Consciousness and Cognition - The Consciousness Library

Phenomenological features of dreams: Results from dream log studies using the Subjective Experiences Rating Scale (SERS).

Consciousness and Cognition April 1, 2016 Tracey L. Kahan, Stephanie Claudatos

Self-ratings of dream experiences were obtained from 144 college women for 788 dreams, using the Subjective Experiences Rating Scale (SERS). Consistent with past studies, dreams were characterized by a greater prevalence of vision, audition, and movement than smell, touch, or taste, by both positive and negative emotion, and by a range of cognitive processes. A Principal Components Analysis of...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.02.007 Full text Dreaming Dream phenomenology Experimental phenomenology Inner experience

The borderlands of waking: Quantifying the transition from reflective thought to hallucination in sleep onset.

Consciousness and Cognition April 1, 2016 Clemens Speth, Jana Speth

We lose waking consciousness spontaneously and regularly over the circadian cycle. It seems that every time we fall asleep, reflective thinking gradually gives way to our interactions with an imaginary, hallucinatory world that brings multimodal experiences in the absence of adequate external stimuli. The present study investigates this transition, proposing a new measure of hallucinatory...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.01.009 Full text Dreaming Consciousness Hypnagogic hallucinations Linguistics +3

No iconic memory without attention.

Consciousness and Cognition February 1, 2016 Arien Mack, Muge Erol, Jason Clarke et al. 58 citations

The experiments reported extend the findings of our earlier paper, (Mack, Erol, & Clarke, 2015) and allow us to reject Bachmann and Aru's critique of our conclusion (2015) that IM requires attention. They suggested our manipulations, which diverted attention from a letter reporting task in a dual task procedure where the task-cue occurred after the array disappeared, might only have affected...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.12.006 Full text Awareness Iconic memory Inattentional blindness Phenomenal consciousness

The epistemic innocence of psychedelic states.

Consciousness and Cognition 2016 Chris Letheby 68 citations

One recent development in epistemology, the philosophical study of knowledge, is the notion of 'epistemic innocence' introduced by Bortolotti and colleagues. This concept expresses the idea that certain suboptimal cognitive processes may nonetheless have epistemic (knowledge-related) benefits. The idea that delusion or confabulation may have psychological benefits is familiar enough. What is...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.11.012 Full text LSD Mystical experience Psilocybin Epistemic innocence +4

How does it feel to lack a sense of boundaries? A case study of a long-term mindfulness meditator.

Consciousness and Cognition December 1, 2015 Yochai Ataria, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana 158 citations

This paper discusses the phenomenological nature of the sense of boundaries (SB), based on the case of S, who has practiced mindfulness in the Satipathana and Theravada Vipassana traditions for about 40years and accumulated around 20,000h of meditative practice. S's unique abilities enable him to describe his inner lived experience with great precision and clarity. S was asked to shift between...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.09.002 Full text Mindfulness meditation Neurophenomenology Sense of agency Sense of boundaries +1

The content of recurrent dreams in young adolescents.

Consciousness and Cognition December 1, 2015 Aline Gauchat, Jean R Séguin, Esther McSween-Cadieux et al.

Studies on children's recurrent dreams have been largely anecdotal and based on adults' recollections of dreams experienced during childhood. We collected 102 reports of recurrent dreams from a sample of young adolescents aged between 11 and 15years and scored the narratives using a range of content measures, including in relation to the threat simulation theory (TST) of dreaming. The most...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.08.009 Full text Dream content Dream recall Parasomnia Recurrent dreams +1

Meditation has stronger relationships with mindfulness, kundalini, and mystical experiences than yoga or prayer.

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2015 John M De Castro 23 citations

Contemplative practices can have profound effects on mindfulness and on physical and sensory and mystical experiences. Individuals who self-reported meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer, or a combination of practices and their patterns of practice were compared for mindfulness, kundalini effects, and mystical experiences. The results suggest that the amount of practice but not the pattern and...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.04.022 Full text Meditation Mindfulness Kundalini effects Mystical experiences +2

Open and closed cortico-subcortical loops: A neuro-computational account of access to consciousness in the distractor-induced blindness paradigm.

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2015 Christian Ebner, Henning Schroll, Gesche Winther et al.

How the brain decides which information to process 'consciously' has been debated over for decades without a simple explanation at hand. While most experiments manipulate the perceptual energy of presented stimuli, the distractor-induced blindness task is a prototypical paradigm to investigate gating of information into consciousness without or with only minor visual manipulation. In this...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.02.007 Full text Basal ganglia Cognitive control Computational model Conscious access +1

Near-Death Experiences in patients with locked-in syndrome: Not always a blissful journey.

