Consciousness, Perception, and Controlled Hallucinations, with Anil Seth

This evening, Anil Seth will sketch the state-of-the-art in the new science of consciousness, with a focus on what neuroscience has to offer. He will distinguish between conscious level (how conscious we are), conscious content (what we are conscious of), and conscious self (the ‘I’ behind the eyes), describing in each case how new experiments are shedding light on the underlying neural mechanisms, in normal life and in neurological and psychiatric conditions. Throughout, he will emphasize phenomenology—the way things seem—as the target for any satisfying explanation of how the brain, in conjunction with the body and the environment, gives rise to and shapes conscious experience.