Medical Hypotheses - The Consciousness Library

Extending mental practice to sleep: Enhancing motor skills through lucid dreaming

Medical Hypotheses March 27, 2023 Emma Peters, Sanne Golembiewski, Daniel Erlacher et al. 12 citations

Improving motor performance without physical movements might seem counterintuitive, however, decades of research on mental practice have demonstrated its feasibility. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming – i.e. becoming aware of the current dream state during ongoing sleep – bears some resemblance to mental practice: behaviors such as motor tasks can be intentionally simulated with mental imagery....

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2023.111066 Lucid dream Sleep system call Cognitive psychology

Deficits in access consciousness, integrative function, and consequent autonoetic thinking in schizophrenia.

Medical Hypotheses October 1, 2021 Nicholas S Patniyot

Alterations within consciousness in schizophrenia can be evidenced by impediments in self-awareness and loss of agency. Ned Block's definition of access consciousness is applied in order to further delineate cognitive deficits involving reflective thought and autonoetic thinking in persons with schizophrenia. Current theories on the nature and functioning of consciousness are discussed, which...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2021.110664 Full text Access consciousness Autonoetic thinking Integrative function Metacognition +1

Right Broca's area is hyperactive in right-handed subjects during meditation: Possible clinical implications?

Medical Hypotheses May 1, 2021 Dipti Magan, Raj Kumar Yadav

Broca's area, conventionally located in left (categorical) hemisphere of brain, is responsible for integrating linguistic and non-linguistic processing however, functionality of its right homolog remains partly understood and explored. This perception is based on the fact that in 96% of right-handed individuals, who constitute 91% of human population, the left hemisphere is dominant or...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2021.110556 Full text Meditation Attention-task Broca’s area Long-term meditators +2

"Men Fear Most What They Cannot See." sleep paralysis "Ghost Intruders" and faceless "Shadow-People"-The role of the right hemisphere and economizing nature of vision.

Medical Hypotheses March 1, 2021 Baland Jalal

Sleep paralysis is a curious condition where the paralyzed person may hallucinate terrifying ghosts. These hypnogogic and hypnopompic visions are common worldwide. They often entail seeing and sensing shadow beings; although hallucinating full-fledged figures (e.g., cat-like creatures and witches) are not uncommon. In this paper, I propose a neuroscientific account (building on previous work)...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2021.110521 Full text Dissociative states Ghost visions Out-of-body experiences Sleep paralysis

The potential use of N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDMA) assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of eating disorders comorbid with PTSD.

Medical Hypotheses 2021 Timothy D Brewerton, Adele Lafrance, Michael C Mithoefer 28 citations

Despite advances in the field, eating disorders (EDs) remain very challenging disorders to treat, especially when comorbid with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted psychotherapy for treatment refractory PTSD shows great promise, with two-thirds of participants achieving full remission at 1 year or more at follow-up. PTSD is a common...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110367 Full text PTSD Eating disorders MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Posttraumatic stress disorder +6

Is there a relation among REM sleep dissociated phenomena, like lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, out-of-body experiences, and false awakening?

Medical Hypotheses November 1, 2020 Michael Raduga, Oleg Kuyava, Natalia Sevcenko 31 citations

During REM sleep we normally experience dreams. However, there are other less common REM sleep phenomena, like lucid dreaming (LD), false awakening (FA), sleep paralysis (SP), and out of body experiences (OBE). LD occurs when one is conscious during dreaming, and FA occurs when one is dreaming but believes that has woken up. SP is characterized by skeletal muscle atonia and occurs mainly during...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110169 Full text Consciousness False awakening Lucid dreams Out-of-body experiences +3

Novel harmala-ocudelic tuning (HOT) for ocular disorders.

Medical Hypotheses October 1, 2020 E S Lansky 1 citation

The eye contains serotonin, and possesses serotonergic receptors and modulators. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may impair ocular function, while other serotonin receptor-binding drugs might improve it. A putative vision-improving drug must be safe at therapeutic doses, most preferably with long-lasting benefits from a single or very few administration(s). One drug potentially...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109834 Full text

Consciousness, Redux.

Medical Hypotheses March 11, 2020 J S Torday 16 citations

There have been many attempts to explain consciousness, ranging from Plato's archetypes, to Descartes' 'Mind-Body Dualism', and more recently to Chalmers' Qualia, and Andy Clarke's extended mind. Yet none of these conceptualizations of consciousness provide empiric evidence for what consciousness actually constitutes. The present hypothesis is that Consciousness is a product of the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109674 Full text

Comment on "A thermodynamic approach to the problem of consciousness".

