The ALIUS Research Team

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* Team Coordinators   

Léna Coutrot

Selen Atasoy

Edvard Aviles

Lucie Berkovitch

Alexandre Billon

Alessio Bucci

Maddalena Canna

Anna Ciaunica

Cordelia Erickson-Davis​

Guillaume Dumas

David Dupuis

George Fejer *

Brendan Fleig-Goldstein

Mathieu Frerejouan

Daniel Friedman *

Tom Froese

Juan González

Arnaud Halloy

Matthieu Koroma *

Michael Lifshitz

Romy Lorenz

Cécile Mahnich

Charlotte Martial

Raphaël Millière  

Matthew Nour

Fernanda Palhano-Fontes

Polona Pozeg

Katrin Preller

Leor Roseman

Rebecca Seligman

Enzo Tagliazucchi​

Chris Timmermann

Timo Torsten Schmidt

Michiel van Elk

Map charting the research interests of ALIUS members

Lines between each discipline show the multidisciplinary nature of the research conducted by ALIUS members. Research items were located on the map according to the disciplinary fields of the researchers studying these topics. Word size is scaled according to the number of ALIUS members studying each item. 

​Click on one of the items listed below to find out who is working on it and get additional details about other topics of research : abnormal body experiences, absorption, autism, delusion, derealization, dissociation, dreaming, hallucinations, hypnosis, meditation, mystical experience, natural context, neurostimulation, placebo, possession, psychedelics (DMT, LSD), psychosis, risk reward, schizophrenia, sleep, spiritual experience, synesthesia, trance, virtual reality.

Research members

Selen Atasoy
selen.atasoy [at] psych.ox.ac [dot] uk
I obtained my PhD in medical imaging jointly at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Imperial College London. Then, reorienting the focus of my research to neuroscience, I held postdoctoral research positions at the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and at the Centre for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Currently I am affiliated to the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. My current research focuses on exploring brain dynamics in consciousness, sleep, meditation and psychedelic states as well as in psychiatric disorders by analysing functional neuroimaging data within the mathematical framework of harmonic waves – a phenomenon ubiquitous in nature.

Edvard Aviles
neuro [dot] aviles [at] gmail [dot] com
I am a philosopher and a psychologist interested in the nature of the mind and cognition. I'm currently a Ph.D. student of Philosophy at Cornell University Before that, I did my B.A in psychology and completed two masters, one in neuroscience (UNMSM), and another one in philosophy at Central European University (CEU), where I worked under the supervision of Tim Crane. My areas of interest are the philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, and epistemology. My work is currently focused on the relationship between perception and imagination and how their link might bear significant consequences for debates about mental representation and consciousness. I'm also interested in conscious perception beyond vision, in particular, the vestibular system and spatial perception; and altered states of consciousness, especially, derealization. 

Lucie Berkovitch
l.berkovitch [at] ghu-paris [dot] fr
I am a French psychiatrist working in Paris. I am part time in charge of an inpatient unit specialized in resistant psychiatric affections (Service Hospitalo-Universitaire de l’Hôpital Sainte Anne) and part time doing research on consciousness in the Picnic Lab (Physiological Investigations of Clinically Normal & Impaired Cognition, Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle). I finished my neuroscience PhD in 2018. I worked on conscious and unconscious processing in healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia under the supervision of Professor Stanislas Dehaene and Professor Raphael Gaillard. I am currently working on behavioural and electroencephalographic effects of ketamine (at psychotomimetic doses) in healthy controls. Our hypothesis is that ketamine at least partly reproduces impairments in conscious access observed in patients with schizophrenia and that such impairments may have a causal role in the advent of psychotic symptoms.

Alexandre Billon
abillon [at] gmail [dot] com
​I am an associate professor at the University of Lille (Udl3/STL). My research centers on philosophical psychopathology, viz., the use of psychopathology to solve philosophical riddles and of philosophy to make sense of intriguing psychopathological conditions.
​In the last couple of years I have focused, more specifically, on the altered sense of the self and reality affecting patients suffering from depersonalization and Cotard's syndrome. 

