Neuroscientists, Mind Your Assumptions!

What if the Brain Doesn’t Create the Mind?

In psychology and neuroscience, we study the mind. We use scientific tools to measure and quantify experience, behavior, and emotion. Yet across much of academia in these fields, there is a persistent problem: psychologists and neuroscientists rarely reflect on the metaphysical or philosophical assumptions that underlie their work on the mind.

​In my experience working and interacting with people in psychotherapy, psychology, and neuroscience—an impression based on observation rather than empirical study—many have never seriously engaged with the hard problem of consciousness, nor explored alternative theories such as panpsychism or idealism. While this lack of reflection may not matter for every purely mechanistic sub-field, it becomes a significant blind spot in areas where interpreting the mind is essential. I am certainly not suggesting researchers halt their empirical work to endlessly debate philosophy. Yet many still hold some form of physicalist or dualistic view, often without clearly recognizing which position they are committed to or what it entails.

​In this article, I want to consider the possibility of allowing greater philosophical diversity in academia alongside our scientific methods, and the positive impact such diversity could have.

Implicit Assumptions and Imprecise Language in Neuroscience

There are essentially two positions that most psychologists and neuroscientists hold without really thinking about them. On the surface, most would probably describe themselves as physicalists or materialists, meaning that only matter or physical entities exist, and that either mental states are equated with brain states or that mental states, in a functional/computational sense, are what the brain does. However, there is no mind in the classical sense as a separate or intrinsic substance, only something that somehow emerges and interacts with the physical world, either as an epiphenomenon or as the same thing “from another side”.

Most people really underestimate how hard it is to have a coherent physicalist view of consciousness, because it is naturally very difficult to include both our subjective experience and the seemingly objective physical world within a single framework.

What often happens, then, is that people who believe they hold a physicalist view implicitly assume a much stronger separation between mind and body than “true physicalism” really grants. The reason is straightforward: our mental life appears so intricate, and so fundamentally different from our bodily processes, that people begin to imagine the mind as something like a homunculus, a little figure adjusting the settings and manually operating the nervous system. This tendency surfaces in everyday language. Phrases such as “your brain starts negotiating with you” or “you can use your brain in such-and-such a way” suggest an implicit belief in two distinct entities: one belonging to the body, one belonging to the person or the mind. Dennett (1991) describes a similar phenomenon, coining the term “Cartesian materialism” to refer to the view held by those who have discarded substance dualism, but still implicitly rely on the imagery of a central place in the brain where it “all comes together.” In actuality, the majority of neuroscientists use terms such as “enters consciousness,” which, according to Dennett, implies this incorrect notion of a “Cartesian theatre”, a physical finish line where brain processes are presented to a central, observing self. Although this position is still materialistic it is still based on a confused assumption.

Yet the people using this language rarely recognise it. They assume there is something like a psyche, the mind, and something more like the body, and that these two somehow interact. What this interaction actually consists in, or how these two sides of the same process are supposed to relate, typically goes unexamined. Psychosomatic illnesses and placebo effects, for example, are often treated as peculiar exceptions rather than as phenomena that demand conceptual clarity. The underlying mechanisms are described only vaguely, in part because many do not clearly understand which position they themselves hold. In my experience, this tension is often sensed, but simply set aside as unimportant.

At its core, this is a dualistic picture, which brings us to the two-position landscape I am describing: physicalism, which is far rarer than one might think, and (often) the dualism that quietly follows from it in practice, which is far more popular even when it has never been consciously adopted.

Before turning to alternative metaphysical views, it is thus necessary to recognise the more fundamental difficulty on which this situation rests. The problem is not only the restriction to a limited set of positions, but that many who believe they hold a certain e.g. physicalist view in fact rely on assumptions characteristic of Cartesian materialism or actual dualism. This reflects a lack of clarity about what physicalism actually entails. If the position were worked out consistently, it would likely take the form of some version of illusionism or functionalism.

For this reason, before asking whether positions such as idealism might be viable, those who identify as physicalists should first articulate their own commitments in a fully explicit manner. Once this point is clear, it becomes possible to move on to alternative theories and to consider their place within the broader scientific landscape. The first claim is therefore straightforward: many who believe they hold a particular metaphysical position have not examined it closely enough to know what it entails. Without such clarity, any further discussion, especially of views such as idealism, lacks a stable conceptual basis.

