Measuring Subjective Effects
Open-science methods, validated questionnaires, psychometrics, and state-space mapping for comparing altered-state reports without flattening phenomenological detail.
ASSC Satellite Event on Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
A compact post-ASSC 2025 workshop-retreat for researchers working across altered states, virtual reality, neurophenomenology, computational phenomenology, and the formal modeling of experience. The event is designed for a small group of roughly 35 participants, with talks, demonstrations, collaborative sessions, and room for new research partnerships.
- Date
- 10-14 July 2025
- Place
- Vrachos Villas, Agia Paraskevi / Ligres, Crete
- Partner
- Qualia Research Institute
- Format
- Workshop retreat after ASSC 2025 in Greece
The Qualia Research Institute is a co-organizational and funding partner for the retreat, supporting the QRI track on formal state-space models, valence, and computational approaches to non-ordinary conscious experience.
Four Themes
Virtual Reality Approaches
VR, bioresponsive systems, hallucination simulations, and immersive tools for eliciting, modeling, and studying changes in self-representation and perception.
Lived Experience
Micro-phenomenology, contemplative practice, sound and art sessions, and first-person methods that make subjective structure part of the research process.
Formal State Spaces
QRI-led work on computational phenomenology, valence, coupling dynamics, visual-state classifications, and mathematical models of non-ordinary experience.
Program by Day
Sessions are grouped by day so the program can be scanned quickly. Select a speaker card to expand the biography and session context.
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Opening / music
Listen, Gather, Begin
Amiruz and Stratos Bichakis
Arrival gathering beneath the night sky, with music beginning around 19:00.
Stratos Bichakis is a transdisciplinary artist whose installations and performances use sound, light, motion, and language to transform sensory experience. For the retreat, his musical role grounds the opening in shared listening rather than formal presentation.
Expand bioFriday, July 11, 2025
Lived experience
Morning Glory
Matthias "Mathiós" Braeunig
Morning meditation and yoga as a daily experiential anchor.
Matthias Braeunig is an independent research scientist with a physics background, long experience in medical statistics, data science, and R programming, and decades of contemplative practice in yoga and Tibetan Buddhist meditation.
Expand bio
Track 1 / measurement keynote
Systematic Quantification of Altered States
Timo Torsten Schmidt
Achievements and challenges in systematic altered-state measurement.
Timo Torsten Schmidt is a neuroscientist at Freie Universität Berlin working on experimental consciousness research, mental imagery, working memory, and altered states. He co-founded CIRCE and founded the Altered States Database to improve open reference datasets.
Expand bio
Track 1 / micro-phenomenology
Refining the Outer Realms
James Sanders
Micro-phenomenology and non-ordinary states, including work from DMT research.
James W. Sanders is a psychologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and phenomenologist at Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research. His work uses micro-phenomenological interviewing to study DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and advanced meditation.
Expand bio
Track 1 / state-space mapping
A Dissimilarity-Based Bottom-Up Approach for State-Space Mapping
Paweł Motyka
Subjective dissimilarity ratings as a route into bottom-up altered-state maps.
Paweł Motyka is a psychology researcher affiliated with the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His work addresses consciousness, multisensory integration, time perception, interoception, and VR-based models of altered states.
Expand bio
Track 1 / methods keynote
Altered States Lab Methods
Vince Polito
Psychometric, experimental, and clinical methods for altered-state research.
Vince Polito is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University whose research spans hypnosis, flow, meditation, yoga, chanting, VR, religious rituals, psychosis, and psychedelic microdosing. He leads large-scale psychedelic and microdosing studies in Australia.
Expand bio
Track 2 / VR
Hallucination Machine 2.0
Keisuke Suzuki
New directions for studying visual hallucinations using VR technology.
Keisuke Suzuki is a cognitive scientist specializing in embodied cognition, conscious presence, and VR-based studies of self-consciousness. His research links artificial life, bodily self-representation, and experimental manipulation of mental states.
Expand bio
Track 2 / VR
Sensory-Driven Altered States and New Hallucination Machine Studies
Paweł Motyka
Stereoscopic, gaze-coupled, and physiology-linked variants of Hallucination Machine studies.
Motyka's work combines multisensory integration, bodily processes, and altered states. In this session he extends the measurement theme into sensory VR induction and peripheral physiology.
Expand bio
Track 2 / bioresponsive VR
Viscereality: Bio-responsive VR System
George Fejer
Breath-based interactions with coupled oscillator dynamics in VR.