Alessio Bucci
alessio [dot] ​bucci [at] unito [dot] it
I studied philosophy at the University of Turin and at the University of Edinburgh. I am currently a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy.
My research aims to provide a clarification of the notion of “altered states of consciousness”, from both a philosophical and scientific perspective.
My focus is on dreaming and sleep related phenomena, hallucinogenic drugs, and meditative states, analysed within the broad framework of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. 

Maddalena Canna
maddalena [dot] canna [at] northwestern [dot] edu
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at Northwestern University (Evanston/Chicago), Fyssen Foundation. I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology (EHESS) and I am affiliated to the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (LAS) of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS/Collège de France). Laureate of the Martine Aublet Foundation (Musée du Quai Branly) since 2012, in my thesis (Martine Aublet Award 2018) and recent works I focus on grisi siknis, a family of hallucinatory, dissociative seizures diffused in the Caribbean Moskitia. My current interests include: the interplay between imagination, metacognition and physiological regulation; the bio-social variability of dissociative phenomena; interactional models of ASCs, embodiment, interoception and visceral perception in dissociative states, spiritual experience and meditative practices.​

Anna Ciaunica
anna [dot] ciaunica [at] gmail [dot] com
My research to date in philosophy of mind and cognitive science focuses on the relationship between (a)typical forms of self-consciousness, embodiment and social interactions in human and artificial agents. I am also interested in basic forms of self-awareness as it unfolds in early life. I am currently the Principal Investigator of three interdisciplinary projects looking at : 
(1) the relationship between altered sense of self and social alienation in Depersonalisation.
(2) self-consciousness and social interactions in human and artificial agents.
(3) multisensory modulation of the sense of self through bodily movements and action observation in depersonalisation and psychedelic experiences.
I am also co-PI of a project looking at the relationship between dreams, sense of self, and self-detachment in clinical depersonalisation.  In my work, I combine conceptual resources from philosophy of mind and the phenomenological tradition with experimental methods from psychology and cognitive neuroscience.  I am the main coordinator of the Network for Embodied Consciousness and the Arts (NECTArs) – a collaborative platform bringing together artists, researchers, stakeholders, policy makers and people with lived experiences, aiming at fostering creative approaches to timely issues such as self-awareness and (dis)embodiment in our hyper-digitalized world.  

Guillaume Dumas
guillaume [dot] dumas [at] ppsp [dot] team 
I am the IVADO Professor of Computational Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of the Université de Montréal, the Director of the Precision Psychiatry and Social Physiology laboratory at the CHU Sainte Justine Research Center, and an Academic Member of the Mila - Quebec AI Institute. In parallel, I am also associated to the "Culture, Mind, and Brain” program of McGill University and the “Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences” of Florida Atlantic University.
I co-founded ARTEMOC, the French research group dedicated to the study of ASCs that later gave birth to ALIUS. In this context, I am now focusing on the relationship between ASCs and psychiatry, from the articulation of categorical and dimensional approaches to the integration of the neural, behavioral, and social scales through multi-brain neuroscience and computational methods.

David Dupuis
david [dot] dupuis2 [at] gmail [dot] com 
I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology-Ethnology (EHESS, Paris) and I am affiliated to the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (Collège de France). 
My doctoral research, based on 18 months of fieldwork investigation in the Upper Peruvian Amazon, focused on ritual innovations, transmission of religious knowledge and therapeutic efficacy in the context of contemporary Metis shamanism practices and the emergence of shamanic tourism based on the use of the psychotropric brew ayahuasca. 
Laureate of the Fyssen Foundation, I am currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Durham (UK). Collaborating with the Hearing the voice team, my research is now focused on ethnographic documentation and comparative study of modes of induction, socialization and control of hallucinations in various cultural contexts, such as the Metis shamanism of the Peruvian Amazon.

