Objective: Meditation is one type of mental training that has been shown to produce many cognitive benefits. Meditation practice is associated with improvement in concentration and reduction of stress, depression and anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, different forms of meditation training are now being used as interventions for a variety of psychological and somatic illnesses. These benefits are...
Past research has demonstrated to the ability of psychedelics to enhance suggestibility, and pointed to their ability to amplify perception of meaning. This paper examines the existing evidence for the meaning-enhancing properties of psychedelics, and argues that the tendency of these agents to enhance the perception of significance offers valuable clues to explaining their reported ability to...
Ever since the modern rediscovery of psychedelic substances by Western society, several authors have independently proposed that their effects bear a high resemblance to the dreams and dreamlike experiences occurring naturally during the sleep-wake cycle. Recent studies in humans have provided neurophysiological evidence supporting this hypothesis. However, a rigorous comparative analysis of...
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Frontiers Events is a rapidly growing calendar management system dedicated to the scheduling of academic events. This includes announcements and invitations, participant listings and search functionality, abstract handling and publication, related events and post-event exchanges. Whether an organizer or participant, make your event a Frontiers Event!
Frontiers Events is a rapidly growing calendar management system dedicated to the scheduling of academic events. This includes announcements and invitations, participant listings and search functionality, abstract handling and publication, related events and post-event exchanges. Whether an organizer or participant, make your event a Frontiers Event!
The present study examines processes associated with intrusions into consciousness during an unconscious state, natural sleep. The definition of sleep is still much debated. Almost all researchers agree that sleep onset represents a gradual loss of consciousness of the external environment. For sleep to be beneficial, it needs to remain as undisturbed as possible. Nevertheless, unlike other...
The abstract has been reorganized. The new version is as follows: “Background: The relationship between awareness and attention is complex and controversial. A growing body of literature has shown that the neural bases of consciousness and endogenous attention (voluntary attention) are independent. The important role of exogenous attention (reflexive attention) on conscious experience has been...
Neuropharmacological effects of psychedelics have profound cognitive, emotional, and social effects that inspired the development of cultures and religions worldwide. Findings that psychedelics objectively and reliably produce mystical experiences press the question of the neuropharmacological mechanisms by which these highly significant experiences are produced by exogenous neurotransmitter...
Functional MRI (fMRI) studies have demonstrated that the rodent brain shows a default mode network (DMN) activity similar to that in humans, offering a potential preclinical model both for physiological and pathophysiological studies. However, the neuronal mechanism underlying rodent DMN remains poorly understood. Here, we used electrophysiological data to analyze the power spectrum and...
A binaural beat is a beat phenomenon that is generated by the dichotic presentation of two almost equivalent pure tones but with slightly different frequencies. The brain responses to binaural beats remain controversial; therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate theta activity responses to a binaural beat by controlling factors affecting localization, including beat frequency, carrier...
N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a potent endogenous hallucinogen present in the brain of humans and other mammals. Despite extensive research, its physiological role remains largely unknown. Recently, DMT has been found to activate the sigma-1 receptor (Sig-1R), an intracellular chaperone fulfilling an interface role between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondria. It ensures the...
New psychoactive substances (NPS) are a heterogeneous and rapidly evolving class of molecules available on the global illicit drug market (e.g smart shops, internet, "dark net") as a substitute for controlled substances. The use of NPS, mainly consumed along with other drugs of abuse and/or alcohol, has resulted in a significantly growing number of mortality and emergency admissions for...
A debilitating mental disorder, major depressive disorder is a leading cause of global disease burden. Existing antidepressant drugs are not adequate for the majority of depressed patients, and large clinical studies have demonstrated their limited efficacy and slow response onset. Growing evidence of low-dose ketamine's rapid and potent antidepressant effects offers strong potential for future...
Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug among adolescents and young adults. Unique cognitive, emotional, and social changes occur during this critical period of development from childhood into adulthood. The adolescent brain is in a state of transition and differs from the adult brain with respect to both anatomy (e.g., neuronal connections and morphology) and neurochemistry (e.g.,...
Humans have long pondered the nature of their mind/brain and, particularly why its capacities for reasoning, communication and abstract thought are far superior to other species, including closely related anthropoids. This article considers superior pattern processing (SPP) as the fundamental basis of most, if not all, unique features of the human brain including intelligence, language,...
The scientific interest in meditation and mindfulness practice has recently seen an unprecedented surge. After an initial phase of presenting beneficial effects of mindfulness practice in various domains, research is now seeking to unravel the underlying psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms. Advances in understanding these processes are required for improving and fine-tuning...
In a task of rating images of artworks in an fMRI scanner, regions in the medial prefrontal cortex that are known to be part of the default mode network (DMN) were positively activated on the highest-rated trials. This is surprising given the DMN's original characterization as the set of brain regions that show greater fMRI activity during rest periods than during performance of tasks requiring...
Human decision-making is often conceptualized as a competition between cognitive and emotional processes in the brain. Deviations from rational processes are believed to derive from inclusion of emotional factors in decision-making. Here, we investigate whether experienced Buddhist meditators are better equipped to regulate emotional processes compared with controls during economic...
Serotonin receptors of the 5-HT(2A) subtype are robustly expressed in the cerebral cortex where they have been implicated in the pathophysiology and therapeutics of mental disorders and the actions of hallucinogens. Much less is known, however, about the specific cell types expressing 5-HT(2A) receptors in cortex. In the current study we use immunohistochemical and electrophysiological...