Consciousness and Cognition July 1, 2015 Vanessa Charland-Verville, Zulay Lugo, Jean-Pierre Jourdan et al.

Memories of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) most often are recounted as emotionally positive events. At present, no satisfactory explanatory model exists to fully account for the rich phenomenology of NDEs following a severe acute brain injury. The particular population of patients with locked-in syndrome (LIS) provides a unique opportunity to study NDEs following infratentorial brain lesions. We...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.03.011 Full text Near-death experience Brainstem lesions Coma Emotions +2

Is dream recall underestimated by retrospective measures and enhanced by keeping a logbook? A review.

Consciousness and Cognition May 1, 2015 Denholm J Aspy, Paul Delfabbro, Michael Proeve

There are two methods commonly used to measure dream recall in the home setting. The retrospective method involves asking participants to estimate their dream recall in response to a single question and the logbook method involves keeping a daily record of one's dream recall. Until recently, the implicit assumption has been that these measures are largely equivalent. However, this is challenged...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.02.005 Full text Dream recall Dream diaries Methodology Self-report methods

External control of the stream of consciousness: Stimulus-based effects on involuntary thought sequences.

Consciousness and Cognition May 1, 2015 Christina Merrick, Melika Farnia, Tiffany K Jantz et al.

The stream of consciousness often appears whimsical and free from external control. Recent advances, however, reveal that the stream is more susceptible to external influence than previously assumed. Thoughts can be triggered by external stimuli in a manner that is involuntary, systematic, and nontrivial. Based on these advances, our experimental manipulation systematically triggered a sequence...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.12.014 Full text Cognitive control Involuntary processing Mind wandering Stream of consciousness

Type 2 blindsight and the nature of visual experience.

Consciousness and Cognition March 1, 2015 Berit Brogaard 37 citations

Blindsight is a kind of residual vision found in people with lesions to V1. Subjects with blindsight typically report no visual awareness, but they are nonetheless able to make above-chance guesses about the shape, location, color and movement of visual stimuli presented to them in their blind field. A different kind of blindsight, sometimes called type 2 blindsight, is a kind of residual...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.017 Full text Direct realism Particularity of vision Phenomenal consciousness Type 1 blindsight +1

EEG manifestations of nondual experiences in meditators.

Consciousness and Cognition 2015 Amanda E Berman, Larry Stevens 55 citations

The holistic experiential benefits of meditation among a widely ranging population have been well established within the empirical literature. What remain less clear are the underlying mechanisms of the meditative process. A large impediment to this clarity is attributable to the lack of a unified and comprehensive taxonomy, as well as to the absence of clear differentiation within the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.10.002 Full text Meditation Contemplative neuroscience EEG Nondual awareness +1

Evidence that phenomenal olfactory content exceeds what can later be accessed.

Consciousness and Cognition November 1, 2014 Richard J. Stevenson, Mehmet Mahmut 1 citation

Visual experience is information rich, but only a small proportion is available for later access. We tested for this distinction in olfaction. In two experiments (E1&2), participants undertook trials rating an odor's features (e.g., how banana-like?), the during-smelling-profile, followed by an after-smelling-profile, upon the odor's removal. On some trials during and after-smelling-profiles...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.012 Full text Access consciousness Olfaction Phenomenal consciousness

Do cortical midline variability and low frequency fluctuations mediate William James' "Stream of Consciousness"? "Neurophenomenal Balance Hypothesis" of "Inner Time Consciousness".

Consciousness and Cognition November 1, 2014 Georg Northoff

William James famously characterized consciousness by 'stream of consciousness' which describes the temporal continuity and flow of the contents of consciousness in our 'inner time consciousness'. More specifically he distinguished between "substantive parts", the contents of consciousness, and "transitive parts", the linkages between different contents. While much research has recently focused...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.004 Full text Cortical midline structures Frequency fluctuations Functional connectivity Variability +2

Accounting for the phenomenology and varieties of auditory verbal hallucination within a predictive processing framework

Consciousness and Cognition October 3, 2014 S. Wilkinson

Two challenges that face popular self-monitoring theories (SMTs) of auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) are that they cannot account for the auditory phenomenology of AVHs and that they cannot account for their variety. In this paper I show that both challenges can be met by adopting a predictive processing framework (PPF), and by viewing AVHs as arising from abnormalities in predictive...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.09.002 Full text

Digital dream analysis: a revised method.

