Kenneth Shinozuka

Under the supervision of Professor Morten Kringelbach, I have been conducting my DPhil research on the neuroscience of psychedelics. A wave of exciting new research has shown that psychedelics can treat a variety of mental disorders, including PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction, OCD, and more. However, we don't know the neurobiological mechanisms that underpin the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. Additionally, psychedelics dramatically affect a person's state of consciousness and are therefore promising tools for expanding our understanding of the mind.

In my DPhil research, I aim to take a holistic approach that integrates our knowledge of the pharmacology, neuroimaging, and phenomenology (subjective experience) of psychedelics. By bridging the insights from these three different levels of analysis, we can achieve a comprehensive understanding of how psychedelics affect the brain and consciousness. I am also studying the disruptive effect of psychedelics on the hierarchy of brain activity in connection to recent research that applies thermodynamic principles to neuroscience; in particular, I am investigating the link between entropy production (irreversibility) and causal hierarchies in the brain.