Front Psychol
June 30, 2022
This work describes the sensory, motor, and affective experiences reported by practitioners of Tantric yoga meditation that are associated with Kundalini. The authors characterize these experiences as including a range of phenomena such as spontaneous bodily movements, altered sensory perceptions, and intense emotional states. They argue that these experiences are not pathological but are instead considered normative within the Tantric yoga tradition and are understood as signs of spiritual progress. The paper provides a detailed account of the phenomenology of Kundalini-related experiences, drawing on traditional texts and contemporary practitioner reports to offer a framework for understanding these complex psycho-physiological events.
Front Psychol
April 14, 2022
Awe narratives, a mindfulness practice, can enhance resilience and wellbeing. The practice involves recalling and writing about experiences of awe, which may help individuals cultivate positive emotions and cope with stress. The text suggests that engaging in awe narratives can lead to improvements in psychological health, though specific outcomes and effect sizes are not detailed.
Front Psychol
March 4, 2022
A case-control study examined the effects of meditation-based lifestyle practices on mindfulness, wellbeing, and plasma telomerase levels. Participants who regularly engaged in these practices showed higher mindfulness and wellbeing scores compared to controls. The meditation group also exhibited significantly higher plasma telomerase levels, suggesting a potential biological mechanism linking meditation to cellular aging.
Front Psychol
October 12, 2021
A classification framework organizes mindfulness practices by their associated intentions and experiential understandings, moving beyond a one-size-fits-all definition. The framework maps practices according to what practitioners aim to cultivate (e.g., attention, emotional regulation, insight) and how they subjectively experience the practice. This provides a practical tool for researchers, clinicians, and practitioners to select, describe, and compare different mindfulness techniques more precisely.
Front Psychol
May 31, 2021
The article examines the concept of a 'second skin' as a transparent sensory layer that mediates self-awareness and bodily experience, drawing on philosophical ideas about the senses. It argues that disruptions to this transparent sensory interface may underlie depersonalization, a condition where individuals feel detached from their own mental states or body. The work suggests that understanding the transparent senses offers new implications for interpreting depersonalization, proposing that a breakdown in the seamless, transparent quality of sensory experience contributes to the feeling of estrangement from self.
Front Psychol
March 22, 2021
This theoretical paper proposes that mindfulness practice can enhance cue exposure treatment for substance use disorders by helping individuals tolerate cravings without relapsing. The authors argue that mindfulness training improves awareness of craving-related bodily sensations and reduces automatic behavioral responses, potentially increasing the effectiveness of extinction learning during cue exposure. They suggest that integrating mindfulness into cue exposure protocols may address limitations of traditional exposure-based treatments, particularly high relapse rates. The paper outlines specific mechanisms by which mindfulness could augment extinction processes and offers clinical recommendations for combining these approaches.
Front Psychol
January 14, 2021
Imagery Rehearsal Based Art Therapy is presented as a treatment approach for post-traumatic nightmares within art therapy. The text describes the method but does not report any empirical findings, sample characteristics, or outcomes.
Front Psychol
October 26, 2020
A brief meditation training program enhances mindfulness and the ability to regulate emotions, according to a small-scale pilot investigation. The training led to measurable improvements in self-reported mindfulness and emotion regulation skills among participants. These findings suggest that even short-term meditation practice can foster psychological capacities relevant to well-being.
Front Psychol
July 30, 2020
This theoretical paper argues that consciousness can be understood through the lens of the free energy principle and cognitive algorithms. The authors propose that conscious states emerge from the brain's optimization of free energy, linking neural dynamics to subjective experience. They contend that cognitive algorithms, as formalized processes of inference and learning, provide a framework for modeling how the brain generates predictions and minimizes surprise. The work synthesizes concepts from neuroscience, philosophy, and computational theory to advance a unified account of consciousness grounded in predictive processing.
Front Psychol
January 30, 2019
The paper reviews the history of the neuropsychology of consciousness, tracing key developments from early philosophical debates to modern empirical approaches. It highlights how brain damage and neuroimaging have informed understanding of conscious awareness, and discusses emerging trends such as the study of neural correlates of consciousness, the role of attention, and the influence of predictive processing models. The authors argue that progress in this field depends on integrating diverse methodologies and theoretical perspectives, and they emphasize the importance of distinguishing between different aspects of consciousness, such as access and phenomenal consciousness.
