Psychedelics may advance the study of consciousness by inducing shifts in structural features of experience (such as the sense of self and world), and emerging empirical work is starting to investigate how short-acting psychedelics are particularly promising for that purpose.

For instance, DMT induces a state of disconnection from the external environment, an immersion in an alternate world inhabited by entities, and may alter beliefs concerning the nature of reality. 5-MeO-DMT stands out as a unique psychedelic, with reports suggesting that sensory contents and thoughts are greatly minimized while awareness remains intact, resembling so-called ‘minimal phenomenal experiences.’ These unique states offer valuable opportunities for researching how experiences are deconstructed and reconstituted when individuals transition in and out of such states.

The central aim of this symposium is to understand how these states deconstruct experience at various levels and the implications of such deconstruction for the field of consciousness science. Speakers will present neurobiological and phenomenological evidence, along with emerging theoretical models, to investigate the potential contributions of these extreme non-ordinary states to the science of consciousness.