Frontiers in Psychology
June 17, 2015
Claire M. Zedelius, Jonathan W. Schooler
124 citations
The relationship between mindfulness and creativity depends on the strategy used to solve problems. Across two studies, people higher in trait mindfulness performed worse overall on creative problem-solving tasks. However, when problems were approached analytically, more mindful individuals performed better. In contrast, when problems were approached through sudden insight, mindfulness impaired performance. The findings suggest that mindfulness may hinder insight-based creativity but can benefit analytical problem-solving.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2014
Jared R. Lindahl, Christopher T. Kaplan, Evan M. Winget et al.
123 citations
Meditation can induce visual light experiences, such as discrete lightforms and patterned or diffuse lights, which are well documented in Buddhist texts but rarely reported in scientific literature. Reports from American Buddhist practitioners closely match these traditional accounts. The paper argues that meditative practices that reduce sensory and social stimulation and focus attention produce perceptual and cognitive effects similar to sensory deprivation. Since sensory deprivation is known to increase neuroplasticity, meditation may similarly enhance neuroplastic potential. The findings suggest that scientists, clinicians, and meditators should be aware of this broader range of experiences arising from contemplative practice.
Frontiers in Psychology
August 5, 2014
Brian Earl
119 citations
Consciousness does not play an active, executive role in determining behavior, contrary to intuitive understanding. Instead, it serves a biological function as input data to a flexible response mechanism (FRM) for decision-making, planning, and nonautomatic responses. The FRM requires task-relevant information, and consciousness provides this through a qualia array of colors, sounds, and other qualitative and quantitative details. When important information is missing from consciousness, the FRM's functions are impaired. This view explains why we have experiences and feelings, why their loss leads to poor decision-making, why blindsight patients do not spontaneously respond to blind-field events, why counter-habitual actions require the intended action in mind, and the reason for inattentional blindness.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2014
Viviana Capurso, Franco Fabbro, Cristiano Crescentini
115 citations
A commentary argues that the relationship between mindfulness meditation and creativity is more complex than previously assumed. It suggests that while mindfulness reduces mind-wandering, which is often linked to creative insight, it may also enhance certain cognitive processes that support creativity. The author contends that the effects depend on the type of mindfulness practice and the aspect of creativity being measured, and calls for more nuanced research to disentangle these interactions.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2014
Christina Merrick, Christine A. Godwin, Mark W. Geisler et al.
108 citations
Consciousness remains a scientific mystery, but contrasting conscious and unconscious processes offers clues. The olfactory system provides a unique window for this contrast due to its neuroanatomy, cognitive mechanisms, and neural dynamics like brain oscillations. This review argues that for an olfactory content to become conscious, it must engage a large-scale neural network involving broad information integration.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 23, 2022
David B. Yaden, Dylan Earp, Marianna Graziosi et al.
106 citations
The acute effects of psychedelics depend on users' expectations and surroundings (set and setting). Current clinical psychedelic administration draws on indigenous practices, 1960s new age spirituality, psychodynamic approaches, and cognitive-behavioral therapies. Cognitive-behavioral therapies, including acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), have the strongest rationale for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy because they avoid cultural insensitivity, make minimal speculative assumptions about the mind and reality, and have the largest empirical support for safety and effectiveness outside psychedelic therapy. Concepts from CBT, DBT, and ACT can usefully inform preparation, session, and integration phases. Evidence-based psychotherapeutic paradigms provide the best starting point for safety and efficacy.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 26, 2019
Susana Ramírez–vizcaya, Tom Froese
105 citations
Understanding bad habits, from minor routines to addiction, is transformed by a novel perspective in Cognitive science. Moving beyond two traditional, opposing views of habits as bodily automatisms or mindful actions, this framework integrates Embodied and Extended Cognition. It defines habits as dynamic, self-sustaining networks of neural and bodily processes. Crucially for Mental Health Research Topics, a "bad habit" is one whose expression, while positive for itself, significantly impairs a person's overall well-being. This unified view advances Psychology's understanding of human Cognition, Social Representations, and Identity.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 11, 2018
Shaun Gallagher, Anya Daly
105 citations
The pattern theory of self proposes that the self is a dynamical pattern that includes neural, embodied, and enactive processes, rather than a static entity. Critics argue the theory fails to explain how the elements of this self-pattern dynamically relate, reducing it to a mere list. This paper argues that the dynamics of the self-pattern can be investigated in three ways: through narrative reflection, by studying psychiatric and neurological disorders to see how relations fail, and by using predictive processing accounts in neuroscience to clarify the dynamical relations that constitute the self-pattern.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
101 citations
Neurophenomenology integrates first-person (subjective) and third-person (objective) approaches to the mind. This practical guide outlines theoretical principles, the importance of phenomenological training, and the utility of cooperating with meditators as skilled participants. First-person accounts range from thick to thin phenomenology, highlighting a tension in naturalizing phenomenology. A typology of bridges creates mutual constraints between approaches. The paper demonstrates a decade of neurophenomenological studies investigating the sense of self, focusing on its embodied and minimal aspects accessed via dissolution of sense-of-boundaries, revealing the multi-dimensionality and flexibility of embodied selfhood.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2011
Andreas Keller
98 citations
Understanding how attention relates to consciousness is central to consciousness research. Unlike consciousness, attention can be systematically manipulated in experiments. Most studies focus on spatial visual attention, but this review introduces attention to the olfactory modality. It clarifies where attention to smells fits in a general taxonomy of attention, reviews the mechanisms and neuroanatomy of attention and consciousness in the olfactory system, and uses this framework to argue that attention is necessary for consciousness.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2018
