Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2017
Anne Giersch, Aaron Mishara
45 citations
Disturbances in unconscious, automatic processing may contribute to abnormal conscious experiences in schizophrenia. Three lines of research—on spatial frequency processing, unpleasant information, and time-event structure—show impairments at both unconscious and conscious levels. The authors argue that examining unconscious physiological and automatic processing separately from conscious processing is a necessary first step to understanding how conscious distortions emerge. Phenomenological psychiatry supports this view, linking impairments in the minimal self—a tacit, non-verbal sense of bodily presence shaped by unconscious processes—to clinical symptoms. Alterations in these unconscious mechanisms may affect the feeling of being a unique individual, justifying a focus on unconscious processes distinct from conscious ones.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 22, 2018
Liat Aviram, Nirit Soffer-Dudek
44 citations
Lucid dreaming—awareness of dreaming while asleep—has been linked to both well-being and psychopathology, possibly because previous studies conflated dream control with lucidity. A new questionnaire (FILD) assessed four dimensions of lucid dreaming: frequency, intensity (control, activity, certainty), emotional valence, and use of induction techniques. Among 187 undergraduates, lucid dream frequency alone showed no connection to psychopathology, but higher intensity and positive emotions were linked to fewer symptoms. In contrast, deliberately trying to induce lucid dreams was associated with more psychopathology and sleep problems, and predicted increases in dissociation and schizotypy symptoms over two months. Lucid dreaming is not inherently beneficial; its effects depend on specific characteristics, and deliberate induction may carry risks.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2017
Andrea Schiavio, Dylan Van der Schyff, Silke Kruse-Weber et al.
44 citations
The paper argues that early musical behaviors in infants can be understood through the 4E approach to cognition—embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Drawing on observational research by François Delalande and Piaget's play stages, the authors introduce "teleomusicality," goal-directed behaviors for exploring and playing with sounds, distinct from earlier "protomusicality" (music-like utterances and emotional interactions not focused on sound itself). A shift from protomusicality to teleomusicality occurs between 6 and 10 months of age, marked by an attentive shift. The framework includes Original Teleomusical Acts (OTAs) seen in exploratory behaviors and Constituted Teleomusical Acts (CTAs), which involve more complex goal-directed chains for musical activity.
Frontiers in Psychology
November 21, 2016
Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, José R. Naranjo, Stefan Schmidt
44 citations
Long-term practitioners of loving-kindness meditation show a reduced difference in brain responses to their own face versus a close other's face, measured by the P300 event-related potential. In 12 meditators and 12 matched controls, the typical pattern of a larger P300 for self than other was smaller in meditators at parietal brain sites. Among meditators, more meditation practice correlated with smaller self-other differences, and across both groups, smaller differences were linked to higher self-reported compassion. A brief loving-kindness meditation induction did not further alter this brain response. The findings suggest that extensive meditation practice may blur the neural distinction between self and other and is associated with greater compassion.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 14, 2023
Juuso Kähönen
43 citations
Psychedelic experiences can shift people's values toward self-transcendence—greater appreciation of beauty, pro-environmental attitudes, and prosocial behavior. This article presents a philosophical-psychological framework explaining how self-transcendent experiences (STEs) drive these value changes. Drawing on Iris Murdoch's concept of 'unselfing,' the author argues that reducing egocentric concerns widens attention and shifts evaluation away from self-interest. Unselfing diminishes biased salience and attunes individuals to values beyond the self. Psychedelics temporarily enhance access to self-transcendent values, but contextual factors influence whether changes persist. The framework is supported by empirical connections between egocentricity, STEs, and self-transcendent values, plus phenomenological analysis of psychedelic experiences.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 18, 2022
Lin Zhu, Long Li, Xiaozhi Li et al.
43 citations
Mind-body exercises such as yoga and mindfulness significantly reduce PTSD symptoms, depression, and anxiety in people with PTSD. A meta-analysis of 16 randomized controlled trials found a moderate effect on PTSD symptoms (standard mean difference = -0.41), depression (-0.35), and anxiety (-0.31). The most effective regimen for PTSD symptoms in patients under 45 was 60-150 minutes of mindfulness per session for 8-16 weeks. For depression, 150-180 minutes of yoga once weekly was effective. The optimal type, frequency, and duration for anxiety could not be determined due to limited trials. Mind-body exercises are recommended as an adjunct treatment, but more rigorous trials are needed.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 3, 2021
Daniel W Grupe, Jonah L. Stoller, Carmen Alonso et al.