Medical Hypotheses March 1, 2020 Seyedsaeid Ahmadvand, Bijan Peik, Babak Azarfar

Recently, Beshkar has published a paper on the nature of qualia. His argument is based on several assumptions leading to a conjecture that qualia have a negentropic nature and so as consciousness. The assumptions are: 1) quale (singular of qualia) is the building block of consciousness and thus they are equivalent, 2) qualia and consciousness are both subjective and non-observable by any...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.109500 Full text

The Psilocybin-Telomere Hypothesis: An empirically falsifiable prediction concerning the beneficial neuropsychopharmacological effects of psilocybin on genetic aging

Medical Hypotheses September 24, 2019 Christopher B. Germann 20 citations

We introduce a novel hypothesis which states that the therapeutic utilisation of psilocybin has beneficial effects on genetic aging. Ex hypothesi, we predict a priori that controlled psilocybin interventions exert quantifiable positive impact on leucocyte telomere length (telomeres are a robust predictor of mortality and multifarious aging-related diseases). Our hypothesising follows the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.109406 Psilocybin Consciousness Argument complex analysis Context archaeology +4

Dissociative identity as a continuum from healthy mind to psychiatric disorders: Epistemological and neurophenomenological implications approached through hypnosis.

Medical Hypotheses September 1, 2019 Enrico Facco, Laura Mendozzi, Angelo Bona et al. 16 citations

The topic of multiple personality, redefined as Dissociative Identity Disorders (DIDs) in the DSM-5, is an intriguing and still debated disorder with a long history and deep cultural and epistemological implications, extending up to the idea of possession. Hypnosis is an appealing and valuable model to manipulate subjective experience and get an insight on both the physiology and the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.109274 Full text

Quantum nature of consciousness - Double slit diffraction experiment in medicine.

Medical Hypotheses August 23, 2019 Andreja Vujanac, I. Srejovic, V. Zivkovic et al.

The essence of our hypothesis is quantum properties of conscious processes as well as the possibility to measure changes in conscious attention by using quantum double-slit experiment. We supposed that the act of observing in state of focused attention cause a wave function collapse in double-slit diffraction. In order to test the hypothesis, 26 participants took part in the study divided into...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.109382

The physical nature of subjective experience and its interaction with the brain.

Medical Hypotheses April 1, 2019 Fredric Schiffer

Penrose and Hameroff assert that brain computations, including quantum computations, involving hydrophobic areas of microtubules whose electron clouds go into orchestrated superpositions and reductions that lead to proto-conscious elements, or "bings" that become orchestrated into conscious experiences. Their assertion, however, like the findings of the neural correlates of consciousness, does...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.02.011 Full text Brain information Consciousness Experience Non-conscious +3

The near-death experience (NDE) as an inherited predisposition: Possible genetic, epigenetic, neural and symbolic mechanisms.

Medical Hypotheses March 26, 2019 J. Lake

The paper is divided into four parts. In Part I, I review principle NDE models, important recent research findings and limitations of NDE research I remark on the absence of consensus on an explanatory model of NDEs. Part II begins with an overview of NDE evolutionary thinking up until now. I define an NDE predisposition as a specialized kind of higher cognitive trait and argue that this...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.03.016

Cellular stress and AMPK links metformin and diverse compounds with accelerated emergence from anesthesia and potential recovery from disorders of consciousness.

Medical Hypotheses March 1, 2019 Jahahreeh Finley

The neural correlates of consciousness and the mechanisms by which general anesthesia (GA) modulate such correlates to induce loss of consciousness (LOC) has been described as one of the biggest mysteries of modern medicine. Several cellular targets and neural circuits have been identified that play a critical role in LOC induced by GA, including the GABAA receptor and ascending arousal nuclei...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.01.014 Full text Ketamine Anesthesia Caffeine Calcium ca2+ +14

Psychedelic medicine: The biology underlying the persisting psychedelic effects

Medical Hypotheses February 11, 2019 K.p.c. Kuypers 34 citations

Psychedelic substances have regained interest as therapeutic agents in the treatment of stress-related disorders. The effects seem to be of persisting nature even after a single dose. Also in lower than 'regular' recreational doses, so-called micro-doses, without the typical effects on consciousness, users report beneficial effects on cognitive processes and well-being. The exact...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2019.02.029

A thermodynamic approach to the problem of consciousness.