Daniel D. Hutto, Ian H. Robertson, Michael D Kirchhoff
89 citations
Basic Emotion Theory (BET) has been central to affective science for decades, guiding research on facial expressions, neuroimaging, and evolutionary psychology. Philosophers have recently called for abandoning BET entirely. This paper defends BET against those criticisms, arguing that the theory should be retained. It also addresses concerns that BET's reliance on affect programs makes it outdated. The authors propose that with minor adjustments, BET can overcome these objections when reinterpreted through a radically enactive account of emotions. Rather than discarding BET, the paper shows how its core ideas can be revised and preserved, concluding that the revised BET remains a valuable framework.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
George Deane, Mark Miller, Sam Wilkinson
88 citations
Disruptions in the ordinary sense of self can lead to either devastating depersonalization or sought-after selfless experiences in meditation. Using the active inference framework, the authors propose that selfhood emerges from a temporally deep generative model that tunes agents to counterfactually rich possibilities for action. Depersonalization may result from an inferred loss of allostatic control, contrasting with the euphoric selfless experiences reported by meditation practitioners. This unified account conceptualizes the experiential similarities and differences between these states, with implications for understanding dissociative disorders and the therapeutic potential and dangers of meditation.
Frontiers in Psychology
August 18, 2015
Josie E Malinowski, Caroline L. Horton
87 citations
Sleep and dreaming serve an emotion assimilation function. Emotions mark waking-life memories for selective processing during sleep, leading to consolidation into long-term memory and integration into existing memory networks. Dreaming reflects these assimilation processes, and the associations between memory fragments activated during sleep produce measurable dream metaphor and hyperassociativity. These are direct phenomenological experiences of emotional memory assimilation during sleep. The paper synthesizes sleep and dream research, arguing that dream science data can enhance theories of sleep function, and sleep-dependent memory research can improve understanding of dreaming.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2014
Brice Martin, Marc Wittmann, Nicolas Franck et al.
87 citations
Disturbances of the minimal self—the immediate sense of being a subject of experience—may be a core feature of schizophrenia, manifesting as an altered sense of presence or difficulty distinguishing self from non-self. These disturbances are not correlated with common cognitive impairments like working-memory or attention disorders. This paper reviews literature suggesting a link between such self-disturbances and alterations in time processing, including both implicit temporal integration windows and explicit duration perception. The authors argue that understanding the relationship between time and the minimal self, along with embodiment issues, requires further research focused on implicit time processing.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 2, 2022
William Brennan, William Brennan, Alexander Belser
86 citations
A new framework called EMBARK provides a transdiagnostic, trans-drug approach to psychotherapy in psychedelic-assisted treatment. Existing models fall into basic support or evidence-based therapy categories, but both lack adequate attention to embodied, relational, and ethical elements. EMBARK addresses these gaps with six clinical domains for supporting therapeutic benefit and four care cornerstones for ethical responsibility, guiding interventions across preparation, medicine, and integration sessions. The model also standardizes therapist training and is already adopted in several clinical trials, aiming to improve research standardization and clarify which factors drive treatment outcomes.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2018
Kenneth Williford, Daniel Bennequin, Karl Friston et al.
85 citations
The Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) combines a projective geometric model of the perspectival structure of conscious experience with a variational free-energy minimization model of active inference, explaining how consciousness serves a cybernetic function: modulating cognitive and affective dynamics to control embodied agents. Projective transformations link geometry and inference, integrating perception, emotion, memory, reasoning, and perspectival imagination to optimize behavior, resilience, and preference satisfaction. The PCM makes empirical predictions, fits a neurocomputational framework, and accounts for pre-reflective self-consciousness, the first-person perspective, the sense of ownership, and social self-consciousness. The authors argue it offers the most complete theory to date of phenomenal selfhood.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 4, 2016
Yung-Jong Eshiah
84 citations
A new theoretical framework, the Nonself Theory (NT), proposes that minimizing or extinguishing the sense of self leads to egolessness and authentic happiness, contrasting with Western psychology's emphasis on strengthening the self. The theory uses the Mandala Model of Self (MMS), which describes the well-functioning self across cultures through four concepts: biology, ideal person, knowledge/wisdom, and action. While the ego pursues desire-driven pleasure to reinforce the self, the nonself approach follows a self-cultivation principle of giving up desires, displaying compassion, practicing meditation, and seeking Buddhist wisdom to overcome the illusion of self. The NT accounts for altruism, mindfulness, peak experiences, and moral conduct, and offers clinical applications and directions for future research.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Thomas Metzinger
84 citations
A metatheoretical paper identifies promising interdisciplinary links between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind, focusing on the MPS-problem—the challenge of isolating and empirically grounding the simplest form of self-consciousness, or minimal phenomenal selfhood. The authors argue that studying bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions can advance this goal. Additional research targets include refining the concept of a first-person perspective at a subcognitive level, exploring commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming, comparing embodiment across dream and wake states, and showing that cognitive corruption and rationality deficits in dreams have more serious implications for epistemology and dream research methodology than usually assumed. The paper proposes a list of innovative research goals to strengthen connections between dream research and philosophy of mind.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2018
Judson A. Brewer, Andrea Ruf, Ariel L Beccia et al.
