Timo T. Schmidt
VITA
Timo Torsten Schmidt, erhielt einen Bachelor Abschluss in Kognitionswissenschaft von der Universität Osnabrück, einen Master Abschluss in medizinischen Neurowissenschaften von der Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin und ist assoziiert mit dem Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin.
Im Fokus seiner Forschung steht die Aufklärung von Gehirnprozesse während des Erlebens von veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen mit aktuellen bildgebenden Methoden, wie funktionaler Magnetresonanztomographie (fMRT). Vor kurzem stellte er das Forschungsfeld ‚Phenomenoconnectomics‘ vor, welches einen empitischen Ansatz verfolgt um Phänomene des subjektiven Erlebens mit der Modulation von Gehirnkonnektivität in Verbindung zu setzen.
Talk: Phenomenoconnectomics
The study of brain connectivity in relation to the phenomenology of altered states of consciousness
‘Phenomenoconnectomics’ is a new empirical approach to relate phenomena of subjective experiences to modulations of brain connectivity. Analogous to other Big-Data-approaches it relies on the joint analysis of data from multiple neuroimaging studies.
Several recent studies combined the experimental pharmacological induction of ASCs with measurements of connectivity changes e.g., with resting-state fMRI. Such experiments enable testing if changes in brain network properties correlate with changes in subjective experiences.
In my presentation, an agenda for current and future neuroimaging studies to identify neural correlates of ASC experiences by study-overarching comparisons will be formulated.
I will present an overview of currently available data on ASC experiences and provide recommendations for common methodological standards in future neuroimaging research. Finally, I will introduce the „Altered States Database“, which will be available soon as a new online resource for scientists and laymen who are interested in the effects elicited by different drugs and non-pharmacological induction methods for ASCs.
Workshop: The empirical study of altered states of consciousness
Guidelines for standards in the assessment of altered subjective experiences
The experimental induction of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) constitutes a unique research opportunity to relate changes in phenomenological states to underlying neuronal mechanisms. A variety of pharmacological as well as non-pharmacological methods, such as breathing techniques or sensory deprivation, can induce ASCs in humans. Subjective reports suggest that ASCs, even when induced by different methods, share certain aspects of experiences. To clarify if shared subjective experiences also share neuronal mechanisms, an accurate psychometric assessment of subjects’ experiences is necessary. Multiple questionnaires have been developed based on qualitative reports and philosophical conceptualizations to quantify the phenomenology of ASCs. Here, I present an overview on available psychometric tools, their theoretical background, and validation. I will discuss the questionnaires which cover a broad range of different experiences in contrast to those that were designed to assess induction method specific effects, e.g., the effects typical to hallucinogens. Addressing a broad range of ASC experiences is required for the identification of common phenomenological structures of differently-induced ASCs. Based on their phenomenological scope and on how much they have been used in previous studies, I present recommendations for questionnaires to assess ASC phenomena in future neuroscientific experiments. Common standards for this rapidly extending body of research will foster comparability across different phenomenological states (‘phenomenological patterns’) and different studies. The comparison across studies represents an empirical framework to test how alterations in subjective experiences can be mapped onto brain functions and related to current theories on global brain function.
