Altered states of consciousness may immediately bring to mind psychedelics or hypnosis, but there are many ways to induce such non-ordinary states. But first, a conundrum. In order to define altered states of consciousness, we need to ask: what is an ordinary state of consciousness? Because scientists can’t agree on an answer to this question, … Read More
“What is it like to be a bat?” famously asked Thomas Nagel in 1974 in The Philosophical Review. It may sound like a silly question, but it has profound implications. We quite literally make sense of the world through our touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Our sense of space in particular is governed in … Read More
These are raw notes from a lecture Dr Derek Tracy gave at UCL on March 2nd 2020. Dr Derek Tracy is a psychiatrist and clinical director at Oxleas NHS and Bexley Care, as well as a senior lecturer in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London, and at UCL’s division of … Read More