal gland claims hold up?

For the death claim specifically, see our fact-check, does the brain release DMT when you die?.

What would settle it?

• A measurement of DMT made by, or released from, a human pineal gland (never done).
• Studies of pineal DMT across the day and night, which a 2018 review said had never been conducted (unresolved).
• Identification of the enzyme that makes DMT in mammals, now that INMT appears unnecessary in rats (unresolved).
• Independent replication of the rat pinealectomy result in another lab (not found in the sources we read).

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