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Michael Lifshitz

Michael Lifshitz, PhD

Psychosocial aspects of disease

Contemplative Practice, Meditation, Neurophenomenology, Placebos, Prayer, Psychedelics
  • Principal Investigator, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research
  • Assistant Professor, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University
  • Associate Member, Department of Anthropology, McGill University

Contact details

michael.lifshitz2@mcgill.ca

Snapshot

Michael Lifshitz is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. He did his PhD in Neuroscience at McGill and then a postdoctoral fellowship in Anthropology at Stanford. His work combines phenomenology, neuroscience and ethnography to shed light on the plasticity of consciousness. He studies practices that aim to transform subjective experience—from meditation and hypnosis to placebos, prayer, and psychedelics. He is particularly interested in how these practices can modulate feelings of agency, so that thoughts, actions and sensations can come to feel like they are emerging from a source beyond the self.

Major Research Activities

I study practices that aim to transform subjective experience—from meditation and hypnosis to placebos, prayer, and psychedelics. I am particularly interested in how these practices can modulate feelings of agency and ownership, so that inner thoughts and sensations can come to feel as if they are emerging from a source beyond the self. My work combines phenomenology, neuroscience and ethnography to shed light on the plasticity of consciousness.

Recent Publications and References