Consciousness and Cognition October 1, 2014 Kelly Bulkeley

This article demonstrates the use of a digital word search method designed to provide greater accuracy, objectivity, and speed in the study of dreams. A revised template of 40 word search categories, built into the website of the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), is applied to four "classic" sets of dreams: The male and female "Norm" dreams of Hall and Van de Castle (1966), the "Engine Man"...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.08.015 Full text Dream content Content analysis Data mining Dreams +1

Associations between attention, affect and cardiac activity in a single yoga session for female cancer survivors: an enactive neurophenomenology-based approach.

Consciousness and Cognition July 1, 2014 Michael J. Mackenzie, Linda E. Carlson, David M Paskevich et al. 38 citations

Yoga practice is reported to lead to improvements in quality of life, psychological functioning, and symptom indices in cancer survivors. Importantly, meditative states experienced within yoga practice are correlated to neurophysiological systems that moderate both focus of attention and affective valence. The current study used a mixed methods approach based in neurophenomenology to...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.04.005 Full text Meditation Affect Attention Cancer +6

First-person approaches in neuroscience of consciousness: brain dynamics correlate with the intention to act.

Consciousness and Cognition May 1, 2014 Han-Gue Jo, Marc Wittmann, Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt et al. 43 citations

The belief in free will has been frequently challenged since Benjamin Libet published his famous experiment in 1983. Although Libet's experiment is highly dependent upon subjective reports, no study has been conducted that focused on a first-person or introspective perspective of the task. We took a neurophenomenological approach in an N=1 study providing reliable and valid measures of the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.03.004 Full text First-person data Intention to act Libet experiment Neurophenomenology +2

The covariation of independent and dependant variables in neurofeedback: a proposal framework to identify cognitive processes and brain activity variables.

Consciousness and Cognition May 1, 2014 Jean-Arthur Micoulaud-Franchi, Clélia Quiles, Guillaume Fond et al.

This methodological article proposes a framework for analysing the relationship between cognitive processes and brain activity using variables measured by neurofeedback (NF) carried out by functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI NF). Cognitive processes and brain activity variables can be analysed as either the dependant variable or the independent variable. Firstly, we propose two...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.03.007 Full text Brain Independent variable Mind Neurofeedback +3

I know how you felt last night, or do I? Self- and external ratings of emotions in REM sleep dreams.

Consciousness and Cognition April 1, 2014 Pilleriin Sikka, Katja Valli, Tiina Virta et al.

We investigated whether inconsistencies in previous studies regarding emotional experiences in dreams derive from whether dream emotions are self-rated or externally evaluated. Seventeen subjects were monitored with polysomnography in the sleep laboratory and awakened from every rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage 5 min after the onset of the stage. Upon awakening, participants gave an oral...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.01.011 Full text Dreaming Content analysis Emotions Rem sleep

Testing the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in lucid dreaming: A tDCS study

Consciousness and Cognition September 8, 2013 Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl 88 citations

Recent studies suggest that lucid dreaming (awareness of dreaming while dreaming) might be associated with increased brain activity over frontal regions during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. By applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we aimed to manipulate the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during REM sleep to increase dream lucidity. Nineteen...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.005

Introspection and schizophrenia: a comparative investigation of anomalous self experiences.

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2013 Louis Sass, Elizabeth Pienkos, Barnaby Nelson 42 citations

This paper offers a comparative investigation of anomalous self-experiences common in schizophrenia (defined in Examination of Anomalous Self Experiences (EASE) instrument) and those of normal individuals in an intensely introspective orientation (early 20th-century "introspectionist" psychology). The latter represent a relatively pure manifestation of certain forms of exaggerated...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.05.004 Full text Anomalous self-experience Depersonalization Hyperreflexivity Introspectionism +4

A differentiating empirical linguistic analysis of dreamer activity in reports of EEG-controlled REM-dreams and hypnagogic hallucinations.

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2013 Jana Speth, Clemens Frenzel, Ursula Voss

We present Activity Analysis as a new method for the quantification of subjective reports of altered states of consciousness with regard to the indicated level of simulated motor activity. Empirical linguistic activity analysis was conducted with dream reports conceived immediately after EEG-controlled periods of hypnagogic hallucinations and REM-sleep in the sleep laboratory. Reports of...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.07.003 Full text Hypnagogia Dream consciousness Dream reports EEG +4

Are delusional contents replayed during dreams?

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2013 Armando D'Agostino, Giacomo Aletti, Martina Carboni et al.

The relationship between dream content and waking life experiences remains difficult to decipher. However, some neurobiological findings suggest that dreaming can, at least in part, be considered epiphenomenal to ongoing memory consolidation processes in sleep. Both abnormalities in sleep architecture and impairment in memory consolidation mechanisms are thought to be involved in the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.04.006 Full text Dreaming Continuity Delusions Memory consolidation +2

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