Cordelia Erickson-Davis
cred22 [at] stanford [dot] edu
I am an MD/PhD candidate at Stanford University in the cultural anthropology department. I draw together theory and methods from the neurosciences and the social sciences in order to explore the links between the political and perceptual; the social and subjective. 
​My research focuses on brain machine interfaces devices – in particular, the artificial eye. I am interested in how certain assumptions that inform device design and implementation manifest in the phenomenological experience of device users. What does the subject “see” when the device is turned on? What does it mean for it to “work”? How might we use the discrepancies that arise between our predictions for artificial vision and that which results to inform our theories of perception more generally?

​George Fejer
gyorgyf [at] live [dot] com
George studied Bioscience (B.Sc.) at the University of Heidelberg and Cognitive Neuropsychology  (M.Sc) at the Vrije University in Amsterdam. His thesis project investigated the subperceptual effects of microdosing psilocybin on temporal integration processes. He is a board member of the Amsterdam Psychedelic Research Association, a collaborative partner of the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research. His research interests include Psychedelics, Predictive Processing, Belief Formation, Phenomenology, and the organization of field studies, citizen research, and open science initiatives. He is currently working as a Research Assistant at the Religion Cognition & Behavior Lab, investigating the placebo effects of psychedelics

​​Brendan Fleig-Goldstein
fleiggoldstein [at] pitt [dot] edu
I am a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and historian of science and religion, completing my PhD
in the History & Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. Previously, I
studied these subjects at Tufts University and Stanford University. My primary research focuses
on the philosophical foundations of cognitive science, with particular emphasis on how to
provide evidence for cognitive models. I also work on traditional topics in the philosophy of
mind, consciousness, and the self. 

Mathieu Frerejouan
mathieu [dot] frerejouan-du-saint [at] univ-paris1 [dot] fr
I studied Psychology at Paris 8, as well as Philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where I am currently a Maitre de Conférences. My PhD research deals with the concept of hallucination from an historical and epistemological point of view.
My aim is to show that the meaning of this concept, from its emergence in early psychiatry to nowadays, is linked to medical practices and cannot be understood apart from its pathological implications.

Daniel Friedman
danielarifriedman [at] gmail [dot] com
As an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis, I studied Genetics and researched gene regulatory network evolution in insects. Currently I am in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution at Stanford University, studying ants with Professor Deborah Gordon.
My main project is exploring how variation in individual ant neurophysiology is associated with variation in collective behavioral outcomes at the colony level. Philosophically, I am most interested in the intersection of ecology, evolution, and consciousness. 

Tom Froese
t [dot] froese [at] gmail [dot] com
​I am a faculty member of the Research Institute for Applied Mathematics and Systems and a member of the Centre for the Sciences of Complexity, both at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where I am the coordinator of the 4E Cognition Group. I received a D.Phil. in Cognitive Science from the University of Sussex.
My research is concerned with understanding the complexities of the human mind in its biological, psychological, and social manifestations. The overarching methodology is to use a dynamical systems approach to interrelate objective and qualitative aspects of subjectivity. I am exploring the idea that ritualized alteration of consciousness may enhance neural and social self-optimization, and that such alteration may also have contributed to the prehistoric origins of human symbolic cognition.

Juan González
jgonzalez [at] uaem [dot] mx
I am a Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Morelos State University (UAEM), in Mexico. I obtained my Ph.D. at the École Polytechnique (CREA), in Paris, in 1998, under the supervision of the late F. Varela and J. Petitot.
I am a member of Mexico’s National Council for Scientific Research (SNI), level II, and am co-founder and Head of the Cognitive Science Graduate Program at UAEM. My primary research interests are in epistemology, philosophy of mind and the philosophy and psychology of perception, combining conceptual analysis, empirical research and phenomenology to tackle problems concerning perception, consciousness, ASCs and cognition in general. I am interested in the scientific and traditional (indigenous) approaches to knowledge, mind and wisdom. 