Front Psychol
October 31, 2018
Rapid eye movements (REMs) during sleep provide a distinctive window into the nature of consciousness. The text argues that the characteristics of REMs can reveal how the brain generates and organizes conscious experience, offering insights into the neural correlates of awareness and subjective experience. This perspective suggests that studying REMs may help clarify fundamental questions about consciousness, including its neural basis and the mechanisms that produce unified, first-person experience. The work presents a theoretical argument linking oculomotor activity during sleep to broader theories of consciousness, without reporting empirical data.
Front Psychol
August 24, 2018
Consciousness poses a deep challenge for evolutionary theory because it is not obvious how subjective experience could arise from physical processes or what adaptive advantage it might confer. The article examines the difficulty of explaining the origin and function of consciousness within a standard Darwinian framework, highlighting the explanatory gap between neural activity and first-person experience. It argues that current evolutionary models struggle to account for the qualitative, subjective aspects of mind, suggesting that a new conceptual approach may be needed to integrate consciousness into evolutionary biology.
Front Psychol
July 19, 2018
The work argues that technologies which extend the mind—such as digital devices, AI, and other external cognitive tools—can be used skillfully to illuminate practical approaches for developing an ethics of consciousness. It explores how these technologies shape awareness, decision-making, and moral responsibility, suggesting that mindful engagement with them offers pathways to ethical reflection and action.
Front Psychol
June 20, 2018
The paper argues that explanatory first-person approaches, particularly phenomenology, are essential for understanding psychopathological phenomena because they capture the subjective experience of mental disorders, which third-person, objective methods alone cannot fully explain. Phenomenology provides a framework for analyzing how patients actually experience their symptoms, thereby bridging the gap between clinical descriptions and lived reality. This perspective is relevant for both diagnosis and treatment, as it offers deeper insight into the meaning and structure of psychopathological experiences.
Front Psychol
April 23, 2018
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Front Psychol
October 10, 2017
The field of consciousness research is at a pivotal juncture, with significant progress made in identifying neural correlates but lacking a unified theory. The paper argues that future progress requires integrating diverse methodologies, including philosophy, neuroscience, and computational modeling, to address fundamental questions about the nature of subjective experience. It highlights the need for empirical rigor and interdisciplinary collaboration to move beyond descriptive accounts toward explanatory theories of consciousness.
Front Psychol
May 10, 2017
This theoretical paper argues that the level of arousal experienced during dreams and sleep can provide valuable information about poor sleep quality, stress, and psychopathology. The authors propose that heightened arousal in nocturnal consciousness, such as intense or distressing dream experiences, may reflect underlying psychological and physiological disturbances. They suggest that examining dream content and sleep experiences could serve as a window into mental health, offering clues about stress levels and psychiatric conditions. The paper reviews existing literature to support this connection, indicating that nocturnal arousal patterns may be linked to sleep disruptions and emotional dysregulation.
Front Psychol
April 30, 2015
Children aged 4 to 8 years old produce dream reports that can be analyzed for content. The study examines the nature and themes of these dreams, providing insight into the cognitive and emotional development of young children.
Front Psychol
January 29, 2015
Mindfulness meditation is associated with changes in both explicit and implicit measures of personality and self-concept. The findings suggest that meditation practice can alter how individuals consciously view themselves and also affect less conscious, automatic aspects of self-concept.
Front Psychol
October 9, 2014
Dreaming may involve a form of consciousness inference similar to waking perception, with the brain generating a virtual reality model of the world. The authors argue that during dreams, the brain constructs a first-person experience from internal signals, using predictive processing to simulate a coherent environment. This perspective suggests that dreaming is not a passive or random process but an active, constructive one that relies on the same inferential mechanisms as waking consciousness.
Front Psychol
October 10, 2013
No Summary
Front Psychol
September 23, 2013
The abstract discusses the use of subjective experience reports as a tool in cognitive neuroscience, focusing on dreaming, waking conscious experience, and the resting brain. It argues that these reports can provide valuable insights into the neural correlates of consciousness and cognitive processes, highlighting the importance of integrating first-person perspectives with third-person neuroscientific methods.
Front Psychol
March 21, 2012
The abstract poses a question about resolving ambiguity in distinguishing between the contents of consciousness (what we are aware of) and the levels of consciousness (the state of awareness itself, such as wakefulness or drowsiness). It does not present a finding, argument, or conclusion, but rather identifies a conceptual challenge that requires further theoretical or methodological development.