Most of Adam’s work has focused on characterizing the nature of preferences and motivation from mechanistic, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives. He has also studied the effects of brief mindfulness interventions on cognition and well-being. While conducting this research, he developed a neurophenomenological model of sensory absorption and ecstatic states via neural entrainment, which eventually led to developing a synthetic theory of consciousness attempting to integrate across seemingly conflicting perspectives. More recently he has proposed an account of embodied agency and free will, and is currently working on a unified mechanistic account of psychedelics. He is also involved in an ongoing research program to characterize ways that psychological flexibility might correlate with the dynamic character of brain networks, and possibly also physiological signals such as heart rate variability. Across all this work, Adam’s ultimate purpose is exploring how individuals can be adaptive, creative, and free in all aspects of their lives.
Graduate
Northwestern University: Brain, Behavior, and Cognition Program; PhD studying developmental socioaffective neuroscience
Undergraduate
Northwestern University: double major in cognitive science and psychology, minor in Eastern philosophy
Your ideal research study
My ideal research study would involve testing the extent of interpersonal entrainment among individuals who share different kinds of rhythmic activities. Do slower frequencies (or ones forming at the timescales of muscle-mediated action-perception cycles) synchronize first and then scaffold other rhythms? I’d also like to find out whether the brain re-represents information into quasi-topographic (and chronotopic) representations of the mind’s eye and lived body in deep association cortices (e.g. precuneus and lateral parietal), and the ways in which those structures are involved in realizing the physical and computational bases of consciousness.
What drew you to consciousness
Really I’m more interested in how it is that more people aren’t obsessed with trying to understand consciousness (because they have more emotional maturity and reasonable expectations, or have just given up on meaning, or…?). Although I first became interested in consciousness in the context of free will, and later when I attempted to combine different perspectives using the Free Energy Principle as a “theory of everything.”
Hobbies
I like to play classical songs (mostly minor keys) on the piano. Every once in a while I’ve been known to dance, although I’m increasingly skeptical of those reports.
