The Neuroscience of a Life Well-Lived
Recent advances in whole-brain modelling have helped stratify the heterogeneity of anhedonia across neuropsychiatric disorders, and the key underlying components of the pleasure network. I will show how modelling of neuroimaging data from diverse hedonic routes such as psychedelics, meditation and music could potentially offer new insights not only into hedonia but potentially also eudaimonia. To this end, we have recently demonstrated the hierarchical organisation of consciousness in over thousand people, and the crucial role played by rare long-range exceptions to a fundamental exponential distance rule of brain connectivity. These processes are controlling the information cascade in the turbulent-like brain dynamics necessary for optimal orchestration of behaviour necessary a life well-lived. This has direct implications for getting a handle on eudaimonia and well-being which are difficult to study empirically, as well as the diagnosis and treatment of anhedonia in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Date: 21 January 2021, 12:30 (Thursday, 1st week, Hilary 2021)
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Dr Morten Kringelbach (Associate Professor, University Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford)
Organising department: Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Organiser: Dr Doug McConnell (University of Oxford)
Part of: New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar Series
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ubcka5LCQ-S96_ZZ98f9uQ
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editor: Rachel Gaminiratne