Your Brain on Drums
The Neuroscience of Rhythm and Altered Consciousness
Overview
⏱️ Schedule: Doors 18:30 → Talk 19:00→ Q&A → Mingle
🗣️ Language: English
Long before modern science, humans had already discovered a way to alter consciousness. Not with chemicals - only with rhythm.
Across cultures and throughout history, people have gathered around drums to enter trance states, heal, connect with something larger than themselves, and experience profound shifts in consciousness. How can something as simple as a drumbeat have such a powerful effect on the mind?
The striking thing? Many of these traditions developed oceans apart, with little or no contact between them, yet their ceremonies often look remarkably similar. Similar rhythms. Similar states. Similar behaviors. Why?
Together, we'll journey between modern neuroscience labs and shamanic drumming ceremonies around the world to explore the mystery behind one of humanity's oldest methods for changing consciousness.
Combining neuroscience with documentary fieldwork, Yoel Gordon explores how rhythm shapes the brain and alters conscious experience. Ancient healers and shamans discovered the power of rhythm long before modern science. Today, neuroscience is beginning to understand why.
What we'll cover
Rhythm and altered states: how repetitive drumming alone can alter consciousness.
The neuroscience of rhythm: what happens when neural activity synchronizes to rhythm.
A global journey into rhythm: through footage from different ceremonies, we’ll trace the deep relationship between humans, music, and altered states across cultures and time.
Why trance matters: what altered states and scientific research of it can reveal about attention, perception, and consciousness itself.
Speaker
