Catriona Osborn Moar
Doctoral Researcher
I study how neural dynamics shape experience using complexity-based approaches.
About
I’m a PhD student at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. I take inspiration from non-neurocentric, relational approaches that view consciousness as a multi-scale process embedded in brain, body, and environment, even though my current empirical work focuses primarily on neural data. My research explores how complexity measures behave and what they might capture across diverse conscious states in different organisms, using both empirical datasets and simulations. A key part of my work is grounded in the stance that there is no “view from nowhere,” motivating an interest in multiverse-style analyses that reveal how different methodological choices produce different “realities” in our findings. I investigate how preprocessing decisions and analytic pipelines shape complexity-based results, particularly in psychedelic research, where these measures are widely used yet remain poorly understood.
Research Interests
- Complexity science & neural dynamics
- Altered states of consciousness
- 4E cognition & relational approaches to mind
- Multiscale cognition
- Diverse intelligences
- Mental health & critical psychiatry
Current Projects
- Psilocybin deep-sampling study: analysing EEG and questionnaire data across altered states.
- Simulation-based work on complexity metrics—especially Lempel–Ziv—to clarify what they capture.
- Exploring neural dynamics of rodent torpor.
- Comparing the behaviour of complexity measures across empirical datasets.
- Multiverse analyses of preprocessing pipelines and analytic choices.
Recent Output
- Roseby, W. & Moar, C.O. (2025). A Comparative Neurophenomenology of the Psychedelic State and Autism: Predictive Processing as a Unifying Lens. Psychoactives, 4(4), 41. Link
Additional papers are listed on the Publications page, and talks and presentations appear on the Talks, Posters & Workshops page.