Only Physicalism is Scientific, Right?

Another assumption that is often made is that physicalism is necessary for doing science. For many researchers, physicalism is simply ‘the scientific stance’ (although, in reality, most of them are actually dualistic because they don’t understand the implications of a true physicalist position).

Most people assume this is simply the status quo with which you have to conduct research. The other theories are seen as weird philosophical counter-ideas that nobody in science can take seriously, because they cannot be used to conduct scientific research. However, this is completely untrue. You can. It’s just harder because people have not thought about them in the same way as they have with physicalism. I want to emphasise that physicalism is not science. It is a metaphysical theory. Science does not make physicalist assumptions. Indeed I would argue science is largely metaphysically agnostic.

Moreover, while theories like idealism or panpsychism often face the counterargument that they cannot be disproven and are therefore unscientific, there is equally no way to prove or disprove physicalism. Idealism is not falsifiable because it places mind at the bottom of all substance. Physicalism is not falsifiable either. It asserts that everything that exists is what we can empirically verify or whatever physics describes — physical matter, atoms, quantum fields. That is all there is.

But the claim that “all we can empirically verify is all there is” is itself not falsifiable, since any evidence we could ever gather already comes through measurable physical processes — our senses, instruments, models, and so on. The methodology of testing is therefore already constrained by physical processes. There is no way to step outside the framework in order to falsify the framework itself.

Another important point that many people seem to miss is that Popperian (empirical) falsifiability is a standard for scientific theories, not for philosophical or metaphysical positions in general; these endeavours were never expected to be falsifiable; indeed Popper himself was a dualist.

So how do we know if any given theory is solid? We can look at coherence and internal consistency, parsimony (Occam’s Razor), and explanatory scope. There is of course, in the end, the question Thomas Nagel raised: whether all of this is ultimately beyond us, and our cognitive apparatus is simply not equipped to fully resolve these questions. Nevertheless, it remains important to hold a coherent and explicit theory from which you conduct research, rather than operating with an implicit one, and thereby perhaps missing parts of the explanation, or even fitting evidence into a worldview you were never fully aware of holding.

Taking all of this into account, I don’t think either of these theories should be categorically dismissed.

I can already hear one counterargument cropping up: What follows from this? Do I have to choose an assumption that I cannot prove? Do I have to become a non-physicalist? No! What I am appealing for is people to examine the available positions and take a reasoned stance — which could also be agnosticism or physicalism — instead of just accepting the status quo, because it is what most people believe. The crucial point is not to pick one working theory and insist that it is true and perfect, but to at least consider ones that you have not previously thought about or examined. What could be more unscientific than conducting research based on an unexamined assumption?

---

Diversity is Valuable

Why is diversity of perspective valuable? Simply thinking about the mind from different conceptual angles tends to generate new ideas and a broader range of theoretical models. When these models remain grounded in empirical data rather than rejecting it, such theoretical diversity is generally beneficial. As the case study of psychedelic states will show, empirical findings can be interpreted within alternative metaphysical frameworks such as idealism, just as they can within physicalism. Crucially, adopting such a framework is not a rejection of science. Rather it is simply an alternative way of working with empirical results.

Moreover, progress in many fields has historically emerged through the tension between competing views. One might describe this process, following Hegel, as a dynamic between thesis and antithesis that can eventually lead to a synthesis. So, when alternative perspectives challenge a dominant view, they can expose its assumptions and open conceptual space for new explanations. Sometimes this process results in a synthesis between positions; at other times it simply reveals new empirical or theoretical questions.

It is also unlikely that any single theory captures the full truth about the nature of mind. For this reason, allowing multiple theoretical frameworks to coexist and develop in parallel may be productive.

This diversity of approaches can therefore be beneficial, even if physicalism ultimately turns out to be correct. The same caution applies to idealist theories in their current forms. It is plausible that different theories capture partial aspects of the truth. For that reason, a productive scientific attitude requires openness to alternative metaphysical assumptions while maintaining commitment to empirical investigation.

It is also worth noting that Eastern traditions have long grappled with these questions. In Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, something resembling idealism is already deeply established. The concept of Brahman for example is quite close in structure. I am not an expert in Hinduism, but this point matters, because the physicalist-dualist assumption is, to a significant degree, a Western cultural assumption. It is a view that science has inherited from a particular cultural context.

