19 Aug INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN CARHART-HARRIS ON LSD RESEARCH | THE INDEPENDENT
An article in the UK newspaper The Independent profiles Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, a researcher at the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College. Writer Laurence Phelan interviews Carhart-Harris about the history and current status of psychedelic research as well as his work using fMRI scanning technology to study the brains of human subjects under the influence of LSD.
The potential scientific benefits of psychedelics (as distinct from whatever cultural, social, artistic, spiritual or subjectively enjoyable benefits one might also argue they have) fall broadly into two categories. They look like being medicinally or therapeutically useful, and they offer an unconventional view of the workings of the human mind, such that the age-old, so-called “hard problem of consciousness” might be made a little easier. The etymology of the word “psychedelic” is, after all, from the Greek for “mind-revealing.”