43 citations
An 8-week mindfulness intervention for police officers led to self-reported improvements in psychological distress, mental health symptoms, and sleep quality, with gains maintained at 3-month follow-up. The mindfulness group also had a significantly lower cortisol awakening response at follow-up compared to a waitlist control group. No effects were found on hair cortisol, diurnal cortisol slope, or inflammatory markers. The findings suggest mindfulness training may buffer against long-term consequences of chronic stress in policing.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Edmund T Rolls
43 citations
The global workspace hypothesis of consciousness faces problems, including how global the workspace must be for consciousness to emerge. Carruthers's (2019) version, which excludes conceptual representations and reduces phenomenal consciousness to physical processes, is also challenged. A different levels-of-explanation approach to the brain-mind relation is advocated. An alternative theory proposes a computational system using Higher Order Syntactic Thoughts (HOST) to perform credit assignment on first-order thoughts of multi-step plans by manipulating symbols in syntactic working memory. This provides an evolutionary reason for such a module, with which phenomenal consciousness is associated. The HOST approach offers advantages over global workspace and Higher Order Thought theories, and may involve prefrontal cortex regions, especially the left inferior frontal gyrus.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Jake H. Davis, David R. Vago
43 citations
Contemplative science has grown rapidly but mostly ignores the original soteriological goal of enlightenment, focusing instead on stress reduction and clinical health. This is a serious oversight because mindfulness practices in traditional Buddhist contexts aim at profound transformation across ethical, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive domains. Short-term interventions as brief as a few sessions already produce neuroplastic changes, suggesting that even secular practitioners may develop states and traits linked to progress toward enlightenment. To properly assess meditative interventions, it is essential to investigate whether enlightenment can be traced to specific neural correlates, cognition, or behavior.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 4, 2014
Robin Carhart-Harris, David Nutt
42 citations
A commentary argues that dreaming is not a unique state of consciousness but rather a form of imaginative experience that shares core features with waking imagination. The author contends that dreams and waking fantasies are both products of the same cognitive processes, specifically the default mode network and memory consolidation mechanisms. The piece suggests that the vividness and narrative structure of dreams arise from the same neural dynamics that generate daydreams and creative thought, challenging the traditional view of dreaming as a separate or altered state of consciousness.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Enzo Tagliazucchi, Marion Behrens, Helmut Laufs
42 citations
Deep sleep, marked by reduced sensory activity and loss of conscious awareness, offers a natural setting for testing theories of consciousness. This review examines recent fMRI studies of spontaneous brain activity during sleep, linking findings to the global workspace theory, information integration theory, and the dynamical core hypothesis. The authors highlight a shift from studying evoked responses to resting-state activity and emphasize the need for dynamic analysis of functional interactions over time. They also stress the importance of experimentally verifying reduced or absent conscious content during the deepest sleep stages.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 27, 2022
Lucie Bréchet, Christoph M. Michel
41 citations
Conscious experience feels continuous but actually consists of brief, discrete brain states lasting 60–120 milliseconds, called EEG microstates. These stable scalp electric field patterns, measured with high temporal resolution, may represent the basic building blocks of thought. Altered states of consciousness—including sleep, anesthesia, meditation, and psychiatric conditions—change the dynamics of these microstates. This perspective argues that studying EEG microstates can reveal underlying features of self-consciousness, summarizing recent findings on microstate alterations during mind-wandering, meditation, sleep, and anesthesia.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 8, 2021
Heiner Stuke, Elisabeth Kress, Veith Weilnhammer et al.
41 citations
People with stronger tendencies toward hallucinations and delusions are more likely to perceive faces in visual noise and to detect invisible direct gaze, supporting the theory that psychosis involves overweighing high-level prior expectations over sensory evidence. In 39 healthy individuals varying in psychosis proneness, the tendency to see faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.50) and delusion proneness (r = 0.46). The tendency to detect invisible direct gaze also correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.43) but not conclusively with delusion proneness. These findings suggest that overly strong priors for socially meaningful stimuli may represent an early processing alteration in psychosis.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Larraitz N Zumeta, Pablo Castro-Abril, Lander Méndez et al.
