Anil Seth is slicing through the murky waters of consciousness like a cerebral ninja. 

A neuroscientist, he’s not just unravelling the mysteries of the mind – he’s rewriting the playbook. 

Remember how in 2015, an ordinary dress went viral because no one could agree on what colour it was? Everyone from Taylor Swift and Julianne Moore chimed in. 

But this random moment of internet momentousness provided a perfect illustration of what this maverick calls “perceptual diversity”: a concept that turns our accepted notion of perception inside out. Literally. 

As Seth explains in his book Being You, forget seeing the world as it is; we’re seeing it as it is useful for us to do so. According to him, our brains don’t just passively soak in sensory inputs like a sponge; they’re more like a fortune teller at a carnival, constantly predicting what’s about to happen next based on past experiences. The brain is thus a “prediction machine”. Housed in our bodies. And each of us sees the same thing differently, in our own unique way. 

This isn’t just a mind-bending thought experiment. It’s a game-changer for how we understand our very existence. Is reality what exists – or how we receive, process, file? In a TED Talk that went viral years ago, Seth summed up reality as a “controlled hallucination”. Which begs the question: what about “the self”, then? Incredibly Seth calls that, too, a hallucination – the experience of free will, of having a body, of emotion, of mood. Thanks to the brain. 

And if you add psychedelics to the mix, these substances disrupt the brain’s usual pathways to prediction – resulting in experiences that are markedly different from ordinary consciousness. And it’s not just magic molecules – dreams and meditation, too, can take you on a detour from your “controlled hallucination”. 

Seth’s work is providing heft to the camp claiming that flesh-and-blood give rise to self-awareness. And even though Seth started parsing through thought and mind when consciousness studies were still more philosophy than science, he draws on his 20 years of study and experiment to assert that the rubik cube of consciousness will be solved, row by row, by science – and science alone. 

Take his Dreammachine project – which is unpacking the “one big scary mystery” into smaller puzzle pieces. How do you experience time? How do you imagine – shape, smell, texture? How do you see colour – is your blue sky, red apple the same as the person next to you? (If you’re interested, you can head over and participate in Seth’s Perception Census – the biggest study of its kind, with over 30,000 people from 133 countries already having taken part.) 

And what of consciousness of the non-human kind? He remains sceptical about whether Siri and Alexa will ever wake up and smell the coffee – even if artificial intelligence gives very strong semblance of self-awareness. And would we even recognise sentience of the silicon kind? 

At SYNAPSE 2025, Anil Seth will unpack why we experience life in the first person. Explain how we each have individual inner universes. Debate consciousness in humans – and other things. And unlock the secrets of being you, me, and everything in between. 

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