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Illuminating the Nature 0f 'Consciousness' Via Psychedelic Research
Robin Carhart-Harris
University of California, San Francisco, United States of America
The term 'psychedelic' literally translates as 'Psyche' or 'Soul— Revealing'. Human research with psychedelic compounds suggests that they can robustly and reliably induce processes of psychological insight that mediate longer-term psychological changes, including improvements in mental health outcomes. As the etymology of 'psychedelic' implies, insight promotion is a core— if not defining— component of the subject effect profile of classic psychedelic compounds, such as psilocybin. Psychedelics have been shown to robustly and reliably induce an increases in the entropy of spontaneous cortical activity, recorded via human EEG and MEG. Supplementing prior psychedelic-fMRI work, this discovery helped advance the 'entropic brain hypothesis', a model of the neuronal encoding of phenomenal consciousness. The entropic brain will serve as a through thread for this talk on how research with psychedelic compounds can illuminate the nature of human consciousness, including how it goes awry in mental illness and can be treated, e.g., with psychedelic-therapy, to restore wellness.
