The psychological and psychiatric literature has seldom appreciated the clinical fact that fears of ghosts and kindred supernatural worries may be a cause of intense discomfort, poor sleep, and socio-occupational impairment. In the present article, this claim is illustrated by the clinical features of six patients who developed intense anxiety when they had to sleep alone at night. The fears...
Humans spend a substantial share of their lives mind-wandering. This spontaneous thinking activity usually comprises autobiographical recall, emotional, and self-referential components. While neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that a specific brain "default mode network" (DMN) is consistently engaged by the "resting state" of the mind, the relative contribution of key cognitive components...