Arnaud Halloy
arnaud [dot] halloy [at] gmail [dot] com
I am a Belgian anthropologist, assistant professor at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis since 2007. After studying an Afro-Brazilian cult in Belgium during my graduation, I traveled to Brazil where I conducted extensive fieldwork in the Afro-Brazilian Xangô Possession Cult of Recife, in the North-East Region of Brazil.
​My main interest goes to the mutual influence between contextual and cognitive dimensions of religious transmission. My research on ASC focuses on emotions and the senses, and their specific role in possession learning process.

Matthieu Koroma
mkoroma [at] ens-paris-saclay [dot] fr​
I am a Postdoctoral researcher at University of Liege studying body-brain interactions during sleep. During my PhD in Neuroscience under the direction of Pr. Sid Kouider (Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University), I focused on understanding whether the sleeping brain disconnects from its environment and to what extent sensory processing depends on internal brain activity, such as dreams and slow-waves. This study adds further understanding on the cognitive ability preserved during sleep such as memory and attention, both when conscious abilities are diminished (deep or slow-wave sleep), or when the sleeper is vividly conscious but with a different phenomenology than during wakefulness (REM or paradoxical sleep).

Michael Lifshitz
michael.lifshitz2 [at] mail.mcgill [dot] ca​
I am interested in the plasticity of human perception. I'm currently wrapping up my PhD in neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal and will soon be joining Tanya Luhrmann as a Culture and Mind postdoctoral fellow at Stanford.
My research investigates practices that aim to transform subjective experience—from meditation and hypnosis to placebos and prayer. I work from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining cognitive, neurobiological, and cultural approaches to shed light on consciousness and self-regulation. In this spirit, I recently co-edited an academic book together with my PhD supervisor, Amir Raz: Hypnosis and Meditation: Towards an Integrative Science of Conscious Planes (OUP, 2016).
Before my doctorate, I completed a master's in neuroscience and an undergraduate with honours in psychology and minors in philosophy and world religions, all at McGill.​

Romy Lorenz
​romy.lorenz [at] mrc-cbu.cam [dot ]ac.uk
I am a cognitive neuroscientist with a multidisciplinary background in psychology and biomedical engineering. I received My PhD from Imperial College London in 2017, for which I have developed an “Artificial Intelligence” neuroscientist – a novel brain-computer interface for optimizing experimental design by combining real-time neuroimaging with machine-learning. Currently, I am a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive & Brain Sciences. My research vision lies in revisiting the classic taxonomy of cognitive processes and bring forward a neurobiologically-derived cognitive taxonomy by fusing large-scale neuroinformatic tools (e.g., text mining and automated meta-analyses) and brain-computer interface technology at the individual level. This also involves thinking about novel efforts of how to advance explanatory insights into the causal network mechanisms that underlie cognition, for which I currently explore deep learning techniques and computational modelling. Equally, I am fascinated studying altered states of consciousness (e.g., meditation and psychedelics) and am long-term collaborator of the Psychedelic Research group, led by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris group at Imperial College London.

Charlotte Martial
​cmartial [at] uliege [dot] be
I studied Psychology and Neurosciences and obtained a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Liège (BE). At present, I’m a clinician-researcher at the GIGA-Consciousness (Coma Science Group), leading the projects aiming to study the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDEs). More broadly, I mainly investigate the characterization and the neural correlates of altered and modified states of consciousness (mainly using behavioral assessments, MRI and EEG neuroimaging techniques). Next to my neuroscientific interest, I’m also involved in the clinical management of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (e.g., vegetative/unresponsive state, minimally conscious state). 