I believe our scientific landscape, would genuinely benefit from a broader, more diverse set of assumptions about the mind. For example, I doubt you could ever publish a mainstream psychological paper written from an idealist perspective. It would likely receive no funding, not because idealism has been disproven, but simply because it sits outside the accepted framework.

With that foundation laid, let us turn to one concrete example. I have chosen idealism because it is a framework I have studied at some length, and because I think it offers a genuinely illuminating contrasting perspective, not only for psychology and neuroscience, but for science more broadly. Just to be clear, the purpose of this section is not to claim that idealism is true, but rather to present an alternative perspective and treat it seriously.

The Idealist Reading of Science

Before we begin this section, I would like to urge you to read the part of my article that deals with idealism and the section that deals with physicalism. If you think idealism is completely unreasonable and physicalism is obviously true, you probably won’t find it convincing. So please take a look if you have not yet read it or are having trouble understanding idealism.

Science in Idealism

Science, according to idealism, is the systematic, rigorous study of the structure of our experience, the content of our dashboard. It investigates the patterns, regularities, and causal relationships that characterize the physical world, the world as it appears to us. This is an extraordinarily valuable and productive enterprise. It allows us to predict earthquakes, cure diseases, build computers, and explore distant galaxies. None of this is undermined by idealism.

What idealism denies is only the further metaphysical claim that often gets smuggled in alongside science: the claim that the regularities science describes are features of a non-experiential reality, and that experience itself is somehow a secondary byproduct of those regularities. Idealism says: science is the most sophisticated map we have of the structured appearance of reality. But a map is not the territory. The equations of physics are extraordinarily accurate descriptions of how our experiential interface behaves. They are not, and cannot be, disclosures of what underlies that interface.

To make this clearer, consider Newton. Newtonian mechanics enabled us to reach the moon. Yet by that time, we already knew that Newton’s description of reality was not “fundamentally correct”. Einstein had shown that Newtonian mechanics is limited, that it approximates reality under certain conditions. And today, even Einstein’s theory is widely regarded as incomplete, perhaps as a highly successful but still partial description. Nevertheless, Newtonian mechanics remains operationally effective. We calculate with it, engineer with it, and rely on it, even while knowing it is not ultimately “true”. That is the point of science. Scientific theories need not provide a final metaphysical account of reality in order to function with extraordinary precision.

Here I want to note something important. One issue that physicalists often raise, and that is indeed unclear in many forms of idealism, concerns the exact explanatory status of science. Within idealism there are different positions on this matter. An idealist might adopt a form of structural realism and hold that science reveals real structures, while not disclosing the intrinsic nature of reality itself. Others argue that science cannot reveal such structures and is instead entirely dependent on the structure of experience.

My own view is far closer to the former position (although I am not an idealist). I think science does tell us something real about the world. It would be an implausible coincidence if science were as extraordinarily successful as it is while failing to describe anything that corresponds to an underlying reality. For that reason I think science can disclose real structures. What it does not reveal is what things are in themselves. Science describes how things behave, not their intrinsic nature.

For this reason an idealist, and in fact any metaphysical theory, must state clearly how it understands the role of science. At the same time, science itself is not rendered unscientific by any of these philosophical interpretations. It operates independently of them.

Neuroscience and Psychology in Idealism

Now let us turn to neuroscience and psychology.

Some might assume that if reality is fundamentally mental, research into brain activity, brain chemistry, and physiology becomes irrelevant. That is not the case. On the contrary, within idealism the brain does not determine conscious experience; rather, it is what conscious experience looks like from a certain perspective. When we examine brain activity or neurochemistry, we are observing how consciousness presents itself under experimental conditions; the brain is how a dissociated segment of mind appears when observed from the outside.

Behavioral psychology is comparatively coarse and not everything can be understood through introspection and self-report. Neuroimaging methods such as fMRI provide a more fine-grained perspective. What we see in such data is not the production of consciousness, but a structured representation of it. From this standpoint, neuroscience becomes arguably even more significant, not less. As Bernardo Kastrup formulates it “the metabolizing brain is a map of the far corners of the mind, unreachable through introspection”.

