Paralelní Polis
Linking physical reality, brain activity and consciousness still stands as one of the most interesting and elusive problems of neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy. Finding their mutual relationships represents the first step toward explanation how the brain process external information and how the picture of reality in our mind relates the world.
In this lecture, I deal with two central questions of consciousness: how and why? “How” refers to the theoretical and empirical approach to reveal the neural correlates and mechanisms that form consciousness. On the other hand, “why” refers to both the evolutionary origin and the question why is there conscious experience at all.
The extraordinary states of consciousness elicited by the psychedelics, such as DMT, psilocybin and LSD, represent one of the most powerful tools for understanding neurobiology of consciousness and answering both “why” and “how” questions. The results of brain neuroimaging studies on the effect of psychedelic drugs on structure of consciousness provide an explanation for its phenomenological features, including unconstrained cognition, meaning of concepts of reality and a sense of expanded consciousness awareness. We will discuss how psychedelics, and other modern techniques such as neurostimulation, may increase cognitive flexibility and creativity, elucidate our understanding of the structure of external physical reality and enhance human potential in general.
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