Raphaël Millière
raphael [dot] milliere [at] philosophy [dot] ox [dot] ​ac [dot] uk
I am a D.Phil student in philosophy and an Ertegun Scholar at the University of Oxford. My research lies mainly at the crossroads between philosophy of mind, phenomenology and cognitive science. In my doctoral thesis, I discuss the claim that a minimal kind of self-awareness is necessary for phenomenal consciousness, through the study of a variety of empirical cases which appear to challenge it (including drug-induced ego dissolution).
​In recent works, I have also focused on the nature of perceptual error, the philosophical significance of autoscopy and full-body illusions, methodological issues regarding the collection of data about phenomenology, the epistemology of metaphysical realism, the conceivability principle in the epistemology of modalities, and topics in history of philosophy (e.g. George Berkeley, F.H. Bradley and Roman Ingarden).

Matthew Nour​
matthewnour [at] gmail [dot] com
I am an academic psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist working in London. I studied Medicine, Neuroscience and Philosophy at Oxford University, and have conducted research with neuroscience groups at Oxford University, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), King’s College London, University College London and Imperial College London.
My current research uses brain imaging (fMRI and PET) and computational modeling to investigate the neurobiology of psychosis and schizophrenia. More broadly I am interested in the neuronal correlates of conscious experience, and in philosophy of mind.

Fernanda Palhano-Fontes
fernandapalhano [at] neuro.ufrn [dot] br
I am an electrical engineer with double degrees: one from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil, and another from the École National Supérieure d'Electrotechnique, d'Electronique, d'Informatique (ENSEEIHT), Toulouse, France. I earned a Master's and a PhD in neurosciences from the Brain Institute of UFRN. In the Master’s program, I used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate the acute effect of ayahuasca on healthy individuals. In my doctoral thesis, I investigated the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Currently, I am a research engineer at the Brain Institute. My main areas of interest are psychedelics, psychiatry, and imaging techniques such as fMRI and electroencephalography.

Polona Pozeg
pozegpolona [at] gmail [dot] com
I have obtained a MSc in Neuropsychology (Maastricht University, The Netherlands) and PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland). In the recent years I have been conducting behavioral studies to scientifically investigate how the sense of one’s own body is constructed and represented in the brain. Intrigued by illusions, hallucinations, and delusions, I am strongly interested in the neuro-cognitive processes underlying the representations of one’s self, and its disorders, observed in certain neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Katrin Preller
preller [at] bli.uzh [dot] ch​
I obtained my M.Sc. (Neuropsychology) from University of Konstanz, Germany. As a PhD student, I went to University of Zurich, Switzerland, where I run several studies investigating the neurobiological and social-cognitive long-term effects of cocaine, MDMA, and heroin use. After completing my PhD, I joined the Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging lab at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich and Heffter Research Center Zürich, investigating the effects of psilocybin and LSD on self-perception, social cognition, and multimodal processing using different brain imaging techniques. After working as a postdoc at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, London, UK, and Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, I now continue my research on the neurobiological effects of psychedelics at University of Zurich and Yale University.​

Leor Roseman
leoroseman [at] gmail [dot] com
I hold a BSc in Neuroscience from Tel Aviv University. Since June 2013, I am a PhD student in neuroscience in the Beckley-Imperial Research Program under the supervision of Prof. David Nutt and Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris.
I specialize in fMRI analysis techniques and my main research focus is neural correlates of psychedelic visual imagery and psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment resistant depression.

Rebecca Seligman
r-seligman [at] northwestern [dot] edu​
I am a medical and psychological anthropologist who focuses on transcultural psychiatry, or the study of mental health in cross-cultural perspective. My research interests involve critical examination of the social and political-economic forces that affect the experience and distribution of mental and physical illness, with an emphasis on the physical processes and mechanisms through which such forces become embodied. I am interested in the relationships of stress, social disadvantage, and cultural models of selfhood to outcomes such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dissociation, somatization, diabetes, and depression. I am also exploring current neurobiological research concerning these phenomena. My past research has explored the connection between mental health and religious participation in northeastern Brazil. My book on this research was recently published.