George Fejer is a PhD candidate in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Konstanz and an ALIUS coordinator. His research uses bioresponsive VR to study breathwork-induced changes in consciousness and peripersonal space.
Expand bio
Track 2 / VR treatment design
VR and Psychoplastogens
Hector Taylor
Possible VR-augmented treatments for chronic conditions.
Hector Taylor is a dual PhD candidate in Neuroscience and Psychology at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich. His work integrates VR embodiment simulation, psychedelics, neurophenomenology, and fNIRS for chronic pain research.
Expand bio
Track 2 / live systems
Goofi-Pipe Demo
Antoine Bellemare and Philipp Thölke
An accessible biofeedback framework for VR and visual applications.
Antoine Bellemare is an artist and postdoctoral researcher working across neuroscience, digital arts, poetry, and interactive biosignal installations. Philipp Thölke develops real-time neurotechnology and computational tools, including goofi-pipe for EEG and biofeedback prototyping.
Expand bio
Track 2 / visual replications
Psychedelic Replications
Raimonds Jermaks / Symmetric Vision
Approaches to modeling and presenting psychedelic visual phenomena.
Raimonds Jermaks, known as Symmetric Vision, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work merges digital art, altered-state research, live projection, and immersive visual storytelling. He is known for detailed visual replications and psychedelic cryptography experiments.
Expand bio
Track 2 / art and uncertainty
Towards Uncertainty and CONFABULATION
Yutaka Makino
A talk followed by a pool-based sound performance for four speakers.
Yutaka Makino is an artist and researcher based in Berlin and Fukuoka. Drawing from psychiatry, psychoacoustics, neuroscience, linguistics, and history of science, he builds performances and installations that make perceptual processes tangible.
Expand bio
Cultural performance
Stratoscapes
Stratos Bichakis
Ambient performance with Cretan Bulgari.
Bichakis' performance practice explores emotional and transcendent possibilities of sound and light. The retreat program uses these artistic sessions as part of its lived-experience structure, not merely as evening entertainment.
Expand bioSaturday, July 12, 2025
Lived experience
Morning Glory
Matthias "Mathiós" Braeunig
Morning meditation and yoga.
The recurring morning format keeps contemplative practice visible inside the event structure, so discussions of non-ordinary states remain tethered to first-person methods.
Expand bio
Track 4 / QRI keynote
Parametrizing Psychedelic States with Dynamic Systems and Coupling Dynamics
Andrés Gómez Emilsson
Image-based and visual state classifications as an entry into formal modeling.
Andrés Gómez Emilsson is Director of Research at the Qualia Research Institute. His work combines neuroscience, philosophy, artificial intelligence, qualia mapping, valence, psychedelic phenomenology, and topological models of consciousness.
Expand bio
Track 4 / computational phenomenology
On the Computational Properties of DMT-Altered Consciousness
June Russell
Computational frameworks for DMT-induced altered states.
June Russell contributes to the QRI-oriented formal modeling strand of the retreat, connecting psychedelic phenomenology with computational descriptions of altered conscious dynamics.
Expand bio
Track 2 / visual phenomenology
Towards a Big-Data Quantitative Phenomenology of Visual Hallucinations
Trevor Hewitt
Training participants to create images of stroboscopically induced hallucinations.
Trevor Hewitt is a PhD researcher at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science whose work connects visual phenomenology, hallucination reports, and quantitative analysis of experience.
Expand bio
Parallel session A
Phenomenological Playground
Andrés, Taru, Till, Philipp, and Antoine
Interactive live coding, visuals, goofi-pipe, and audience participation.
This collaborative session brings together QRI researchers, computational artists, and neurotechnology builders. Taru Hirvonen develops mathematical models and visualizations of conscious dynamics; Till Holzapfel works at the intersection of altered states, embodiment, and immersive technology.
Expand bio
Parallel session B
FOLDINGS
Yutaka Makino
An art project distorting spatial perception through custom goggles and audio manipulation.
In FOLDINGS, visitors experience ordinary surroundings through layered visual and auditory distortions. The session uses adaptation and cross-modal delay to make the construction of perception directly experientially available.
Expand bioSunday, July 13, 2025
Lived experience
Morning Glory
Matthias "Mathiós" Braeunig
Morning meditation and yoga.
The final Morning Glory session closes the contemplative thread of the retreat before the Sunday sequence of tulpamancy, debate, meditation, and psychedelic psychodynamics.
Expand bio
Special keynote
Tulpamancy
Michael Lifshitz
The phenomenon of tulpamancy and its implications for consciousness research.
