A Structural Measurement Framework for Altered-State Experience via Coherence Trajectories

Abstract

This paper introduces a structural measurement framework for altered-state experiences — including mystical, psychedelic, contemplative, and near-death states — that transforms subjective experience from narrative description into a measurable dynamical trajectory. Existing approaches rely on post hoc reconstruction, semantic content, and static psychometric instruments that lack temporal resolution and structural specificity. The framework addresses this gap by mapping observable emissions — voice, text, timing, and silence — into a five-dimensional coherence state vector f(t) = (i, b, t_c, m, a) representing integration, boundary coherence, temporal continuity, meta-awareness, and affective coherence. Two scalar coherence observables are derived: C_min(t), capturing fragility via the weakest-link dimension, and C_geom(t), capturing distributed coherence via the geometric mean across dimensions. Trajectories through coherence space are analyzed using velocity, curvature, and recurrence to yield regime classification across four states: stable, drift, rupture, and recovery. The framework is content-independent, domain-agnostic, and operable from acoustic and linguistic signal processing pipelines without laboratory or neuroimaging infrastructure. A formal falsification program defines five core claims (C1–C5) with explicit failure conditions. Mode C simulation validates the pipeline against synthetic trajectories with known ground-truth regime sequences. The framework is positioned as a theoretical architecture for empirical instantiation and is compatible with existing entropy and connectivity measures in the altered-states literature.