Enzo Tagliazucchi
tagliazucchi [dot] enzo [at] googlemail [dot] com
I studied physics and mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires and obtained a PhD in physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Currently, I lead the Consciousness, Culture and Complexity Group (www.cocuco.org) at the Buenos Aires University. I am a Professor of Neuroscience at the Favaloro University, and a Marie Curie fellow at the Brain and Spine Institute in Paris. My main interest is the study of human consciousness as embedded within society and culture. The members of my research group represent different disciplines, including physics, engineering, biochemistry, psychology, computer science and ethnobotany. Our ongoing projects aim towards linking the phenomenology of non-ordinary states of consciousness to neurophysiological and neuropharmacological data. We are also interested in how cultural diversity influences consciousness and vice versa. We use tools ranging from natural language processing, to chemical informatics and molecular dynamics, and to whole-brain neuroimaging and computational modeling of brain activity.​

Chris Timmermann
c [dot] timmermann-slater15 [at] imperial.ac [dot] uk
I obtained a BSc in Psychology in Santiago, Chile and a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Bologna in Italy. I am currently completing a PhD in Imperial College London, leading a project focusing on the effects of DMT in the brain and human consciousness.
I am interested in the use of methods bridging the relationship between the phenomenology evoked by the psychedelic experience and changes in brain activity using diverse neuroimaging tools.

Timo Torsten Schmidt
timo [dot] t [dot] schmidt [at] fu-berlin [dot] de
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin. As a neuroscientist interested in
the neuronal underpinnings of human consciousness, I work with methods from the field of
computational cognitive neuroscience with a focus on functional neuroimaging. My research
focuses on the mental representation of consciousness content (working memory and mental
imagery) and mechanisms underlying altered states of consciousness (ASC). The latter entails a meta-analytical approach aimed at identifying common ‘phenomenological patterns’ across diversely induced ASCs. For this purpose, we created the Altered States Database accessible on www.asdb.info. It constitutes a full open-access resource to enable meta-analyses on questionnaire data about ASC experiences. I am also interested in classifying different physiological and neuronal mechanisms that contribute to the induction of ASCs in accordance with a taxonomy of predictive brain processes, including the concept of ‘active inference’.

Michiel van Elk
m [dot] vanelk [at] uva [dot] nl
I work in the Psychology Department of the University of Amsterdam. My research group focuses on the psychological and neurocognitive basis of religious and spiritual experiences. I mainly investigate (1) the causes and consequences of religious experiences (e.g., elicitors, role of expectations, effects on prosocial behavior) and (2) the role of cognitive biases and cultural learning in shaping supernatural beliefs and experiences.
In a recent project, I critically assess the replicability of main findings within the psychology of religion and propose to use a Bayesian framework to improve the scientific study of religion. My research is multidisciplinary, involving both cognitive and personality measures, brain imaging techniques (e.g., EEG and fMRI), self-report measures and field studies. In the spring quarter of 2017, I will be working as a Fulbright scholar in Stanford’s Anthropology Department.

Administrative and organizational staff

Léna Coutrot
lenacoutrot [at] gmail [dot] com
Former student researcher in cognitive sciences, I am now a scientific journalist at Tempo Santé (Bayard Presse). I write feature stories and news articles about psychology, well-being, medicine, society, and I am interested in any subject related to human and environmental health. I also produce podcasts on a freelance basis and I am supervising an ongoing podcast project for ALIUS.

​Cécile Manhich
cecile [dot] mahnich [at] gmail [dot] com
I am research engineer at San Diego State University. My contributions involve the edition of the forthcoming ALIUS newsletter and the creation of a new website.

Past members

              Martin Fortier                      Baptiste Gille                             Jean-Rémy Martin                  Rojwan François Lemoine

              Matthew Nour                   Fernanda Palhano-Fontes