Michael Lifshitz is Assistant Professor in Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and co-director of the Psychedelics and Contemplation Lab. His research examines how culture shapes spiritual experience and agency.
Expand bio
Debate
The Great Tulpa Consciousness Debate
June Russell, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Till Holzapfel, and Marc Antonio
A structured debate on tulpa consciousness and models of awareness.
Marc Antonio is an AI researcher and philosopher in Amsterdam interested in formal logic, transcendental phenomenology, mechanistic interpretability, qualia space, social space, and neurophenomenology. The panel links these questions with QRI and VR perspectives.
Expand bio
Meditation research
What Kind of Suffering Does Meditation Reduce?
Vismay Agrawal
A systematic account of how meditation may dismantle mechanisms that create suffering.
Vismay Agrawal is a PhD researcher at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies. His interests include mental suffering, advanced meditation, phenomenology, active inference, and contemplative practice.
Expand bio
Super special keynote
Introduction to the Psychodynamics of the Psychedelic Experience
Tobias Buchborn
Psychodynamic frameworks for interpreting psychedelic experiences.
Tobias Buchborn holds a PhD in Neurobiology and has studied psychedelic tolerance, optogenetic voltage imaging, chemogenetics, and fiber photometry. His current work examines therapeutic mechanisms in psychedelic research.
Expand bioWorkshop in Tribute to Martin Fortier
Partner event at Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, honoring Martin Fortier's work on anthropology, hallucinations, altered states, feelings of reality, spiritual experience, shamanism, and the diversity of consciousness.
- Organizers: Jérôme Dokic and Raphaël Millière
- Place: Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, Paris
- Time: 10:00-18:15
- Format: English talks; French and English round table
Legacy program and abstracts
Program
- 10:00 - Introduction.
- 10:15-11:15 - Joëlle Proust, "From socio-cognitive habits to metacognitive diversity".
- 11:15-12:15 - Juan C. González, "Classification, reality and epistemic value of psychedelic hallucinations".
- 14:00-15:00 - David Dupuis, "Can really psychedelics change the world? Hallucinogenic substances and cultural evolution".
- 15:00-16:00 - Raphaël Millière, "Dimensions of Consciousness".
- 16:15-17:15 - Jérôme Dokic, "The varieties of feelings of reality".
- 17:15-18:15 - Round table.
Presentation
In 2020, Martin Fortier, a doctoral student at EHESS attached to the Jean-Nicod Institute, died prematurely, on the verge of defending a thesis of nearly 600 pages. With his dual training in philosophy and anthropology, his research crossed social sciences and cognitive sciences. His published works focus on the epistemic and ontological status of hallucinations, feelings of reality and hyper-reality, spiritual experiences and shamanism, altered states of consciousness, and the diversity of consciousness. This workshop honored his memory by addressing some of his favorite themes.
Abstract themes retained from the legacy page
Joëlle Proust discussed Martin Fortier's contribution to metacognitive diversity and the anthropological evidence he collected around social metacognition. Juan C. González examined Martin's idea that psychedelic hallucination phenomenology can be linked with neuropharmacological bases, and questioned the real/unreal divide for psychedelic experience. David Dupuis revisited debates with Martin Fortier about psychedelics, cultural transmission, and extrapharmacological factors. Raphaël Millière developed questions around multidimensional global states of consciousness. Jérôme Dokic argued that the feeling of presence is affective and has bodily, interactive, and self-presence aspects that can vary independently of sensory perception.
Somatic Cultures and Consciousness
From Event Cognition to Self-Transformation. This legacy project page framed somatic cultures as communities where bodily practices, embodied episodes, and shared meanings shape distinctive forms of self-consciousness and social belonging.
- Organizers: Maddalena Canna and Rebecca Seligman
- Discussant: Rebecca Seligman, Northwestern University
- Place: Vancouver CC WEST, Room 212, Vancouver, Canada
- Time: Saturday 23 November, 4:15 PM-6:00 PM
Legacy abstract
Recent scholarly explorations of embodiment have explored the multiple ways in which cultural meaning and somatic experiences are intermingled through complex loops of influence between mind and body. The panel focused on somatic cultures: contexts where shaping, conditioning and transforming participants' bodies is pivotal for developing a distinctive sense of Self integrated into a specific community.
The legacy page described religious groups, sports practitioners, meditators, communities defined by sexual orientations, shared trauma, pathology, practices of consumption, and ascetic practices as places where transforming one's body can forge distinctive self-consciousnesses and selective socialities. The panel proposed to explore somatic enculturation by integrating anthropology, transcultural psychiatry, neurocognitive science, and biological science.
