Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPEs) are states of consciousness in which wakefulness is preserved but phenomenal content is low or absent. The Entropic Brain Hypothesis (EBH) is a model of conscious processes that regards the entropy of spontaneous brain activity as a marker of 'phenomenal richness', exemplified by high-content psychedelic experiences (HCPEs). Yet recent human neuroimaging...
Meditation practices often involve sustaining attention on the body. Typically, attention is understood to enhance both neural resource allocation and the subjective salience of the attended target. However, in deep meditative states, practitioners sometimes report a dissolution of bodily boundaries, a phenomenon known in Pali as bha[Formula: see text]ga. This presents a paradox: why does...
Under the influence of psychedelics, people often report encountering "entities" who seem to have their own autonomous agency. Depending on the cultural milieu, these entities are reported to take a variety of forms, including spirits, elves, ancestors, or fragments of the self. Encounters with such beings hold a central place in many traditions of psychedelic practice around the world. And...
Criticality describes a regime between order and chaos that supports flexible yet stable information processing. Here we examine whether neural dynamics can be volitionally shifted toward criticality through the self-regulation of attention. We examined ten experienced practitioners of meditation during a 10-day retreat, comparing refined states of meditative absorption, called the jhanas, to...
Meditation practitioners, historically and today, sometimes report experiencing energy-like sensations in their body. While recent empirical studies have explored such experiences in the context of Buddhist and Yogic practice, no comparable research has yet examined energy-like sensations in Jewish, Christian, or Islamic traditions. We interviewed 30 practitioners and 30 teachers from Abrahamic...
Psychedelic substances exhibit complex interactions with the 'set and setting' of use, that is, the mental state of the user and the environment in which a psychedelic experience takes place. Despite these contextual variables' known importance, psychedelic research has lacked methodological rigor in reporting extra-pharmacological factors. This study aimed to generate consensus-based...
Since its synthesis in 1962, ketamine has been widely used in diverse medical contexts, from anesthesia to treatment-resistant depression. However, interpretations of ketamine's subjective effects remain polarized. Biomedical frameworks typically construe the drug's experiential effects as dissociative or psychotomimetic, while psychedelic paradigms emphasize the potential therapeutic merits of...
Buddhist Jhāna meditation and the Christian practice of speaking in tongues appear wildly distinct. These spiritual techniques differ in their ethical, theological, and historical frames and seem, from the outside, to produce markedly different states of consciousness-one a state of utter calm and the other of high emotional arousal. Yet, our phenomenological interviews with experienced...
Abstract This chapter aims to show that working back and forth between neuroscientific methods and ethnographic phenomenology can inspire us to think differently. We discuss a neurophenomenological project to improve our understanding of the evangelical Christian practice of speaking in tongues. After several years of ethnographic participant observation in tongues-speaking churches, we...
Background Psychedelic drug experiences are shaped by current-moment contextual factors, commonly categorized as internal (set) and external (setting). Potential influences of past environments, however, have received little attention. Aims To investigate how previous environmental stimuli shaped the experiences of patients receiving ketamine for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), and...
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, over 14% of the US population practice mindfulness meditation. The effects of mindfulness training on physical and mental health have been consistently documented, but its effects on interpersonal relationships are not yet fully understood or investigated. Interpersonal relationships play a crucial role in the wellbeing of individuals...
AbstractThere are communities in which hearing voices frequently is common and expected, and in which participants are not expected to have a need for care. This paper compares the ideas and practices of these communities. We observe that these communities utilize cultural models to identify and to explain voice-like events—and that there are some common features to these models across...
Virtual reality (VR) based meditation has been shown to help increase relaxation and decrease anxiety and depression in younger adults. However, this has not been studied in Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) in the older adult population. The aim of this RCT is to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a VR-guided meditation intervention for community-dwelling older adults and its effect...
Psychedelics have been already used by human societies for more than 3000 years, mostly in religious and healing context. The renewed interest in the potential application of psychedelic compounds as novel therapeutics has led to promising preliminary evidence of clinical benefit in some psychiatric disorders. Despite these promising results, the potential for large-scale clinical application...
This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as computational phenomenology because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy...
Among a rapidly aging population, there is increased need for neuroprotective interventions promoting healthy neurological aging. Mind-body interventions, such as Kundalini yoga, are actively being explored as accessible means to encourage healthy aging. However, little remains known about the neurobiological effects of Kundalini yoga. This pilot randomized-controlled trial (RCT) examined the...
Late-life depression (LLD) affects up to 18% of older adults and has been linked to elevated dementia risk. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) holds promise for treating symptoms of depression and ameliorating cognitive deficits in older adults. While preliminary findings are promising, a definitive RCT investigating its effects on late life depression and cognition have not yet been...
RationaleIs it possible to have a psychedelic experience from a placebo alone? Most psychedelic studies find few effects in the placebo control group, yet these effects may have been obscured by the study design, setting, or analysis decisions.ObjectiveWe examined individual variation in placebo effects in a naturalistic environment resembling a typical psychedelic party.MethodsThirty-three...
The science of contemplation has focused on mindfulness in a manner quite disproportionate to its use in contemplative traditions. Mindfulness, as understood within the scientific community, is a practice that invites practitioners to disattend to words and images. The practitioner is meant to experience things as they "really are," unfolding here and now in the flux of embodied sensations. Yet...
Some people seem to have a 'talent' for spiritual experience: they readily sense the presence of supernatural beings, receive special messages from God, and report intense feelings of self-transcendence, awe and wonder. Here we review converging strands of evidence to argue that the trait of 'absorption' captures a general proclivity for having spiritual experiences. Participants scoring highly...
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with abnormal functional interactions among large-scale brain networks. Here we report findings from a randomized, active-controlled trial examining whether mindfulness-based therapy can regulate specific patterns of resting-state functional connectivity in clinically depressed patients. We show that a brief, clinically effective mindfulness...
Abstract Mindfulness and transcendental meditation techniques have emerging research supporting them as positive additions to treatment as usual/standard care for mood and/or cognitive disorders among older adults. This session will highlight this recent research and evidence of the benefits of these interventions in the context of late-life depression (LLD) and late-life anxiety (LLA). In the...
Abstract Meditation is trending right now. From classrooms and hospitals to business meetings and phone apps, our culture is enthralled by meditation as a powerful tool to train our brains and shape our private mental lives—to make us happier, more productive, and more peaceful on the inside. But meditation is not just about training our brains. It’s a deeply social—and fundamentally...
This chapter explores psychedelics as catalysts of spontaneous thought. Classic serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca can induce potent alterations in cognition and perception. The chapter reviews research on these substances through the lens of cultural neurophenomenology, which aims to trace how neurobiology and sociocultural factors interact to shape experience....
Meditation and hypnosis both aim to facilitate cognitive-emotional flexibility, i.e., the "de-automatization" of thought and behavior. However, little research or theory has addressed how internal thought patterns might change after such interventions, even though alterations in the internal flow of consciousness may precede externally observable changes in behavior. This chapter outlines three...
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