To illustrate how we can view science from an alternative perspective, I want to step fully inside the idealist framework and trace what it does with neuroscientific findings, medicine, and therapy. What follows is a view from within that perspective. I do not endorse all of it, but I think it deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms.

Case Study: Psychedelic States

A prominent example of how idealism could inform research and how baseline assumptions can lead to mistakes, is provided by psychedelic states. Recent evidence indicates that during psychedelic experiences, neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), such as the default mode network, show decreased activity rather than increased activity (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012; Palhano-Fontes et al., 2015; Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013).

For example Carhart-Harris et al., 2016 note:

Differences (increases) in CBF were restricted to the visual RSNs, whereas differences in variance and integrity (decreases) were much more pronounced and universal. According to previous research with psilocybin (17), it was predicted that decreased DMN integrity (or DMN “disintegration”) would correlate with ratings of ego-dissolution, and this hypothesis was supported (r = 0.49; P = 0.03)”

This decrease obviously contrasts with the reported richness and complexity of subjective experience under substances such as psilocybin, LSD, or DMT. From a physicalist perspective, one might expect heightened metabolic activity in the brain during such states, since reductions in metabolism, especially in the default mode network, is typically associated with diminished consciousness or rest (Millière et al., 2018). So according to physicalism, if neuronal activity is causally responsible for experience, richer experiences should correlate with increased activity in the brain, since the brain is the cause for this experience. However, empirical evidence does not support this expectation.

Nevertheless, there obviously are explanations that have been proposed to solve this apparent issue. For instance, the entropic brain hypothesis suggests that the richness of psychedelic experience may correspond to increased variability or complexity in brain activity despite an overall decrease in mean activity (Carhart-Harris, 2018). Still, this theory remains debated and is not universally established. The decrease in activity within certain networks under psychedelics remains somewhat mysterious.

As for an idealist interpretation, the observed result patterns fit surprisingly well. On such a view, brain activity would be understood as a representation of the experiential state rather than its cause. An idealist would therefore not expect to observe the precise neural changes that generate these experiential states. Instead, the brain and its activity would function merely as a kind of “dashboard” representation of experience, rather than as the thing in itself that produces it.

Furthermore, it would make sense to posit decreased brain activity in states where the ego dissolves or “reconnects” with the “mind at large”. This also fits surprisingly well with self-reports of these states across multiple cultures, where we often find a state called “drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED)”. This has been described as a “loss of one’s sense of self and self-world boundaries together with a concomitant oceanic feeling of “oneness” or “unity”” (Millière et al., 2018; p.5). We also find similar brain activity patterns for different forms of meditation that also are associated with similar experiences (Millière et al., 2018).

As Kastrup and Kelly (2018) note, the reliance on a (often implicit) physicalist theory can theoretically introduce risks of confirmation bias, as researchers may actively seek explanations to preserve their theoretical commitments. Consequently, interpretations of data, including statistical analyses, may be inadvertently influenced. This has led to direct mistakes in reporting of the data (Kastrup and Kelly, 2018). For instance as they point out a study by Tagliazucchi et al., 2014 found that psychedelics increase variabilty in some regions and an overall decrease, however media reported the study the following way:

“Researchers … found increased activity in regions of the brain that are known to be activated during dreaming.”

This is not only something that people start to regurgitate; AI bots such as ChatGPT also misinterpret the results and disseminate them incorrectly. This shows how easily your baseline assumption can lead to confirmation bias and cherry picking. Furthermore, Kastrup and Kelly (2018) argue that the overall decrease appears to be far more significant than the modest increases in “diversity” between regions. This also seems to be at odds with the extraordinary content and experiential nature of psychedelic states.

This brings us back to a possible alternative explanation such as the one of the “reduced valve” model:

“Earlier advocates of the “reducing valve” model, however, felt compelled by evidence to adopt a broader view: consciousness, they argued, “overflows the organism” (Henri Bergson) and is ultimately grounded in some sort of transpersonal “mind at large” (Aldous Huxley).” (Kastrup and Kelly, 2018)

This discussion certainly does not imply that physicalists lack an explanatory framework, or that the concept of brain entropy is necessarily invalid, or that there never can be a fully exhaustive physicalist account. A physicalist framework can offer a legitimate interpretation, provided that researchers explicitly acknowledge their theoretical stance. What I am suggesting, however, is that this stance is often adopted implicitly rather than explicitly. Researchers may attempt to reconcile their findings with a position they have not critically examined or clearly articulated. In such situations, there is a risk that empirical results are interpreted in a way that fits underlying metaphysical assumptions, even though alternative theoretical frameworks might account for the same observations.