Its central distinction was between somatic events - discrete episodes marking integration into a community - and self-transformation, the broader dynamics of personal reconfiguration and re-socialization. The page retained examples including initiation, desired but unpredictable enlightenment, boxing careers, circumcision, ritual shaving, and enslavement piercings in BDSM practices. It argued for a bio-looping approach in which bottom-up bodily processes and top-down meaningful experiences co-dependently shape selves, biology, and social worlds.
Voix et visions
Regards croisés sur les hallucinations. Journées d'études organized by David Dupuis and Mathieu Frèrejouan at École Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d'Ulm, Paris.
- Organizers: David Dupuis and Mathieu Frèrejouan
- Place: ENS, Salle Dussane and Salle des actes
- Theme: Voices, visions, hallucinations, psychiatry, religion, art, and psychedelics
- Language: French program retained from the legacy page
Legacy three-day program
Jeudi 24 octobre
- Matinée - Les voix aux marges de la psychiatrie: Mathieu Frèrejouan; Magali Molinié; Ekaterina Odé.
- Après-midi - Voix et visions dans les Amériques: David Dupuis; Marion Aubrée; Katerina Kerestetzi; Vincent Basset.
Vendredi 25 octobre
- Matinée - Voix et visions en Asie: Mary Picone; Florence Galmiche; Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière.
- Après-midi - Substances hallucinogènes, expériences cliniques et psychédéliques: Elise Grandgeorges; Jelena Martinovic; Vincent Verroust; Vittorio Biancardi.
Samedi 26 octobre
- Les voix en Occident: perspectives religieuses: Pierre-Antoine Fabre; Sylvain Piron; Claude Langlois.
The Cultural Shaping of Consciousness
Partner event at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Western Ontario University, London, Ontario, Canada.
- Organizer: Martin Fortier
- Place: Western Ontario University, London, Ontario
- Format: Partner symposium at ASSC
- Focus: Ordinary enculturation, non-ordinary techniques, and culture-dependent altered states
Legacy symposium description
The legacy page argued that consciousness studies had paid too little attention to cultural variables, despite evidence that susceptibility to visual illusions, sensory integration, binocular rivalry, and the cultivation of non-ordinary states vary across cultures. It contrasted monophasic cultures, reluctant to induce contents and modes beyond ordinary consciousness, with polyphasic cultures that explore a larger repertoire of conscious states.
Retained talk structure
- Martin E. Fortier, "The cultural shaping of consciousness: A general introduction".
- Xiao-Fei Yang, "Cultural influences on the neural correlates of emotional experiences: Implications for consciousness?"
- Michael Lifshitz, "Learning to hear voices: The phenomenology and cognitive mechanisms of tulpamancy".
- Rebecca Seligman, "The biology and culture of spirit possession: An integrative model of dissociation and altered states of consciousness".
The old page preserved three routes by which consciousness can be encultured: ordinary conscious processes shaped by ordinary practices; cultures using non-ordinary techniques such as hallucinogens, fasting, or sleep deprivation; and culture-dependent forms within techniques for altering consciousness such as trance. The talks connected neuroimaging of emotion, tulpamancy, spirit possession, dissociation, and altered states.
Recherches en Neurosciences et Engagement Social
Partner event at the Italian Embassy in Paris, retained from the old Events list as a program PDF for the Tiziana Zalla tribute.
- Place: Italian Embassy, Paris
- Format: Partner event
- Documentation: Legacy program PDF retained
ALIUS Workshop 2018
Methodological Issues in Consciousness Research at École Normale Supérieure. Organized by David Dupuis, Matthieu Koroma, and Raphaël Millière.
- Place: ENS, 45 rue d'Ulm, Paris
- Theme: Neuroscientific, anthropological, and first-person/third-person methods
- Sessions: Neuroscience, anthropology, and bridging approaches
Legacy workshop description and program
The old page framed ALIUS as an interdisciplinary research group investigating non-ordinary and understudied conscious states, connecting anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy of mind, and psychiatry. The workshop asked which methodological approaches allow fruitful dialogue between disciplines in the investigation of consciousness.
Friday 26 October - Neuroscientific perspectives
- Matthieu Koroma, "Constructed consciousness".
- Oussama Abdoun, "New theoretical frameworks for meditation research".
- Jean-Arthur Micoulaud-Franchi and Guillaume Dumas, "Psychiatry: a Crash Test for Integrative Neuroscience".
