Our relationship with death and dying is changing and so is our understanding of human consciousness. COVID has heightened anxiety about our own mortality, while emerging psychedelic therapies are reinventing end of life care. What does it mean to be human? Is there life after death? These are the questions driving the research at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, where researchers explore the nature of consciousness in life and after death, testing the boundaries of prevailing science and shaping future scientific breakthroughs. Their findings expand traditional paradigms about the mind-brain relationship, and more broadly, what it means to be human with important implications around how we deal with death anxiety, grief, mental health & finding purpose.