"Your Brain in Altered States", a talk by Dario Nardi

Just got done watching these ...and absolutely loved it. So many thoughts...

It's quite apparent that human psychology is a very complicated system. I like how Nardi's perspective honors the complexity, while also trying to highlight over-arching patterns that can be found.

He talks about the nervous system and the various sections, watching this I really got a sense that the neocortex, limbic system, and vagus system are a pretty "true" trichotomy.

Just as left/right brain hemispheres have legitimate anatomical as well as psychological differences, so do these three subsystems of the nervous system. And it seems to coincide with the enneagram's "Head, Heart, Gut" trichotomy. It's also the same thing enunciated by Plato as the "Tripartite Soul".



And for any theory/efforts to quantify human nature, it's very gratifying to have or build a model that reflects the reality of our biology as well. So it makes sense to me to have a psychological theory that runs parallel to the science; built on natural dichotomies... and I hope to help in this department.


I find slide 31 on the PDF so interesting, in how it describes that the neocortex can be antagonist toward the limbic response and put up a "shield" against it. We have a response at one level, but an opposite attitude at the more "conscious" level.

@entheogens

It's quite fascinating to me to see more research being done to legitimize the existence of this phenomenon. I wanna run parallel studies on this too.

I like how Nardi is a mix between formal/professional but also very curious/correlative/associative. He's not dry and overly sterile in what he allows himself to say or speculate about. Some may consider him sloppy for the very same trait, but to me he is willing to draw parallels which the data supports and I get a sense that this is someone whose chasing the data with passion to see where it leads. Which isn't always the case when researchers are too focused on hitting publication goalmarks and trying to retain rapport; more worried about their academic standing than the physical world and how it works.

Love this guy!

ps. I really like his new modeling software; I wonder where I could find it.