How to Expand Your Consciousness | Dr. Christof Koch

My guest is Dr. Christof Koch, PhD, a pioneering researcher on the topic of consciousness, an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the chief scientist at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation. We discuss the neuroscience of consciousness—how it arises in our brain, how it shapes our identity and how we can modify and expand it. Dr. Koch explains how we all experience life through a unique “perception box,” which holds our beliefs, our memories and thus our biases about reality. We discuss how human consciousness is changed by meditation, non-sleep deep rest, psychedelics, dreams and virtual reality. We also discuss neuroplasticity (rewiring the brain), flow states and the ever-changing but also persistent aspect of the “collective consciousness” of humanity.

Articles

• A framework for consciousness (Nature Neuroscience)
• Cortico-thalamo-cortical interactions modulate electrically evoked EEG responses in mice (eLife)
• Cognitive Motor Dissociation in Disorders of Consciousness (The New England Journal of Medicine)
• Recovery Potential in Patients Who Died After Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Treatment: A TRACK-TBI Propensity Score Analysis (Journal of Neurotrauma)
• A survey on self-assessed well-being in a cohort of chronic locked-in syndrome patients: happy majority, miserable minority (BMJ Open)
• The will to persevere induced by electrical stimulation of the human cingulate gyrus (Neuron)
• What is it like to be a bat? (The Philosophical Review)
• Complex slow waves in the human brain under 5-MeO-DMT (Cell Reports)
• Exploring 5-MeO-DMT as a pharmacological model for deconstructed consciousness (Neuroscience of Consciousness)
• Randomized trial of ketamine masked by surgical anesthesia in patients with depression (Nature Mental Health)
• Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain (Nature)

Books

• Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
• Letters
• The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
• Meditations

Other Resources

• Joseph Emerson (pilot) case
• Non-sleep deep rest (NSDR)
• The Twelve Steps (Alcoholics Anonymous)
• Perception Box
• #thedress
• Terry Schiavo
• A Tribute to Oliver Sacks from Colleague and Friend Christof Koch
• Charlie Kirk assassination
• Intrinsic Powers, Inc
• Spiegel im Spiegel (Arvo Pärt)
• The End of Children (New Yorker)
• Single gene variant is what keeps small dogs small (Science)

Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned

• How to Set & Achieve Massive Goals | Alex Honnold
• Spacetime Bridging Meditation

People Mentioned

• René Descartes: French mathematician, philosopher
• Plato: Greek philosopher
• William James: American psychologist, philosopher
• Elizabeth R. Koch: American publisher, writer
• Thomas Bayes: English theologian and mathematician
• Oliver Sacks: British neurologist, author
• Francis Crick: English molecular biologist, Nobel laurate
• Jeremy Bailenson: professor of communication, Stanford University
• Josef Parvizi: professor of neurology and neurological sciences, Stanford University
• Steven Pinker: Canadian psychologist, author
• Immanuel Kant: German philosopher
• Aldous Huxley: English writer, philosopher
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: French priest, philosopher
• Daniel Dennett: American philosopher
• Arthur Schopenhauer: German philosopher