Ayahuasca, Consciousness and the Brain (FeSBE 2012)

Psychedelic Science Symposium. Coordinator: Eduardo Schenberg.

Plantando Consciência organized the event at the 36th Conference of SBNeC (Brazilian Society of Neurosciences and Behavior) that took place during 27^th annual meeting of FeSBE (Federation of Societies of Experimental Biology), at Águas de Lindóia, São Paulo, Brazil, between August 22 and 25, 2012.

Among the invited scientists and researchers, we will had the illustrious presence of Luis Eduardo Luna, one of the pioneers in the academic work with ayahuasca throughout the world.

Program (August 25th @ 2PM):

The Ayahuasca/Yajé Complex and Amerindian epistemology: historical and ethnographical perspectives

Luis Eduardo Luna, PhD
Research Centre for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary art and consciousness

Luis Eduardo Luna is the director of Wasiwaska (Research Centre for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary art and consciousness). Born in Colombia, Mr. Luna is a former Senior Lecturer at the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, from where he retired, and a former Professor of Anthropology at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil (1994-1998). Luna received a Ph.D. from the Institute of Comparative Religion at Stockholm University (1989), and an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York (2000). He is the author and co-editor of innumerous books on ayahuasca, and discoverer of Peruvian painter Pablo Amaringo, with whom he published Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman(1991). Luna has lectured about Amazonian shamanism and modified states of consciousness worldwide, and has curated exhibitions of visionary art in several countries. He has over 40 years of experience with ayahuasca in various contexts: as an anthropologist with indigenous groups and among urban and rural mestizo ayahuasqueros inPeru andColombia, with all the syncretic Brazilian religious organizations that use ayahuasca as a sacrament, and as a facilitator in specially designed workshops.

Hallucinogen Rating Scale (HRS) – a Brazilian version: translation and cross-cultural adaptation

Suely Mizumoto, MSc
Universidade de São Paulo, Psychology Institute

Suely Mizumoto is a psychologist specialized in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Her clinical activities include therapeutic interventions in psychological processes derived from the use of psychoactive substances, with emphasis on ayahuasca and cannabis sativa. She is experienced in the teaching of Psychopathology and runs research in chemical addiction recovery programs within the religious context. She is currently involved in projects aimed to the transcultural adaptation of rating scales to measure the effects of psychoactive substances, specially with concern to ayahuasca. Mizumoto is doing her Masters degree in Social Psychology at the Psychology Institute of Universidade de São Paulo.

Ayahuasca and brain waves

Eduardo Ekman Schenberg, PhD Universidade Federal de São Paulo, department of Neurosciences This lecture was awarded by SBNeC (Brazilian Society for Neuroscience and Behavior).

Eduardo Schenberg has a PhD in neuroscience from Universidade de São Paulo. Mr. Schenberg is member of the European Brain and Behavior Society (EBBS), the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP), Erowid, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and, in Brazil, the Sociedade Brasileira de Neurociências e Comportamento (SBNeC) and the Núcleo de Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre Psicoativos (NEIP). He is currently doing research on the effects of ayahuasca in the human brain by the use of the Electroelcephalogram test (EEG), a work that was introduced in the last Cartographie Psychedelica, in San Francisco.

Seeing with the eyes shut: Mental imagery following ayahuasca ingestion

Tiago Arruda Sanchez, PhD
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Departament of Radiology at the Medical School

 Tiago Arruda Sanchez has a PhD in Physics Applied to Medicine and Biology from Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Sanchez is experienced in neurosciences and medical physics, with emphasis on Neuroimages, Behavioral Neuroscience, oral contrast agent and fMRI, which he uses in studies of emotional regulation and other research in psychiatry and neurology. Sanchez is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Radiology at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Medical School, where he has recently done a post-doc in Biophysics. He recently co-authored a study of neurofunctional changes after ayahuasca intake, presented at the last Cartographie Psychedelica, in San Francisco. This research examined brain activity after administration of ayahuasca.