🔊 CTC x Felix Schoeller (BeSound & Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies)
🦻🏻This week, we welcome Felix Schoeller. He is co-founder of BeSound - medical wearables and screen-free interfaces for augmented audio experiences in mental health. He is a senior research scientist at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies in Santa Monica, CA. His work combines brain, body, and contextual (AR/VR) stimulation to engineer personalized interventions for depression and PTSD.
🗣️ In this talk, he will introduce their software and hardware tools designed to capture, personalize, and enhance aesthetic chills—shivers and goosebumps experienced during music or films. I will also share preliminary findings from our collaboration with MIT Media Lab and Harvard Medical School, where we leverage synthetic chills stimuli to disrupt maladaptive cognitions in depression and alleviate symptoms of anhedonia.
🗒️ [These sessions are not recorded to preserve the ephemeral freeform magic that's been core to this group. Also, we hope to respect confidentiality of ideas not yet ready to be shared widely and encourage provocative insights and inquiry. So we recommend in person participation if you can. But happy to accommodate Zoom participants, too! Just register and we'll share Zoom link].
Who are we?: We are a multidisciplinary group of experts and enthusiasts from neuroscience, Brain Computer Interface (BCI), Human Computer Interaction design (HCI), psychotherapy, arts, somatic healing, ancient wisdom practices and related fields interested in building a holistic Wellbeing Economy.
We've been gathering since March 2023 to explore our shared concerns and curiosities about the impact of a new wave of emerging technologies on human well-being.
We believe in and want to advocate for a future where Technology and Capital support human and planetary flourishing. Not the other way around. Conscious tech means 1. raising individual and collective consciousness towards mindful love and compassion (e.g. mental health tech, tech for wisdom) and 2. Craft technology with mindful conscious intentions (e.g. calm tech, ambient computing)
We define rising consciousness as the (re)connection to ourselves, each other, and to our planet.
Our 3 pillars of action are:
1. Focused Research
2. Thought leadership (publications) / Movement building (events)
3. Product Incubation
Join us!