Depatterning factor

The depatterning factor is Giorgio Samorini’s name for a speculative evolutionary hypothesis: when familiar behaviors no longer serve a species, psychedelic-induced changes in perception and conduct might generate alternatives, a few of which could aid adaptation. The idea recasts psychedelics not simply as individual experiences but as a possible source of behavioral variation within a population.

Evolutionary Hypothesis

In Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness, Samorini proposes that rapid environmental change or crisis may favor a few individuals abandoning conditioned responses and experimenting with radically different behaviors. Most such novelties, like most genetic mutations in the analogy, would prove disastrous and disappear through natural selection; some, probability suggests, might help individuals, groups, and perhaps an entire species adjust to new conditions. The depatterning factor names this possibility: a neurochemically induced source of variation when established patterns cease to avail.

The account is explicitly presented as speculative, not as an established explanation of psychedelic use or evolution. Its reach nevertheless extends beyond animals: the narrator considers whether Homo sapiens might also face a crisis requiring mental and behavioral depatterning, and wonders whether the appearance of psychedelic molecules could answer that need. The question leaves the hypothesis open rather than resolving it, making the concept both an evolutionary proposal and a way to frame humanity’s uncertain circumstances.

From Adaptation to Communication

The hypothesis acquires a more expansive, less strictly evolutionary meaning in a conversation with Paul Stamets around a fire pit. As dinner sizzled in a pan, Stamets spoke of psilocybin as a chemical messenger sent by Earth, with human consciousness and language making people capable of hearing its call and acting before it was too late. The scene does not establish Samorini’s proposal as scientific fact; instead, it shows how the idea of psychedelics disrupting old patterns can open onto a broader claim about human responsibility. Samorini’s account imagines altered behavior as possible variation under environmental pressure, while Stamets casts the mushroom’s message as a summons to respond to an impending crisis. The narrator notes the distance between Stamets’s eloquence and plausibility, preserving that tension rather than settling it.

Dose, Behavior, and Survival

The hypothesis sits against a practical distinction between dose and consequence. A 2015 review in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology reported that several tribes feed psychoactive plants to dogs to improve their hunting, a use attributed to increased sensory acuity and possibly focus at small doses. At higher doses, animals experiencing psychedelic effects would generally seem less equipped to survive; the text acknowledges that many likely are disadvantaged. The depatterning factor addresses the narrower possibility that, for a select few, altered behavior might nevertheless prove adaptive—not only for an individual but potentially for its group or species.

A Speculative Evolutionary Frame

The hypothesis does not equate altered behavior with genetic mutation; it borrows mutation as a model for how variation can arise and be sifted, while locating the proposed variation in perception and conduct. Its force lies in that distinction: psychedelics are not presented as reliably adaptive, but as a possible source of departures from habitual responses whose value would only become apparent under particular pressures. The narrative leaves the proposal at the level of possibility, using it to ask whether established patterns can themselves become liabilities when conditions change.