%0 Journal Article
%T Self unbound: ego dissolution in psychedelic experience
%A Chris Letheby
%A Philip Gerrans
%J Archive of "Neuroscience of Consciousness".
%D 2017
%R 10.1093/nc/nix016
%X Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ¡®I¡¯ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ¡®ego dissolution¡¯ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. Combining recent work on the ¡®integrative self' and the phenomenon of self-binding with predictive processing principles yields an explanation of ego dissolution according to which self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. The self-model is not a mere narrative posit, as some have suggested; it has a more robust and ubiquitous cognitive function than that. But this does not mean, as others have claimed, that the self-model has the right attributes to qualify as a self. It performs some of the right kinds of functions, but it is not the right kind of entity. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist
%K psychedelic
%K self
%K psilocybin
%K LSD
%K binding and multisensory integration
%K hallucinogen
%U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007152/