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
Download CV_0.docx
Faculty
Doctoral Student
Phone:
E-mail:
DOCTORAL STUDENT
Phone:
E-mail:
DOCTORAL STUDENT
Phone:
E-mail:
DOCTORAL STUDENT
Phone:
E-mail:
Meera Kumar Menon
Doctoral Student
Phone:
E-mail:
Niharika Sharma
Doctoral Student
Phone:
E-mail:
DOCTORAL STUDENT
Phone:
E-mail:
Associate Professor
Phone:
E-mail:
nithin.nagaraj@gmail.com
Phone:
E-mail:
DOCTORAL STUDENT
Phone:
E-mail:
Pushya A Gautama
Doctoral Student
Phone:
E-mail:
Phone:
E-mail:
people
Professor
Phone:
080-22185090
E-mail:
prajnanata@gmail.com
Post-Doctoral Associate
Phone:
E-mail:
Doctoral Student
Phone:
E-mail:
Honorary Visiting Professor, Senior Homi Bhabha Fellow
Phone:
080-2218-5143
E-mail:
sisir.sisirroy@gmail.com
DOCTORAL STUDENT
Phone:
E-mail:
Associate Professor
Phone:
+91802218500, Extension 5107 (Office), Mobile: +917829496778
E-mail:
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
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
Past Events
event poster NIAS CSP Reading Glass
Emerging Information Technologies: Internet of Things
Prof Tilak Agerwala, Visiting Professor , Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities
Consciousness Studies Programme
14 November 2019
event poster NIAS CSP Reading Glass
Emerging Information Technologies: Artificial Intelligence and other technologies
Prof Tilak Agerwal , Visiting Professor, Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities
Consciousness Studies Programme
13 November 2019
event poster NIAS CSP Reading Glass
Consciousness and Causality: Perspectives from integrated information theory, phenomenology, and Kashmir Shaivism
Dr Shankar Rajaraman, Dr Nithin Nagraj, and Dr Saurabh Todariya, Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities
Consciousness Studies Programme
25 October 2019
IBS-NIAS CSP Interactive Brainstorming Sessions
Phenomenological Approach of Qualitative Research
Prof Koshy Tharakan
Consciousness Studies Programme
22 October 2019
Event Poster NIAS CSP Reading Glass
Self, Identity, and Healing Practices
Sangeetha Menon, Meera Kumar Menon, Sangeetha G, Consciousness Studies Programme, School of Humanities
Consciousness Studies Programme
27 September 2019
SRB-NIAS CSP Svasthya Rasa Bodhini
Between Dionysus and Plato: Is there an aesthetic thinking in ancient Greece?
Dr Soumyabrata Choudhury, Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU
Consciousness Studies Programme
Lecture Hall, NIAS
18 September 2019

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”