Friday 26 October - Anthropological perspectives
- Arnaud Halloy, "Ethnographic immersion: an added value in the study of the diversity of states of consciousness?"
- David Dupuis, "Ethnographizing the hallucinated consciousness".
- Samuel Veissière, "Thinking through other minds: a variational approach to consciousness, cognition, and cultural affordances".
- Maddalena Canna, "How to integrate anthropology and neuroscience in a natural context?"
Saturday 27 October - Bridging first-person and third-person approaches
- Raphaël Millière, "Multidimensional approaches to consciousness".
- Chris Timmermann, "Novel approaches in the bridging of first person reports and neuronal activity in transitions of conscious states".
- Enzo Tagliazucchi, "From molecules to consciousness: towards an integrative neuroscience of psychedelics".
ALIUS Workshop 2017
Exploring the diversity of consciousness at École Normale Supérieure. Organized by Martin Fortier, Maddalena Canna, David Dupuis, and Matthieu Koroma.
- Place: ENS, 46 rue d'Ulm and 24 rue Lhomond, Paris
- Registration: No registration required
- Legacy livestream: facebook.com/aliusresearch
Legacy two-day program
Friday, December 8
- Stephen Whitmarsh, "Worlds of difference: Attempts to study subjective experiences through art and science".
- Maddalena Canna, "Interactional models of Altered States of Consciousness and the role of mental practices in inducing dissociative states".
- Alexandre Billon, "The sense of existence".
- Mathieu Frerejouan, "Making sense of hallucinations: The principle of charity and its limits".
- Keynote: Jérôme Dokic, "Are hallucinations metacognitive errors".
Saturday, December 9
- Matthieu Koroma, "Dreams and fiction: Neuroscientific and philosophical views".
- Michiel van Elk, "The power of suggestibility using expectations and placebo cognitive enhancement devices to manipulate subjective experience".
- David Dupuis, "The whispers of the selva".
- Keynote: Renaud Jardri, "Advances in fMRI capture of hallucinations".
- Martin Fortier, "How the sense of reality and religious systems are uniquely shaped by serotoninergic and anticholinergic hallucinogens".
- Christopher Timmermann, "EEG correlates and phenomenology of the DMT state".
- Guillaume Dumas, "Normative modelling and patients stratifications".
The legacy page also retained a participant list with affiliations from Université de Lille, EHESS, Institut Jean Nicod, Institut Pasteur, Durham University, ENS, Imperial College London, University of Amsterdam, and related laboratories.
Anthropologie de l'art visuel des hallucinations
Images Visionnaires: a study day at Collège de France on visual hallucinations, visionary art, anthropology, and neuropharmacology.
- Place: Collège de France, Salle 2, Paris
- Organizers: David Dupuis and Maddalena Canna
- Theme: Visionary images, hallucination, ritual, and art
Legacy program
- Claire Vidal, "Voir Guanyin au Putuoshan".
- Andrea-Luz Gutierrez Choquevilca, "Chamanismes en série".
- Charles Stépanoff, "Les régimes d'imagination dans l'évolution biosociale humaine".
- Esteban Arias, "L'écriture des invisibles".
- Martin Fortier, "Anthropologie et neuropharmacologie des visions".
- Maddalena Canna, "L'art hallucinatoire comme dispositif de recognition de l'expérience".
- David Dupuis, "Apprendre à voir l'invisible".
- Round tables with Samir Boumedienne, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Patrick Deshayes, and Paolo Fortis.
The Sense of Self
Partner event at the University of Oxford on selfhood, conscious experience, and altered states, retained with the external legacy event site.
- Place: University of Oxford
- Format: Partner event
Bicycle Day Workshop
Neuroscientific and socio-cultural approaches to hallucinogenic experiences at Stanford University, organized by Martin Fortier.
- Place: Stanford University
- Rooms: Building 260, Room 252; Building 50, Room 51A
- Registration: Free, no registration required
- Contact retained from legacy page: mfortier@stanford.edu
Legacy schedule
- 14:00 - Michiel van Elk, "The deselfing brain: Reduced default mode network activity in psychedelic experience and experience of awe".
- 14:35 - Leor Roseman, "Psilocybin-assisted therapy: Neural changes and the relationship between the acute peak experience and clinical outcomes".
- 15:30 - Coffee break.
- 16:00 - Christopher Timmermann, "Studying dynamic transitions of consciousness using DMT".
- 16:50 - Martin Fortier, "Hallucinogenic experiences and the evolution of religious representations".
- 17:40 - Olivia Marcus, "Integrating ayahuasca experiences into western paradigms of mental health".