If researchers simply report the empirical findings, for example decreased activity together with increased connectivity and complexity, this is entirely unproblematic. The difficulty arises when interpretations are added that implicitly presuppose a particular metaphysical framework without acknowledging that this framework itself is a substantive assumption. Obviously, this can easily happen without malicious intent. Researchers may simply attempt to reconcile results with theoretical commitments they have not explicitly reflected upon.

For this reason, I suggest that researchers should explicitly state their theoretical framework in any publication that may be influenced by it. I also think it would be a good idea to reflect on the assumptions associated with that framework more often. In areas such as the study of consciousness and psychedelic states, where empirical findings intersect with broader metaphysical questions, I would further suggest that researchers at least consider alternative metaphysical interpretations alongside their preferred framework.

Idealism in Psychology and Therapy

Idealism also leads us to rethink medicine and psychotherapy. Within idealism, the physical body can be understood as the representation of our personal unconscious mind. This refers to aspects of the mind that are not available to metacognitive reflection. The body is therefore not a lump of matter existing independently outside the mind. Rather, it is a deeply unconscious aspect of the same mind to which we simply lack direct access and which is not part of our self-reflective awareness. In this view, a representation of an unhealthy body corresponds, at a deeper level, to unhealthy psychic activity within the personal mind, even if this activity is unconscious.

This perspective reverses the usual physicalist assumption that psychological disorder is merely a biological dysfunction. Under idealism, what appears as biological dysfunction can instead be interpreted as psychological dysfunction manifesting itself in bodily form. One can see how this changes how medicine and health are conceptualized.

Now, importantly this does not mean that medication does not work. Medication clearly alters brain chemistry, and the empirical evidence for its efficacy is well established. An idealist would simply interpret this differently. The claim would be that this biochemical alteration is how a genuine change in the mind appears from an external perspective. In reality, it would still be a mental process manifesting as a biochemical interaction from an outside view. Importantly, neither physicalism nor idealism posits a real separation between brain and mind. The difference lies in how the relationship is interpreted.

Under physicalism, however, healthcare systems often become focused primarily on mechanisms rather than on healing in a more holistic sense. This tendency is visible in many medical and psychiatric institutions. Psychological well-being is frequently treated as secondary. Hospitals, for instance, are rarely environments designed with the patient’s psychological state in mind. Their purpose is to repair the material body, while the subjective experience of the patient often becomes largely irrelevant to the system itself.

Interestingly, this situation again reveals how “Cartesian materialist” intuitions persist, even among self-described physicalists who do not follow through and do not understand their own position; because the mind simply appears phenomenologically so different from the rest of the body.

Kastrup (2014) has argued that modern medicine has overcorrected, that in gaining powerful biochemical tools, it has largely abandoned the psychological dimension of healing:

“Back then, we lacked the avenue of the collective ‘unconscious’ in the form of effective drugs and surgery. Now, the situation has been reversed: we focus solely on the collective ‘unconscious’ methods of drugs and surgery, ignoring the egoic channel. The time has come to explore both of these avenues concurrently. The time has come for integrative medicine. Human health and wellbeing demand no less.”

At the same time, idealism does not justify unscientific healing practices simply because people believe in them. The claim is not that positive thinking, affirmations, or energy healing automatically produce real effects merely because everything is part of the psyche. In idealism, an intervention must still affect deeper layers of the mind, including the unconscious processes that appear to us as the body. Simply believing something does not make it effective.

This also means that individuals should not feel guilty about “attracting” illness through negative emotions or psychological states. Such claims misunderstand the role of the unconscious. By definition, one cannot directly regulate unconscious processes. It would therefore be misguided to assign personal blame for such conditions.

Consequently, psychology and psychotherapy become more central to medicine and healing. Many familiar conditions already illustrate the close relationship between psychological and bodily states: psychosomatic disorders, stress-induced stomach pain, tension headaches, and similar conditions. These phenomena are often difficult to explain purely in mechanistic biomedical terms.

