Lucid dreaming, defined as the experience of becoming aware of dreaming while dreaming, offers a unique window into a state of consciousness characterised by a blending of the sensory vividness of REM sleep with the self-awareness of wakefulness. While past functional imaging has shed light on the neural activity supporting lucid dreaming, the structural brain correlates of lucid dream...
This study explores the use of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) cave environments to investigate hypotheses concerning altered states of consciousness, creativity, and flexible thinking in archaeological contexts. Building on the premise that ancient humans used caves as sites for rituals involving altered consciousness, we recreated a virtual cave environment to simulate these experiences and...
Hypnosis and meditation share phenomenological and neurophysiological features, and their comparison is a topic of growing interest in the scientific literature. In this article, we review a classification of these two kinds of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and discuss the studies that directly compare them. Some findings seem to suggest that hypnosis and meditation are distinct...