Tag Archives: Consciousness

How we identified brain patterns of consciousness

Davinia Fernández-Espejo is Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham. Her main goal is to understand how the brain supports consciousness and what goes wrong for patients to become entirely unaware after severe brain injury. She uses techniques such as MRI (structural and functional), tDCS, and behavioural approaches in both healthy volunteers and patients with a disorder of consciousness to test hypotheses about the role of different brain structures in the clinical deficits they present. This research is directly translated into the development of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers to be used in clinical settings, as well as the development of novel treatment approaches.

Demystifying the psychedelic experience

Marta Kaczmarczyk is an expert in persuasive science and technology. She is interested in demystifying the psychedelic experience and creating a scientific framework that would be more accessible to the Western mind and more relevant than the shamanic or new age framework which is popular in the psychedelic community. She is a co-founder and a coordinator of Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands; a non-profit organization focused on advocating a safe use of psychedelic substances.

How a trippy 1980s video effect might help to explain consciousness

Robert Pepperell is an interdisciplinary researcher who works between art, science, and philosophy. He has published research in the fields of art history and theory, neuroscience, perceptual psychology, computer science, and philosophy of mind. He current leads FovoLab (www.fovography.com), where methods from art and science are combined to investigate the nature of visual experience and how it can be represented.

Ketamine trips are uncannily like near-death experiences

Christian Jarrett is a senior editor at Aeon, working on the forthcoming Psyche website focused on psychological wellbeing. A cognitive neuroscientist by training, his writing has appeared in BBC Future, WIRED and New York Magazine, among others. His books include ‘The Rough Guide to Psychology’ (2011) and ‘Great Myths of the Brain’ (2014). His next, on personality change, will be published in 2021.

Ecstasis

Fine artist Luciana Haill works with stroboscopic lighting & brainwaves (EEG signal) exploring consciousness & expressing the results through digital media, performance, sound & drawings.
Her artworks focus on liminal states of consciousness, sleep – more specifically the discrete states of Lucid Dreaming (the awareness within a dream & the ability to take control) & ‘Hypnagogia’ which is an inspirational state more commonly experienced at the onset of sleep & day-dreaming. She investigates the neural correlates & reveals these to the audience as changes in textured soundscapes & data visualisations. She is currently a visiting lecturer at Brighton University for the Digital Media Art MA.

Philosophy and Psychedelics

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-H is an Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher of mind who specializes in the thought of Whitehead and Nietzsche, and in fields pertaining to panpsychism and altered states of sentience. In the words of futurist, philosopher and pop star Alexander Bard: ‘One of our favourite contemporary philosophers, Peter Sjöstedt-H…think a psychedelic Nietzsche’.

Teleological behaviourism or what it means to imagine a lion

Howard Rachlin is an American psychologist and the founder of teleological behaviorism. He is Emeritus Research Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. His current research focuses on patterns of choice over time and how those patterns affect self-control (on which he worked with George Ainslie), including cooperation over time. His most recent book is The Escape of the Mind (2014).

The ‘real you’ is a myth – we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want

Giuliana Mazzoni is Professor of Psychology, University of Hull. Human memory represents her main research interest, and more specifically the study on how personal memories are remembered in normal people and in those whose ability to remember is exceptional. Her work on memory has been featured in newspapers and magazines in the UK (among many, The Sunday Times) and around the world (among many,The Washington Post).

Could consciousness all come down to the way things vibrate?

Tam Hunt is an Affiliate Guest in Psychology in the META Lab, Psychological and Brain Sciences Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on the philosophy of mind, reconciliation of scientific and spiritual views of the world, and the interaction of mind and matter. A practicing lawyer, he brings a unique perspective to psychology and philosophy.