Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics Conference

Source: beckleyfoundation.org via Aaron on Pinterest

http://www.horizonsnyc.org/site/

2012 Speakers

Alphabetical by last name:

• MATTHEW BAGGOTT, PH.D., “Beyond Fear: The Effects of MDMA in Humans”
• ALEXANDER BELSER, “The Rule of Three from NYU: (1) A patient speaks, (2) A proposed narrative study of patient experiences, and (3) Recent findings from the NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study”
• AMY EMERSON, “MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD Research: Bridging Biology and Psychology”
• KEVIN FEENEY, J.D., “Ayahuasca & Law: International Perspective”
• CHARLES S. GROB, M.D., “Why Psychedelics Matter”
• ROMAN HANIS, “Amazonian Grass Roots Research on Entheogen-based healing of Physical Pathologies”
• JAMES KENT, “Psychedelic Information Theory: Mapping the Limits of Human Perception and Imagination”
• MARIAVITTORIA MANGINI, Ph.D., FNP, “Gender and Psychedelics: Exploring Women’s Experience”
• RALPH METZNER, PH.D., “Psychoactive Substances in Shamanism and Psychotherapy”
• SIDARTA RIBEIRO, PH.D., “Seeing with the Eyes Shut: Neural Basis of Enhanced Visual Imagery following Ayahuasca Ingestion”

Mind Medicine - Does fear have an off switch?

“We’ve learned a fair amount of the circuitry that’s involved in generating the initial fear response. We really know relatively little about the circuitry that’s involved in turning it off”   (Richard Davidson, Neuroscientist). 

Is there a reason why this has been neglected? 

Protesters caught on newsprint at Occupy

"Using cannabinoids to overcome fear in the brain"
by Christie Wilcox
Scientific American

" ...in a study published this week in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers from Duke university have found that marijuana-like compounds and the enzyme that degrades them may be the key to understanding fear’s off switch."


http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2012/06/12/overcoming-fear-in-the-brain/



Why it's illegal to take drugs? Psychedelics might open the soul and motivate it against the greed machine? Marijuana might block out fear so that revolution becomes a possibility. We live in fear; of war, of hunger, of our own anxiety. Some drugs could propel us into a society of equality and compassion.


"You may say that I'm a dreamer..." 

Jonathan's Cochlear Implant Activation 8 months old, right ear

What a beautiful gift thanks to technology we can witness in real time the significance of sound on human understanding and well being!

absolutely breathtaking

"Brian Eno and The Microsoft Sound"

Highlights: "In 1994 Microsoft corporation designers Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk approached Brian Eno to compose music for the Windows 95 project... the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 31/4 seconds long.





http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?id=7504

Medical science needs your brain

        After reading Robert Jourdain's Music, the Brain and Ecstasy I found myself carried away by the uncertainty lying in the tangle of nerves at the nape of my neck. The transformation of vibration to sound, from information to understanding, is but a mystical light show to our primitive eyes. Once I realized that the answer to my burning questions could not be seen alive (with current affordable technology) I quickly called my mother and told her with grave persistence.... if anything happens to me, donate my brain to music science.
    
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2009/01/medical_science_needs_your_bra.html

Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together

by Roger Dooley, Neuromarketing

Highlights: "This phenomenon has profound implications for many areas of brain science. Researchers have found that brain maps (the locations of the brain that correspond to individual body parts) can be altered by training. One experiment attached two fingers of a monkey together for a period of months so that they acted, in essence, as a single finger; tests showed that the previously separate brain mappings for the two fingers had indeed become one."

Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together

Making Music Boosts Brain's Language Skills

Making Music Boosts Brain's Language Skills

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music | Video on TED.com

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music | Video on TED.com

Singing 'rewires' damaged brain

By Victoria Gill  Science reporter, BBC News, San Diego

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8526699.stm