Consciousness Studies

Programme About

The research, outreach and documentation completed by the Consciousness Studies programme in 2020-21 pertained largely to projects funded by the Tata Trusts, DST-CSRI, and DST-SATYAM. The interdisciplinary nature of the research carried out by programme members facilitated the development of frameworks beyond the mainstream and concepts that were original yet addressed the marginal. For instance, the studies on causality and indigenous notions of health highlight the importance of considering a discipline-centric, yet multifarious set of data inputs. The programme organised, with the hashtag ‘#Care Consciously! Defeat Corona,’ several online programmes such as short academic courses, workshops, Friday lectures, poetry sessions, and lectures series, and through all these created a bridge with the public at large towards connecting life, living and health in the pandemic times. The programmes were attended by students, professionals and the larger public from across the world, and more than 300 institutions connected with the programme regularly.

NIAS-CSP Courses

Philosophy, Self & Consciousness I Research Writing & Communication 

Phenomenology & Social Research I Quintessence of Being Readings from Indian Aesthetics 

Facets Of AI I The Lockdown Experience I Knowing, Experiencing and Being

NIAS CSP Consciousness Conversations 

NIAS-CSP Videos 

Philosophy Self and Consciousness  I The Lockdown Experience  I Research Writing and Communication 

Reflective Course I Sanskit Language and its traditions series  I Svasthya Rasa Bodhini 

Phenomenology and Social Research  I Quintessence of Being  I Readings from Indian Aesthetics 

Facets of AI Workshop  I Kaavyaalaap I NIAS CSP Friday Lectures  

Brainstorming Discussion I Consciousness Conversations 

Programme Head
people Sangeetha Menon
Professor and Dean
School: School of Humanities
Programme: Consciousness Studies
Room no: F6
080-22185090
prajnanata@gmail.com
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Faculty
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Meera Kumar Menon
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Niharika Sharma
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Associate Professor
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nithin.nagaraj@gmail.com
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Pushya A Gautama
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080-22185090
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prajnanata@gmail.com
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Honorary Visiting Professor, Senior Homi Bhabha Fellow
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080-2218-5143
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sisir.sisirroy@gmail.com
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+91802218500, Extension 5107 (Office), Mobile: +917829496778
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vvbinoy@gmail.com
Kashmir Saivism, Self-Reflection and Aesthetics

The concepts of consciousness and self-reflection in the context of related epistemological and ontological structures that imply insights for understanding causal mechanism in Kashmir Saivism are studied. The cognitive and the aesthetic characteristics that underlie the philosophical discussions on emotions have been brought out in the light of understanding perceptual and experiential reality vis- a- vis the metaphysical structures of the concept of pratyabhijna.

Causal Structures, Consciousness and the Pratyabhijna

The major intent is to focus on the fundamental discussions pertaining to philosophical and psychological questions raised by the thinkers of Kashmir Saivism and attempt the contextualising of Information theory, consciousness studies and artificial intelligence, from the view point of analysing causal structures of thought, experiences and entities. The study is the first comparative attempt to juxtapose emotions, aesthetic process, memory, cognitive structures and the self in the context of understanding consciousness in Indian philosophy.

Study of Alternate and Indigenous Psychiatric and Psychological Practises of Healing and Wellness

The indigenous healing and wellness traditions of Kerala are being documented to understand the psychological and psychiatric implications with the help of examining antiquity, tribal medicine and native landscapes, ritual healing, and indigenous living. The association of language with consciousness, specifically how ambiguity as a function of language might be influential in psychological healing through Mantravada, is being addressed.

A Study of Consciousness Measures and Synchrony between Brain and Cardiovascular Dynamics in Yoga Experience

The depth and quality of yoga and meditation on well-being has been addressed. A host of complexity measures of consciousness have been evaluated and have converged on a novel measure that we have proposed – Network Causal Activity.

Causality Testing in Cognitive Neuroscience with Applications to Measures of Consciousness

A new algorithm – Compression-Complexity-Causality (CCC) to identify causal relationships between time series was invented. CCC performs reliably on short, noisy, sampled and filtered time series that occur in practical scenarios can be applied to wide range of applications in econometrics, cognitive science, climatology, measuring consciousness and sustainability research.  

