Link Swanson, PhD

link@umn.edu | Minnesota, USA

Education

2022 PhD, Cognitive Science, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Dissertation: Psychedelic Vision

2019 MA, Philosophy, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Thesis: Making Sense of Hallucination

2006 BASc, Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
Honors Thesis: Psychedelic Drug Use and Creative Thinking

2006 BA, Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth
Honors Thesis: Panpsychism in Philosophy of Mind

Areas of specialization

perception, psychedelic drugs, cognitive science, philosophy of mind

Areas of competence

psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychopharmacology

Publications

Swanson, LR (forthcoming). “Psychedelic Visuals in Context”. in Philosophical Perspectives on the Psychedelic Renaissance (forthcoming) Letheby and Gerrans (eds.). Oxford University Press.

Swanson, LR (2018). Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 9, 172. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2018.00172

Swanson, LR (2018a). Unlearning to See: Linking the Perceptual and Clinical Effects of Psychedelic Drugs [Abstract]. in Rogers, T. T.; Rau, M.; Kalish, C. W. & Zhu, X. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2018, 2972.

Swanson, LR (2016). The Predictive Processing Paradigm Has Roots in Kant. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. 10:79. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2016.00079

Technical skills

Programming languages: Python, Matlab, PHP, HTML, CSS, JSON, YAML, XML

Software engineering: automation, scripting, application development, command-line interfaces, web interfaces, software packaging, DevOps, containerization, cloud architecture, web servers, Linux systems administration, blockchain, smart contracts, Ethereum, git

Data collection and analysis: extract-transform-load (ETL), statistical analysis, plotting, pandas, matplotlib, EEG acquisition, EEG signal processing, BrainFlow, EEGLAB, ERPLAB, psychophysics stimuli, adaptive staircases, Psychopy, psychometric rating scales

Invited talks

2020 Dec “Psychedelics and mental context: Phenomenology and neural computation”
Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Louisville, Kentucky

2018 Oct “My Non-Ideal Self” (with Kathryn Swanson, PhD, JD)
Selfless Minds Workshop, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Frankfurt, Germany

2018 Oct “Predictive Brains on Psychedelic Drugs”
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Conference presentations

2019 Mar “Belief, Expectation, and Psychedelic Drug Mechanisms”
Community Symposium, Psychedelic Society of Minneapolis, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN

2018 Jul “Unlearning to See: Linking the Perceptual and Clinical Effects of Psychedelic Drugs”
The 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Madison, WI

2018 Apr “Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects”
The Science of Consciousness, Tucson, AZ

2017 Jun “Theoretical Models of Psychedelic Drug Effects”
Breaking Convention, University of Greenwich, London, UK

2017 Apr “Bayesian Neuroscience of Psychedelic Drugs” Spring Research Day, Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota

2017 Jan “Predictive Processing Models of Psychedelic Effects”
The Driftless Psychedelic Therapy Symposium, Viroqua, WI

2016 Jul “Panpsychism Has No Future in Philosophy of Mind”
Matter, Mind, and Consciousness, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

2016 Sep “User Interfaces and the Epistemology of the new Computational Cognitive Revolution”
Informatics Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota

2016 Apr “The Philosophical Roots of Predictive Coding Theory”
Spring Research Day, Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota

Departmental talks

2017 May “Hallucination and Perception: A Delicate Balance of Top-down and Bottom-up in the Predictive Brain”
Cognitive Science Colloquium Series, University of Minnesota

2016 Apr “What Are the Philosophical Roots of Predictive Coding Theory?”
Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota

2016 Mar “The Philosophical Roots of Predictive Coding Theory”
Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota

Grants & fellowships

2016 “Where is the Human In the Data?”
University of Minnesota Informatics Institute Graduate Summer Fellowship
$5,000 (Office of the Vice President for Research)

2004 UROP Grant, Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
$1,500 (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program)

2002 UROP Grant, Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
$1,500 (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program)

Teaching experience

2005 Teaching Assistant, Intro to Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth

2005 Teaching Assistant, Transpersonal Psychology (online), University of Minnesota Duluth

2004 Teaching Assistant, Abnormal Psychology (online), University of Minnesota Duluth

Service to the field

Editorial work

2019 Invited Reviewer, The 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Montreal, Canada

2018 Invited Reviewer, Selfless Minds Workshop, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Frankfurt, Germany

Organizational affiliations

Cognitive Science Society - Student Member
Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota - Full Student Member
Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science - Graduate Student Fellow