To be clear, physicalism can, in principle, arrive at a similar integrative perspective since, like idealism, it regards the mind and body as one and the same thing. However, this would require it to respect both the subjective and mechanistic sides of the issue more. Within physicalism, modern models such as the biopsychosocial model already attempt to integrate these aspects, but they still struggle to become fully institutionalised — a problem that may or may not be the result of implicit assumptions.

I would also like to add that all of these assumptions about medical and psychological health should form part of a scientific process. We should be able to approach research and interpret results differently, but we should not make a lot of assumptions about treatments that could all be effective, yet are untestable. In other words, effectiveness still needs to be tested empirically, rather than being based on theoretical assumptions alone. If something cannot be empirically verified as effective, then under idealism too, we should abandon that assumption!

Still, there are many implications like this that open up once you genuinely step into the perspective of idealism and look from within it. Do I find them all convincing? No. Still, thinking about this has shaped how I see the psyche, because I was able to shift my perspective on different problems. Sometimes it makes certain things click that did not before. And this shift in perspective is itself a form of progress.

Conclusion

The argument I have been making is simple. First, if you study the mind for a living, you should know which theory of mind you are actually operating with and what it implies. If you are a physicalist, think carefully about what that implies. Do not rely on the implicit language of Cartesian materialism or even dualism. Not because any single theory must be correct, but because an unexamined metaphysical position is not a neutral starting point. It shapes the questions you ask, how you interpret results, and what you may never think to investigate.

Secondly, I am highlighting the issue of a lack of philosophical diversity among scientists, which I believe would be beneficial. I am not calling for a revolution in science, but for a more modest change: that researchers in neuroscience, psychology and other fields take the philosophical foundations of their work seriously, and that academia embraces diversity rather than treating it as a distraction. There is no single proven metaphysical view. Physicalism is not proven. It is possible to hold an idealist position and still conduct rigorous research.

In one sentence: different frameworks, held explicitly and applied rigorously to the same empirical standards, would result in a richer science than the one we currently have. In my opinion, nothing is more unscientific than conducting your research based on an unexamined philosophical assumption.

If you work with the mind, think about the mind.

References

Carhart-Harris, R. L., Erritzoe, D., Williams, T., Stone, J. M., Reed, L. J., Colasanti, A., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2012). Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 109(6), 2138-2143.

Carhart-Harris, R. L., Muthukumaraswamy, S., Roseman, L., Kaelen, M., Droog, W., Murphy, K., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2016). Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(17), 4853-4858.

Carhart-Harris, R. L. (2018). The entropic brain-revisited. Neuropharmacology, 142, 167-178.

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Little, Brown and Company.

Grossarth-Maticek, R., & Eysenck, H. J. (1990). Personality, stress and disease: Description and validation of a new inventory. Psychological Reports, 66(2), 355-373.

Muthukumaraswamy, S. D., Carhart-Harris, R. L., Moran, R. J., Brookes, M. J., Williams, T. M., Errtizoe, D., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2013). Broadband cortical desynchronization underlies the human psychedelic state. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(38), 15171-15183.

Millière, R., Carhart-Harris, R. L., Roseman, L., Trautwein, F. M., & Berkovich-Ohana, A. (2018). Psychedelics, meditation, and self-consciousness. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1475.

Palhano-Fontes, F., Andrade, K. C., Tofoli, L. F., Santos, A. C., Crippa, J. A. S., Hallak, J. E., ... & De Araujo, D. B. (2015). The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca modulates the activity and connectivity of the default mode network. PloS one, 10(2), e0118143.

Kastrup, B., & Kelly, E. F. (2018). Misreporting and Confirmation Bias in Psychedelic Research. Scientific American.

Kastrup, B. (2014, June 30). The case for integrative medicine. Bernardo Kastrup. https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/06/the-case-for-integrative-medicine.html

Kastrup, B. (2024). Analytic idealism in a nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st century’s only plausible metaphysics. Simon and Schuster.

Tagliazucchi, E., Carhart‐Harris, R., Leech, R., Nutt, D., & Chialvo, D. R. (2014). Enhanced repertoire of brain dynamical states during the psychedelic experience. Human brain mapping, 35(11), 5442-5456.

Silberman, S. (2009). Placebos are getting more effective. Drugmakers are desperate to know why. Wired Magazine, 17(09), 17-09.