Non-Ordinary Experiences (NOEs), encompassing phenomena such as feelings of cosmic or divine unity and sensing the presence of deceased persons, are common in the general population of different countries. Despite a recent increase in the number of studies investigating the implications of these experiences for mental health and well-being, no review comprehensively synthesizing existing...
Spiritual and religious experiences (SREs) are common subjective phenomena related to the awareness of transcendence, which transforms one's perception of life, death and suffering. Despite the high prevalence of SREs worldwide, not enough studies have been conducted beyond Europe and North America. To fill this gap, this study investigates the prevalence of SREs in Brazil and their association...
Evidence indicates that highly hypnotizable subjects may have larger area of the rostrum of the corpus callosum (CC). Mediumship can be defined as the alleged ability to communicate regularly with deceased personalities, and self-hypnosis is postulated as an underlying mechanism for this ability. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the CC area, hypnotic susceptibility, self-reported...
Cultural traditions attribute to pineal gland an important role for spiritual experiences. Mediumship and spirit possession are cultural phenomena found worldwide which have been described as having dissociative and psychotic-like characteristics, but with nonpathological aspects. A sympathetic activation pattern in response to spirit possession has been reported in some studies, but empirical...
Background: Teaching mindfulness techniques has been used in the attempt to prevent mental health problems in medical students. Although it has already shown promising results when offered to volunteers, the use as a required strategy is still controversial. Objectives: To verify the efficacy of teaching mindfulness techniques to large groups when made part of a required discipline at the...
Mediumship and spirit possession are cultural phenomena found in many societies worldwide. In Brazil, Spiritism (a tradition in which mediumship is emphasized) is the third largest religious denomination. The present study aimed to investigate physiologic correlates of nonpathological dissociative experiences by comparing 20 female spiritist mediums with several years of socially sanctioned...
This study aims to conduct a search of publications investigating experiences commonly associated with the possibility of the existence of a consciousness independent of the brain held on the main scientific databases (Pubmed, Web of Knowledge, PsycINFO, Science Direct, and Scopus). Of the 9065 articles retrieved, 1954 were included (598 near-death experiences, 223 out-of-body experiences, 56...
Background Mediumship can be defined as the alleged ability to communicate with deceased persons. The last decade has been particularly productive for this field of research and the study of mediumship can help the understanding of the human mind-brain relationship and provide objective data to the scientific community and to the general population. Objective The aim of this review is to...
Near-death experiences have been defined as profound psychological events that may occur to a person while close to death or in a situation of extreme physical or emotional distress. These experiences seem to have an important effect on the patients' mental health and may occur in several situations despite their cultural and religious beliefs. The present case report describes the positive...