Robin Carhart-Harris
Neuroscientist and psychedelics researcher; founded the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, then moved to the University of California, San Francisco; proposed the entropic brain hypothesis.
From their papers REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics5 korrents The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs4 korrents
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Their wordsWe end by discussing further implications of the model, such as that psychedelics can bring about the revision of other heavily weighted high-level priors, not directly related to mental health, such as those underlying partisan and/or overly-confident political, religious, and/or philosophical perspectives.
↗REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelicspmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 10 from this paper
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Their wordsThe resulting synthesis states that psychedelics work to relax high-level priors, sensitising them to liberated bottom-up information flow, which, with the right intention, care provision and context, can help guide and cultivate the revision of entrenched pathological priors.
↗REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelicspmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 10 from this paper
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Our reading
Psychedelics may be therapeutic precisely because they act on the brain's highest-level beliefs.
Their wordsIn this paper, we propose that psychedelics can be therapeutically effective, precisely because they target the high levels of the brain’s functional hierarchy, primarily affecting the precision weighting of high-level priors or beliefs.
↗REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelicspmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 10 from this paper
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Their wordsReliable and robust models of natural phenomena, of the sort that science endeavors to discover and finesse, serve us best, as they are less likely to betray us, leaving us open to logical fallacies, dogmatism, absolutism, and an emotional and existential instability.
↗REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelicspmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 10 from this paper
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Their wordsIt is an ideal of psychedelic therapy that this newly available content be appropriately integrated and assimilated into existing mental models so that more of the inner and outer world can be processed.
↗REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelicspmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 10 from this paper
- 5 years earlier
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Their wordsThe psychedelic state is considered an exemplar of a primitive or primary state of consciousness that preceded the development of modern, adult, human, normal waking consciousness.
↗The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs (with 7 co-authors)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 4 from this paper
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Their wordsMoreover, if primary states are critical, then this suggests that entropy is suppressed in normal waking consciousness, meaning that the brain operates just below criticality.
↗The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs (with 7 co-authors)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 4 from this paper
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Their wordsIt is argued that this entropy suppression furnishes normal waking consciousness with a constrained quality and associated metacognitive functions, including reality-testing and self-awareness.
↗The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs (with 7 co-authors)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 4 from this paper
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Their wordsIt is also proposed that entry into primary states depends on a collapse of the normally highly organized activity within the default-mode network (DMN) and a decoupling between the DMN and the medial temporal lobes (which are normally significantly coupled).
↗The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs (with 7 co-authors)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov All 4 from this paper