Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Survey on Psychedelics and Synaesthesia



Survey on Psychedelics and Synaesthesia


This is an invitation for people to take part in a survey on the use of psychedelics (and other psychoactive substances) and synaesthesia. We are looking for people who have used psychedelics and other psychoactive substances, whether or not they have had experiences of synaesthesia, and we are looking for people who have synaesthesia, whether or not they have used psychedelics and other psychoactive substances.

Synaesthesia can be defined as experiences in which there is a blending of the senses, such as shapes having a particular taste, sounds having a particular shape, or numbers having a particular colour.

Depending on how many types of synaesthesia experience you have had, and how many different substances you have consumed, we expect this survey to take anywhere upwards from 5 minutes to complete (perhaps taking as long as 30 minutes in the extreme), although on average we expect that for most people it will take about 10-15 minutes.

Participation in this survey is completely anonymous, and has been approved by the University of Greenwich Research Ethics Committee. Please follow this link for further details and the survey:

https://greenwichuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bCW3OZwywP7IeNu

This research may be important in helping to establish the role of psychedelics in understanding unusual perceptual phenomena and neurobiological processes involved in consciousness, so thank you for taking part. Please forward this invitation to anyone else who may be interested in responding.

If you have questions about this study please direct them to Dr David Luke: d.p.luke@gre.ac.uk

Many thanks,

Dr David Luke
Senior Lecturer
Department of Psychology and Counselling
University of Greenwich

Dr Devin Terhune
Research Fellow
Department of Experimental Psychology
University of Oxford

Monday, 18 April 2011

The Great Elf Debate


Six hundred fractal thank yous to everyone (yep, 600 folk) who made it along to Canterbury at the beginning of April for the extraordinary Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness extravaganza, Breaking Convention. After a sleepless few days chipping away at the coalface of the new neurochemical renaissance there emerged a number of legendary quotes, cries of an epic and historic weekend, oodles of inspired blog reviews and even the odd manifesto manifesting online - all of which have been assembled here for your delight.

Attempting to bring as many of the departed Breakeros back together again, the ECC salon will now resume this Tuesday 19th April (tomorrow) at the October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London, in an effort to bridge the hyperdimensional divide between Kent's Breaking Convention and Daimonic Imagination with The Great Elf Debate, which will be led, widdershins, by Dr David Luke with help from friends. Elves, induced by DMT or otherwise, are of course a hot topic on Psychopraxis.

The Great Elf Debate

Dr David Luke + friends + you

Tuesday, 19th April, 2011

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

Please RSVP on Facebook (afraid so) so that we can anticipate numbers – Please pay on the door.

Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available

A few saucy comments and mischievous taunts and counter-taunts to get the ball rolling on the ontology of elves and then over to the good people of the floor to take the debate on a merry dance. We'll throw in some DMT, mushrooms, aliens and preying mantises into the faerie ring for good measure and then probe the audience for some thoughts on imps, piskies, gnomes, self-transforming machine elves and possible pro bono proctologists. Representatives from the Social Constructivist quad and from Tir Na Nog will be on hand to stir the pot.


Dr David Luke directs and curates the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery, which occasionally zoops off in new and interesting co-creative directions like the Breaking Convention. He has often considered taking McKenna up on his elfin call for creating an embassy for the invisible but is really just too busy being a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, the President of the Parapsychological Association, a Research Associate of the Beckley Foundation, a guest lecturer on the transpersonal masters at the University of Northampton, and an explorer of lost pirate utopias. He hasn't written a single book but promises to finish editing the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness anthology very soon.