“It is difficult to understand what something does without having a baseline from which to compare it to. Every experiment needs a control. For example, measuring your biometric data during your everyday activities as well as when you were performing on stage.”

In other words, there would be little he could do to sate that particular curiosity. To test how the medication affected the experience, he would need to measure the experience without the medication. He could extrapolate, perhaps, comparing the experience to others who were not on the medication, but it would depend a lot on the data. And on multiple drug studies he would undoubtedly need to familiarize himself with.

“The topic of neurotheology is more fascinating than I had intended. I read a paper just a few days ago that demonstrated the same increased frontal lobe activity and decreased parietal lobe activity in both praying Catholic nuns and meditating Buddhist monks. But decreased frontal lobe activity in Muslims engaged in their specific prayers.”

How do other activities compare? How do the brain waves change? How does neurotransmitter release change? Those were the questions Isamu most wanted to answer.