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Luisa Prochazkova finished her Ph.D. at the Cognitive Psychology Unit, Leiden University under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bernhard Hommel and Dr. Roberta Sellaro. In her PhD project, funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant, she worked on the questions of how cognitive control affects the interplay between so-called intentional and automatic processes. In particular, she investigates how the ability to maintain behavioural goals is dictated by current metacontrol state bias and how is such bias induced. To this end, Luisa studies the effect of drugs (psychedelics/microdosing), meditation, changes in the autonomic nervous system and reward processing on the metacontrol policies. Furthermore, Luisa is interested in improving existing VR-mindfulness games by implementing biofeedback to monitor and aid emotional responses and psychophysiological states during training.

Talea Cornelius is a health psychologist and Assistant Professor of Medical Sciences at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Her research situates mental health and health behaviors within a social context. In particular, she explores how an acute medical event, such as an acute coronary syndrome or a stroke, impacts patients and partners alike, and how partners can both facilitate and undermine patient well-being. Dr. Cornelius is also exploring novel applications of dyadic analysis to gain insight into interdependent, individual-level processes.

Psychedelic Experiences, Physical Health and Health Behavior Change. More info HERE.

Context, Social Dynamics & Lived Experience

Understanding how and why change happens

• Ceremonial, digital, and group contexts
• Relational and shared experiences
• Practitioner perspectives and facilitation
• Subjective experiences (e.g., mystical-type experiences)

Michiel van Elk completed his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen (cum laude). He worked as a visiting researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara (2010), as a Marie Curie post-dotoral fellow at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland (2010-2012), as a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University (2017), as a Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Amsterdam (2019-2010) and as Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam (2013-2020). Since 2020 Michiel is affiliated as Associate Professor to the University of Leiden and as an affiliate researcher at VU University. Supported by grants from the Templeton Foundation, NWO and the BIAL Foundation he supervises the PRSM Lab, which focuses on the study of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual and Mystical Experiences.  By using a variety of different techniques, including self-report measures, interviews, expectancy manipulations, neuroimaging tools, psychophysiological techniques and pharmacological challenges the aim of the lab is to understand how PRSM experiences come about, the effects they have on our behavior and well-being and the philosophical implications of PRSM experiences for our views on the self and reality.