Network Causal Activity (NCA) was tested on ECoG datasets from monkeys to characterise the level of consciousness in awake and anesthesia states based on causal activity in brain networks. NCA could be applied to help neurosurgeons determine the level of consciousness in patients who are unable to report their experience. A causal stability synchronisation theorem which is a necessary and sufficient condition for coupled dynamical systems to achieve complete synchronization has been proved. Its potential applications include determining when a group of coupled neurons will synchronise indicating the onset of a seizure.

Automatic Identification of SARS-CoV-2 vs. SARS-CoV-1 Viruses

A compression-complexity distance measure was proposed to identify the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused global pandemic of virus disease (COVID-19) and distinguishing it from SARS-CoV-1 virus using only short contiguous fragments of nucleotide sequences. The proposed algorithm could potentially be used in vaccine research by enabling rapid matching of genomic sequences and could avoid the need for sequence assembly.  

Neuro-chaos Inspired AI: ChaosNet, a chaos based artificial neural network architecture for classification has been proposed mimicking the chaotic firing of neurons in the brain (which conventional algorithms do not). ChaosNet produces state-of-the art performance on classification tasks on publicly available datasets. With as low as 0.05% of the total data used for training, the proposed method reports accuracies ranging 73% to 98% while also claiming to be robust to external noise.

Meera Kumar Menon
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Past Events
Event Poster NIAS-CSP Friday Online Lecture
Medical pluralism for future healthcare - A researcher’s perspective
Dr. Vishnuprasad C.N., Associate Professor, TDU , Transdisciplinary Health University
Consciousness Studies Programme
12 February 2021
Default image Kaavyaalaap
Kaavyalaap Vaividhya
Dr. Anand Ahuja, Kalyani, Shree Nahata
Consciousness Studies Programme
9 February 2021
Event Poster NIAS-CSP Friday Online Lecture
The State of the Indian Republic
Dr. Sandeep Shastri, Vice-Chancellor of the Jagran Lakecity University, Bhopal.
Consciousness Studies Programme
29 January 2021
NIAS-CSP Friday Online Lecture
THE STATE OF THE INDIAN REPUBLIC
Dr. Sandeep Shastri
NIAS-CSP
Zoom
29 January 2021
Default image NIAS CSP Friday Online Lectures
CPC – A Pioneering e-initiative
H.L. Sowmya Achar, Additional Commissioner of Income Tax at Centralised Processing Centre, Bengaluru
Consciousness Studies Programme
22 January 2021
Default image NIAS CSP Friday Online Lectures
Existential Posthumanism: A Path of Self-Discovery
Prof Francesca Ferrando, Professor, NYU-Liberal Studies, New York University, New York University
Consciousness Studies Programme
15 January 2021

CSP recognising the importance of Leadership and Connecting Communities Initiatives during the COVID-19 Pandemic times organised several customised online short courses. The current pandemic times brought in a “closed down” and a psychological feeling of the inability to connect, socialise, or seek out for help and knowledge, including a peer connect.  

Considering such a challenge that has social, psychological and pedagogic implications, initiatives were conceptualised and implemented towards “Leadership and Connecting Communities during the COVID-19 Pandemic times”. . 

The following are the Courses organised and completed during the academic year: 

  • “Knowing, Experiencing and Being: Methods, Applications and Philosophies inspired by Phenomenology, Collective Frameworks, and Reflective Capabilities” 
  • Online Workshop on “Facets of Artificial Intelligence”  
  • Online  Webinar series on the "Nine Dimensions of the 'Lockdown experience: The psychology and philosophy of the Self seeking freedom and boundlesness in a bounded and limited world" 
  • Online Course on “Readings from Indian Aesthetics”  
  • Online Course on “Phenomenology and Social Research” 
  • Online Course on “Quintessence of Being: Examining Existence and Experience”  
  • Online Course on “Introduction to Western Classical Music” 
  • School of Humanities Foundation Course 
  • International lecture series on “Sanskrit language and its traditions: A Journey through its history and contemporaneity”  
  • Other series include: “Svāsthya-rasa-bodhinī Public Lecture Series” “NIAS CSP Friday Lectures”; “Kaavyaalaap”  and “The Reading Glass”