Medical Hypotheses April 1, 2018 Majid Beshkar

What is the nature of qualia? Why qualia are subjective? This article is an attempt to provide speculative answers to these questions based on what we know about thermodynamics. The proposed answer to the first question is that qualia are self-organized structures built by exported entropy. The proposed answer to the second question is that qualia are subjective because entropy-decreasing...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2018.02.003 Full text

Out of the box: A psychedelic model to study the creative mind

Medical Hypotheses March 23, 2018 K.p.c. Kuypers 16 citations

Our creativity is challenged daily when facing new situations asking for novel solutions. Creativity, a multicomponent construct includes flexible divergent and rigid convergent thinking. Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin can enhance creativity and affect state of mind (mood, empathy, openness). Of note, flexible thinking is disturbed in psychopathological conditions like anxiety disorders and...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2018.03.010 Psilocybin Anxiety Creativity Empathy +10

Bottom-up gamma and stages of waking.

Medical Hypotheses July 1, 2017 E Garcia-Rill

Gamma activity has been proposed to promote the feed forward or "bottom-up" flow of information from lower to higher regions of the brain during perception. The pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN) modulates waking and REM sleep, and is part of the reticular activating system (RAS). The properties of PPN cells are unique in that all PPN neurons fire maximally at gamma band frequency regardless of...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2017.05.023 Full text Coherence Coma Consciousness N-type calcium channels +3

Stream of consciousness: Quantum and biochemical assumptions regarding psychopathology.

Medical Hypotheses April 1, 2017 Lucio Tonello, Massimo Cocchi, Fabio Gabrielli et al.

The accepted paradigms of mainstream neuropsychiatry appear to be incompletely adequate and in various cases offer equivocal analyses. However, a growing number of new approaches are being proposed that suggest the emergence of paradigm shifts in this area. In particular, quantum theories of mind, brain and consciousness seem to offer a profound change to the current approaches. Unfortunately...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2017.02.013 Full text Depression EEG Experimental neuroscience Gamma synchrony +3

Disrupted integration of sensory stimuli with information about the movement of the body as a mechanism explaining LSD-induced experience.

Medical Hypotheses March 1, 2017 Grzegorz R Juszczak 4 citations

LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is a model psychedelic drug used to study mechanism underlying the effects induced by hallucinogens. However, despite advanced knowledge about molecular mechanism responsible for the effects induced by LSD and other related substances acting at serotonergic 5-HT2a receptors, we still do not understand how these drugs trigger specific sensory experiences....

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2017.01.022 Full text

Cycles of insanity and creativity within contemplative neural systems.

Medical Hypotheses September 1, 2016 Stephen L Thaler

Random connection weight disturbances within an assembly of artificial neural networks (ANN) drive a progression of activation patterns that are tantamount to the memories and ideas nucleating within the brain's cortex. The numerical evaluation of these pattern-based notions by another, more placid system of ANNs governs the magnitude of weight disturbances administered to the former assembly,...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2016.07.010 Full text

Constructing the ecstasy of MDMA from its component mental organs: Proposing the primer/probe method.

Medical Hypotheses February 1, 2016 Thomas S. Ray 6 citations

The drug MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, produces a specific and distinct open hearted mental state, which led to the creation of a new pharmacological class, "entactogens". Extensive literature on its mechanisms of action has come to characterize MDMA as a "messy" drug with multiple mechanisms, but the consensus is that the distinctive entactogenic effects arise from the release of...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2015.12.018 Full text Mental organs Neuron groups Specific mental states Complex brain states +10

Potential benefit of lamotrigine in managing ketamine use disorder.

Medical Hypotheses February 1, 2016 Ming-Chyi Huang, Lian-Yu Chen, Chih-Ken Chen et al.

Ketamine is an anesthetic derivative of phencyclidine (PCP; 'Angel dust') with dissociative, analgesic and psychedelic properties. Ketamine has become a popular recreational drug of abuse in many parts of the world in recent years. The preclinical studies demonstrate the reinforcing effects of ketamine and long-term ketamine abuse induces a delayed and persistent upregulation of dopamine...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2015.11.011 Full text

Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered state of consciousness

Medical Hypotheses April 11, 2015 Enrico Facco, Christian Agrillo, Bruce Greyson 61 citations

During the last decades an increasing interest has developed in the so-called altered state of consciousness (ASCs); among these, near-death experiences (NDEs) are one of the most intriguing and debated examples. NDEs are deep and universal experiences with a clear phenomenology and incidence, while some of their features challenge the current views of human consciousness (focused on neural...

DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2015.04.004

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