Consciousness, Chemically Altered

Science Friday with Ira Flatow (NPR), May 18, 2018

In his latest book, How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan writes of his own consciousness-expanding experiments with psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin, and he makes the case for why shaking up the brain’s old habits could be therapeutic for people facing addiction, depression, or death.

In this segment, Ira talks with Pollan and psychedelics researcher Robin Carhart-Harris about the neuroscience of consciousness, and how psychedelic drugs may alter the algorithms and habits our brains use to make sense of the world. Listen to the segment here.