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***See below for a complete topic breakdown.***

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Psychedelic research is on the cutting edge of cognitive neuroscience.

Actually, psychedelic research seems to be the cutting edge of a lot of science right now. Yes, you’ve heard it before, psychedelic renaissance and all that. But, slow down for a second and consider that this mass of psychedelic science, neuroscience and all the rest, and that mainstream cultural upswing it’s inviting wasn’t always on trending.

It has taken a lot of dedicated work by a lot of courageous people to put themselves and their careers on the line to effort towards the legitimization of psychedelic science. Thanks to them, mentioning the scientific or therapeutic value of psychedelics in academia is not akin to career suicide anymore. In fact, The opposite may even be true at this point.

So who do we have to thank for this? Well, a lot of people, back decades, both scientists and outlaws and those straddling the middle. But, there is one person we can thank for the current repertoire of fMRI studies on the psychedelic brain, and he is the guest for this episode of the podcast.

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris heads the Psychedelic Research Group within the Centre for Psychiatry at Imperial College London, where he has designed a number of functional brain imaging (fMRI) studies with psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD, MDMA (ecstasy) and DMT (ayahuasca), plus a clinical trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. He has over 50 published papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals; two of which were ranked in the top 100 most impactful academic articles of 2016. Robin’s research has featured in major national and international media and he has given a popular TEDx talk.

Dr. Carhart-Harris joins us on Adventures Through The Mind to talk about the Entropic Brain (and mind) theory, complexity vs. order, the disproportionate representation of ‘ego’ consciousness in modern civilisation and its impact on the natural world, confirmation biases and misreporting in psychedelic science and, of course, how psychedelics work in the brain.

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Episode Breakdown

An introductory primer on the entropic brain theory

free energy principle, thermal dynamics, complexity science, and brain activity

LZ/complexity and the varieties of consciousness states

the importance of indexing the ‘mind stuff’ in psychedelic research

Natural language analytics, mental illness, and how we narratives our psychedelic encounters

primary and secondary states of mind, and

Brain development and comparing psychedelic mind to the mind of a child

ego consciousness, psilocybin, and the collapse of civilization

REBUS and the resistance of uncertainty

A little talk about trauma and psychotherapy

A discussion around ‘Is there a confirmation bias in psychedelic neuroscience?’

Deconstructing the fallacy of physicalist neuroscience

The (very specific) neuroscience of psilocybin What psilocybin does when it gets into the body the neocortex and serotonin receptors psilocybin’s effects on neural cellular behaviour

Is psilocybin intelligent?

Mapping brain anarchy

What turns psilocybin into psilocin

Psilocybin effect on and in the gut (enteric brain)

Are there any genetic variations that could block psychedelics’ effects?

“There will never be an account of reality that will be absolute.”

Relevant Links

“The Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial focuses on two main research areas: 1) the action of psychedelic drugs in the brain, and 2) their clinical utility, e.g. as aides to psychotherapy, with a particular focus on depression. The group is lead by Dr Robin Carhart-Harris.” Follow Imperial PRG on twitter

Here are the two SCIAM articles about misreporting and cognitive biases that we mentioned during the interview: