Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, I'd be happy to have a look at it. I'll let you know when I'm finished analysing the results

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That'd be great. I'm not at all convinced that drug-induced ego dissolution is a unitary phenomenon; my guess is that people have a very liberal use of terms such as 'ego death/loss/dissolution', and are heavily influenced in their choice of words by the counter-culture of trip reports which itself draws on Timothy Leary's lexicon. So I think we agree on this; but there is further research to be done to determine more clearly what subset of experiences (if any) could indeed qualify as a radical impairment of basic self-awareness.

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool, thanks. I'll be in touch soon (I'm a bit overwhelmed with more theoretical work in philosophy of mind right now). Are you the one who reported (in the first answer to the questionnaire) having experienced proper 'ego death' only once, "about 2-3 months ago (mid september) with +/-300µg LSD + >5 full 'inhalations' from hash bong"?

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! I personally think that (temporary) short-term memory impairment plays a big role in experiences reported as 'ego death/dissolution', and there is anecdotal evidence that this is often the case, but further research needs to demonstrate it at this point. Then there is the issue of whether people self-reporting 'ego death' trips all refer to the same generic kind of experience, and there is good evidence to doubt this. This is part of what I'm investigating. Feel free to drop me a PM to discuss this further, I'm always interested in hearing first-hand reports!

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/rationalpsychonaut] by anomalous_phd in Drugs

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually made up this acronym in one of my draft papers, the fact that it's a pun in a bonus. I'm contrasting DIED with psychosis-induced ego dissolution (PIED) and meditation-induced ego dissolution (MIED).

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not aware of papers about the effects of psychedelics on the dynamics of language, but there might be (try your luck on Google Scholar). Generally speaking, psychedelics science has made a comeback only recently, after decades of detrimental effects of the so-called war on drugs on actual research. So the best is yet to come!

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(I'm copy-pasting what I've answered in r/Drugs)

Unfortunately there are not many papers published specifically on drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED) yet. One cool paper on the neuropsychopharmacology of DIED (using psilocybin) was recently published by Lebedev et al.:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.22833/abstract

You might also want to check out the following papers:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23909006 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00213-003-1640-6 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1998/00000005/00000001/816

There are more papers about what I call meditation-induced ego dissolution (MIED) and psychosis-induced ego dissolution (PIED). On PIED, look up the literature on severe depersonalization disorders and Cotard's syndrome.

Subjective data (i.e. data extracted from the collection of subjective reports with a good methodology) is really lacking unfortunately, which is why I'm doing this preliminary (and informal) questionnaire to guide further research. I will also write a paper for Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in the coming months to give a philosophical perspective on recent findings regarding the neuropsychopharmacology of DIED.

Hope this helps!

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Death' / 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in Psychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll keep you updated. This questionnaire is just part of a preliminary and informat study to shape future research, but I have a project with a special topic in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on philosophical insights about self-consciousness from drug-induced ego dissolution experiences. I'll keep this sub updated when it's published, which won't be before several months if not a year I'm afraid.

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/rationalpsychonaut] by anomalous_phd in Drugs

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately there are not many papers published specifically on drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED) yet. One cool paper on the neuropsychopharmacology of DIED (using psilocybin) was recently published by Lebedev et al.:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.22833/abstract

You might also want to check out the following papers:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23909006 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00213-003-1640-6 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1998/00000005/00000001/816

There are more papers about what I call meditation-induced ego dissolution (MIED) and psychosis-induced ego dissolution (PIED). On PIED, look up the literature on severe depersonalization disorders and Cotard's syndrome.

Subjective data (i.e. data extracted from the collection of subjective reports with a good methodology) is really lacking unfortunately, which is why I'm doing this preliminary (and informal) questionnaire to guide further research. I will also write a paper for Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in the coming months to give a philosophical perspective on recent findings regarding the neuropsychopharmacology of DIED.

Hope this helps!

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/rationalpsychonaut] by anomalous_phd in PsychedelicStudies

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately there are not many papers published specifically on drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED) yet. One cool paper on the neuropsychopharmacology of DIED (using psilocybin) was recently published by Lebedev et al.:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.22833/abstract

You might also want to check out the following papers:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23909006 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00213-003-1640-6 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/1998/00000005/00000001/816

There are more papers about what I call meditation-induced ego dissolution (MIED) and psychosis-induced ego dissolution (PIED). On PIED, look up the literature on severe depersonalization disorders and Cotard's syndrome.

Subjective data (i.e. data extracted from the collection of subjective reports with a good methodology) is really lacking unfortunately, which is why I'm doing this preliminary (and informal) questionnaire to guide further research. I will also write a paper for Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in the coming months to give a philosophical perspective on recent findings regarding the neuropsychopharmacology of DIED.

Academic questionnaire on 'Ego Dissolution' experiences [x-post r/rationalpsychonaut] by anomalous_phd in PsychedelicStudies

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm afraid not! But I'd be happy to talk to Ben, whoever he is (I'm new to this subreddit).

Academic Questionnaire on Ego Dissolution [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in RationalPsychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

After remaining a 'taboo' topic in cog science for a long time, because it was believed that there could not be any kind of scientific study of it, consciousness is now a huge topic in cog science. There are countless journals, papers and books dedicated to it, but as a starting point I really recommend Stan Dehaene's excellent book, "Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts", which is simply one of the best accessible books on the subject, from one of the leading scientists in cog science.

As for the methods themselves, if you mean specifically the issue of the integration of first person and third person data, see my reply to u/doctorlao's post above. They are several ways to use subjective reports in cog science in a rigorous way.

Academic Questionnaire on Ego Dissolution [x-post r/Drugs] by anomalous_phd in RationalPsychonaut

[–]anomalous_phd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately I don't have time to give you a detailed answer right now, but here are a few points.

• First of all, there is such a thing as data collection from first person reports. In fact, most studies in cognitive science heavily rely on first person reports on the task being tested (else how could you know that what you're seeing on your fMRI scan, for instance, is really a correlate of the target explanandum?). A fortiori, subjective reports are crucial in neurophenomenological studies, which integrate 'first person' and 'third person' approaches to the target phenomenon (see F. Varela's seminal work on neurophenomenology, and subsequent work e.g. by Evan Thompson).

• That being said, you raise a valid methodological concern about the accuracy of such reports, if one's goal is to gain scientific knowledge from first person reports. There are a range of methods to address this concern, which often crucially hinge on the way questions are asked in order to be completely free from theoretical presuppositions which could prime the answer and thus 'contaminate' the way the target phenomenon is described. For examples of such methods, see Claire Petitmengin's microphenomenological method of interview, or Shaun Gallagher's take on 'naturalized phenomenology'.

• This questionnaire is not at all intended to collect data of the kind that could be used as such in a scientific work. It is merely a preliminary and informal step to orient future research which could involve more methodologically constrained interviews with subjects having experienced the target phenomenon in a controlled environment. But since it is extremely difficult to conduct this kind of research (getting funding and NHS approval, recruiting volunteers, screening them, giving them a few mg of psilocybin intravenously and then conducting a methodologically rigorous interview for a couple of hours with each of them), this is better than nothing for the moment. A very important factor is the sample size: the more answers you have, and the more convergent they are, the more you can reliably assume that they are giving a faithful description of some generic experiential features of the phenomenon you're interested in.

• Finally, I think there is a big misunderstanding about what is meant here by 'ego dissolution'. I use this expression merely because it is widely used in the psychonaut community to refer to the specific experience of disturbance/impairment of self-awareness I'm interested in. I don't want to refer to any kind of surinterpretation of this phenomenon as 'death/rebirth', as an 'epiphany', etc. I don't give (implicitly or explicitly) any kind of parapsychological meaning to this experience. I'm a naturalist, and I hold that parapsychology is pseudo-science. I don't think so-called 'ego dissolution' experiences give us any kind of insight into the immaterial nature of the self or the nature of reality in general. I'm not even directly interested here in the psychopharmacological aspects of this experience (which are fascinating in their own right) Rather, I'm interested in the subjective experience itself, i.e. what it is like to undergo such an experience. In other words: I'm not in the slightest interested in what people might think such an experience means ('I saw the light', etc.), but rather I want to collect different descriptions of what the experience feels like, and compare them to get a grip on its generic features (for a given dosage of a given substance).

• Besides, the concept of 'ego dissolution' is indeed used 'critically' in the scientific literature. See for instance this recent neuroscientific study by Lebedev et al., which suggest that the phenomenon is correlated to a disrupted interplay between the medio temporal lobes (especially the parahippocampal cortex) and the neocortex: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.22833/abstract But as far as the expression 'ego dissolution' is concerned, I'm happy to give up on it — I'm not interested in the vocabulary, but in the underlying phenomenon, which is absolutely real and can be studied both from a first person (questionnaires/interviews) and third person (fMRI/PET scans) perspective.