{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Can Psychedelics Lead to False Beliefs? with Hugh McGovern, PhD","description":"In this episode, Hugh McGovern, PhD joins to discuss his research on the impact of psychedelics on beliefs. Dr. McGovern is a Research Fellow at the School of Medicine, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. To start, Dr. McGovern introduces the inference or predictive processing framework utilized in his paper \u201cAn Integrated theory of false insights and beliefs under psychedelics\u201d. He explains the role of prediction in cognition, showing how insights occur when our existing perspectives are unable to make sense of our experience. In this vein, Dr. McGovern discusses how the psychedelic experience disrupts our normal modes of prediction and perception, leaving room for greater influence of environmental factors on insight production. In closing, Dr. McGovern shares ideas on further clinical directions for this research that could give guidance for helping patients more effectively integrate insight experiences.   In this episode you'll hear: The research into how psychedelics can influence and change beliefs The role beliefs and insights can play in psychedelic journeys  How false insights can be experimentally induced The connection between prediction errors in our cognition and insight experiences The hippocampus, memory, and psychedelics The association between insight moments and increased mental health following psychedelic experiences   Quotes: \u201c[In psychedelic experiences] your expectations are no longer helping you make sense of your current sensory experience. And so you\u2019re uniquely susceptible to environmental input under psychedelics\u2014which would account for things like visual hallucinations [and] these novel insight moments.\u201d [18:30] \u201cWhen you have really really strong prediction errors or really really strong insight moments, they can have a disproportionately important influence on your worldview going forward.\u201d [20:03] \u201cPsychedelics, from a few different studies, show they can impair the formation of hippocampally dependent memories but they can perhaps even enhance the formation of cortically dependent memories. So what that means is you come out of the experience with this sense of knowing but it's in some sense lacking in details.\u201d [29:04]   Links: \u201cAn Integrated theory of false insights and beliefs under psychedelics\u201d by Hugh McGovern et al. Dr. McGovern on Bluesky Previous episode: Guruism & Cult Dynamics in Psychedelic Practices with Joseph Holcomb Adams Psychedelic Medicine Association Porangui   ","author_name":"Psychedelic Medicine Podcast with Dr. Lynn Marie Morski","author_url":"https:\/\/psychedelicmedicineassociation.org\/podcasts\/","html":"