Ethnomycology examines the roles of fungi in human social experience, spanning cultural domains and crossing humanities, fine arts, and social and natural sciences. Its early ties to cultural anthropology stem from exchanges between Claude Lévi-Strauss and R. Gordon Wasson from the 1950s to the 1980s. Since then, research on behaviors, uses, cultural transitions, and social relationships related to fungi has revealed diverse ideas about human-fungi engagements.
Shamanism and possession, though both involving ritual alterations of consciousness, differ in their experiential features: shamanic practices center on soul flight or out-of-body experiences where one's visual perspective separates from self and body, while possession episodes involve control by spirits and amnesia of the event, reflecting psychosocial dissociation. Cross-cultural studies show these differences are rooted in human nature. Both phenomena share biological features, however, in their elicitation of ancient brain systems that modify consciousness for healing and spiritual experiences.