83 citations
Modern food environments interact with human biology to promote reward-related eating through associative learning, specifically operant conditioning. Standard weight-loss diets that rely on dietary restriction have shown little long-term benefit and may be counterproductive because they do not directly target the habit-based reward-related eating cultivated by positive and negative reinforcement. Mindfulness training that targets reward-based learning may help rewire the eating process. Teaching patients to act on intrinsic rewards—such as enjoying healthy eating, not overeating, and self-compassion—rather than extrinsic rewards like weighing oneself, offers a promising new direction for improving individuals' relationship with food.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2018
Marcin Miłkowski, Robert W. Clowes, Zuzanna Rucińska et al.
82 citations
Several recent 'wide' perspectives on cognition—embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed—are only partially relevant because cognitive science has already moved beyond them toward integrated mechanistic explanations that include internal submechanisms, interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and the environment. These wide perspectives function as research heuristics for building such explanations. The argument draws on developments in the study of mindreading and debates on emotions, showing that cognitive neuroscience has undergone a silent mechanistic revolution, turning from binary oppositions toward integration with the broader field.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
David Luke, Devin B. Terhune
81 citations
A review of published studies finds consistent evidence that serotonin agonists can temporarily produce synaesthesia, a condition where senses blend, such as seeing sounds. However, the research has many methodological flaws and little experimental work has been done. While the findings point to the serotonergic system's role in synaesthesia, the limitations prevent firm conclusions about whether chemicals truly induce genuine synaesthesia.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Bhuvanesh Awasthi
81 citations
Research on meditation's neurobiological correlates often overlooks its philosophical foundations, leading to problems with definition, study design, and outcomes. A satisfactory neuroscience of meditation requires an operational definition that integrates traditional ontological descriptions with modern neurocognitive accounts. To understand how meditation works, it is essential to appraise the philosophical positions underlying its phenomenology in originating traditions. Addressing issues of definition, design, and validity of response measures is crucial for the field's evolution and will provide context for meditation-based interventions.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 6, 2021
Paul T. P. Wong, Gökmen Arslan, Victoria L. Bowers et al.
80 citations
During the COVID-19 pandemic, cultivating self-transcendence—connecting with the true self, others, and something larger—offers a promising path to personal growth and mental health. The paper explains self-transcendence using Frankl's model and Wong's extension, reviews relevant literature, and presents the Self-Transcendence Measure-Brief (STM-B) along with its psychometric history. Empirical evidence indicates that self-transcendence served as a buffer against pandemic suffering, suggesting that fostering this quality can help overcome mental health crises in difficult times.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 29, 2021
José Manuel Rodríguez-arce, Michael James Winkelman
80 citations
Our hominin ancestors likely encountered and ingested psychedelic mushrooms throughout their evolutionary history, supported by evidence from early hominins' paleodiet, primate mycophagy and self-medication, and the biogeography of psilocybin-containing fungi. Psilocybin and similar psychedelics, targeting the serotonin 2A receptor, stimulate flexible cognition, alter emotional processing and social behavior, and may have provided adaptive advantages. Their incidental inclusion in the diet and later integration into rituals could have enhanced sociality, imagination, and suggestibility, aiding adaptation to a socio-cognitive niche. The model proposes four instrumentalization goals: managing distress, enhancing social interaction, facilitating collective rituals, and improving group decision-making, potentially favoring prosociality in human evolution.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Todd E Feinberg, Jon Mallatt
80 citations
Consciousness arises from standard (weak) emergence in physical systems, not from a radical or strong form of emergence. The paper traces emergent features through three progressive levels: life, nervous systems, and special neurobiological features, each increasing in complexity and ultimately leading to phenomenal consciousness. The formulation Life + Special neurobiological features → Phenomenal consciousness expresses this relationship. Consciousness fits the criteria of an emergent property with extreme complexity. The authors conclude that consciousness stems from an organism's personal life combined with a complex nervous system that maximizes emergent neurobiological features, and that no scientific explanatory gap exists between brain and consciousness, though an experiential or epistemic gap remains that is ontologically untroubling.