Tag Archives: Mind

Extract from ‘Consciousness Came First’

Dr Edi Bilimoria is an award-winning author, engineer, and international speaker with over fifty years of study in the Perennial Philosophy. ‘Consciousness Came First’ is a unique, panoramic and powerful book bridging the gulf between contemporary science and the philosophy of the ages. Aimed at the general rather than the specialist academic reader, it is essential reading for all those attempting to unravel the mysteries of life in the modern age. Based on his monumental award-winning four-volume work ‘Unfolding Consciousness: Exploring the Living Universe and the Intelligent Powers in Nature and Humans’, it is arguably the most radical and persuasive reappraisal of the subject in decades.

On Complexity and Consciousness

Neil Theise is a Professor of Pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr. Theise’s book, ‘Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being’ (Spiegel & Grau, 2023) calls on his studies in complexity theory to address topics such as consciousness studies and science-religion dialogue. In this interview he discusses his life, ideas and work.

Why our physical bodies may be a core part of conscious experience – new research

Renzo Lanfranco is a Principal Researcher in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology based in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience and the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet.
“My research explores the function of conscious awareness in visual perception and bodily self-perception, using behavioural, psychophysical, computational modelling, and neuroimaging techniques, to understand the perceptual principles and neural mechanisms of these processes.”

How to build a digital ‘twin’ of the human brain – what existing models overlook

Andrea Luppi is a Senior Research Associate, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford.
Wellcome Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford and Research Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge. I work at the intersection of computational neuroscience, network science, and complex systems to understand principles of consciousness and cognition in biological and artificial systems.

Professor Gustavo Deco is Research Professor at the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) and Professor (Catedrático) at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) where he leads the Computational Neuroscience group. He was also Director of the Center of Brain and Cognition from 2001 to 2021 at UPF.

Professor Morten L Kringelbach is the founding director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing at Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK. He is also a Principal Investigator at Center for Music in the Brain, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His prizewinning research has helped elucidate the brain systems driven by hedonic and eudaimonic stimuli such as, for example, infants, food, psychedelics and music. He has published fifteen books, and over 450 scientific papers, chapters and other articles.

How your conscious and unconscious mind interact

Samantha Brooks is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Liverpool John Moores University.
“My PhD (King’s College, London) examined the neural processes of extreme appetite control in adults with anorexia versus bulimia nervosa. I took what I learned to Sweden (Uppsala University) to measure the early risk markers in the brain of adolescents with a new diagnosis of anorexia (before weight loss/reduced brain volume) occurred. I then took this knowledge to Cape Town (University of Cape Town), to develop a cognitive training intervention to test whether similar brain processes could be strengthened in people with weaker appetite control. e.g. those with addictions. Based on over 100 publications, we have developed a ‘gym training’ for the brain, called ‘curbyouraddiction.com’ – a free intervention to strengthen the brain processes of appetite control (willpower) over one month. I am currently a researcher and associate professor teaching undergraduates and postgraduates on topics from research methods to cognitive neuroscience, at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.”

How individual consciousness works – and makes us unique

Peter Coppola is a Visiting Researcher, Cambridge Neuroscience, University of Cambridge.
“Most of my work focuses on network dynamics, graph theory and consciousness. I am very interested in neurological and neuropsychological cases and what these can tell us regarding consciousness. I intend to investigate how the neuroscience of consciousness can be integrated in clinical psychological practice and ethics.”

Emmanuel A Stamatakis is Lead, Cognition and Consciousness Imaging Group, Division of Anaesthesia, University of Cambridge.
“My work focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying a broad spectrum of altered states of consciousness in healthy volunteers (induced by anaesthetics or psychedelics), and patients who have sustained brain injuries that result in disorders of consciousness (DoC e.g. minimally conscious state, coma). This work is underpinned by fundamental neuroscience questions as well as broader cognitive architecture questions. In addition to my work on severe brain injury and DoC, I am interested in concussion focusing on the potential of fMRI to predict long-term cognitive/affective post-concussive symptoms. I also employ pharmacological fMRI to investigate therapeutic interventions in patients with traumatic brain injury.”

When your eyelids become a cinema screen: what strobing light reveals about the brain

David Schwartzman is a Research Fellow (Informatics), School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Sussex.
“I study how stroboscopic light stimulation (SLS), flickering light viewed through closed eyes, can alter conscious experience in powerful yet controlled ways. My work examines the visual patterns and altered states SLS can produce, why people respond differently, and how we can study these experiences safely.
A big part of my research is about subjective experience: what people actually feel, see, and report during these states, and how that relates to what is happening in the brain. I’m interested in SLS both as a tool for understanding consciousness and perception, and for its possible practical uses in mental health.
I currently lead an MRC-funded research programme exploring whether SLS could have therapeutic potential for depression. More broadly, my work asks a simple question: if we can safely and reliably shift perception, can that help us better understand the mind — and potentially support wellbeing too?”

Psychedelics and Language Model Temperature

The effect of psychedelics is often described as an increase in fluidity – of being, in some non-specific sense, more free to wander out of usual habit patterns. This essay presents an analogy to a feature of LLMs, namely the temperature parameter, that allows a precise characterisation of this increased fluidity. It begins with a semi-technical description of how this parameter affects the operation of an LLM, and then draws a parallel to how psychedelics affect human experience at multiple levels from perception to thought patterns and life reflections, before concluding by placing this analogy inside a larger project of using the internal mechanism of AI to better understand our own minds.

Three In One Nature of Consciousness & Dream Seequence

Alan MacDonald was a graphic designer and illustrator for 40 years.
“As a metaphysical artist I am concerned with a three-way comparison between: metaphysics (science of subject / why), Science of object (how), and information technology, the most important metaphor we have for the nature of consciousness. Vedic philosophy, describes the three in one nature of consciousness; rishi, devata, chandas (knower, known, process of knowing). My ‘Dream Sequence’ series proposes dreams as daily status reports from the source regarding our level of alignment with the source. I record every dream, interpret upon waking and illustrate it.”

Major theories of consciousness may have been focusing on the wrong part of the brain

Peter Coppola is a Visiting Researcher, Cambridge Neuroscience, University of Cambridge.
“Most of my work focuses on network dynamics, graph theory and consciousness. I am very interested in neurological and neuropsychological cases and what these can tell us regarding consciousness. I intend to investigate how the neuroscience of consciousness can be integrated in clinical psychological practice and ethics.”