40 citations
Participation in International Women's Day demonstrations on 8 March 2020 is associated with positive personal and collective well-being outcomes, mediated by psychological mechanisms including perceived emotional synchrony, behavioral synchrony, and transcendent emotions. A cross-cultural survey of 2,854 people from nine Latin American and European countries compared demonstration participants with non-demonstrators who followed via media. Female and non-binary participants reported stronger effects than males. Meta-analyses showed perceived emotional synchrony consistently linked to both proximal mechanisms and well-being measures. Sequential moderation analyses indicated that the proposed mechanisms fully mediated the effects of participation on affective well-being, personal growth beliefs, social integration, collective efficacy, and intentions to support women's rights, consistent with a Durkheimian collective ritual framework.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Catherine Read, Agnes Szokolszky
40 citations
Ecological Psychology and Enactivism both oppose representation-based cognitive science but differ fundamentally in their theories of sensation and perception. Ecological theory holds that perception is not based on sensation, a point illustrated through retinal image theories and perception in single-celled organisms. The paper emphasizes organism-environment mutuality, contrasting it with the structural coupling of sensations and motor behavior in Enactivism. Ecological-phenomenological methods arise from mutualism, linking Gibson's visual kinesthesis to Merleau-Ponty's lived body. The authors conclude that convergence is impossible due to conflicting assumptions, but cross-fertilization between the approaches is possible and desirable.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 31, 2017
Cedric Galetzka
40 citations
The review traces how cognitive science has grappled with the symbol grounding problem—the difficulty of explaining how abstract symbols acquire meaning. Embodied theories propose that meaning arises from sensorimotor experiences, and concrete action-related words indeed show consistent sensorimotor activation. However, abstract concepts remain a challenge for fully embodied accounts, as sensorimotor activation alone does not seem sufficient to explain them. Integration areas like convergence zones or the 'hub and spoke' model appear to be the most promising candidates for bridging the gap between concrete and abstract concepts and for unifying the field. The review identifies key milestones, fundamental challenges, and directions for future research.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 22, 2016
Chun-Yu Kuo, Yei-Yu Yeh
40 citations
Free walking boosts creative divergent thinking in both young and older adults, and the effect depends on bidirectional body-mind links—not just any movement. In two experiments, young participants who walked freely generated more original, fluent, and flexible uses for chopsticks than those who walked a fixed rectangular path or followed someone else's path. Older adults randomly assigned to free walking also outperformed those on a rectangular path, and their originality matched or exceeded that of young adults on the fixed path. The findings indicate that the bidirectional connection between proprioceptive-motor experience and abstract concepts enhances creative thinking across age groups.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 21, 2015
Thomas Rabeyron, Tianna Loose
40 citations
Anomalous or exceptional experiences, often interpreted as paranormal, can be better understood at the intersection of psychoanalysis and cognitive neuroscience. Three research lines are discussed: these experiences often emerge as non-pathological hallucinations in reaction to negative life events; they involve traumatic aspects and altered states of consciousness; and they may result from a hypersensitivity linked to increased psychic permeability. The authors conclude that anomalous experiences serve as primary forms of symbolization and transformation of subjective experience, particularly during or after traumatic situations.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 16, 2021
Pascal Michael, David Luke, Oliver Robinson
39 citations
In a naturalistic field study, experienced users of the psychedelic N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) were observed taking the drug at home (40–75 mg inhaled) and then interviewed immediately afterward. Thematic analysis of 36 interviews revealed that nearly all participants (94%) reported encountering other 'beings' with distinct roles, appearances, and forms of communication, while every participant described emerging into other 'worlds' with immersive scenes and contents. These findings systematically detail the hyper-real, otherworldly content of the breakthrough DMT experience and connect it to phenomena such as alien abduction accounts, shamanic journeys, and near-death experiences.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 13, 2021
Sascha Thal, Stephen Bright, Jason M. Sharbanee et al.
39 citations
This narrative review, the first in a series on appropriate conduct in substance-assisted psychotherapy (SAPT), outlines preconditions and theoretical knowledge valuable for therapeutic practice. It discusses ethical considerations and the spiritual emphasis of SAPT approaches, and summarizes current methods, models, and concepts of psychological mechanisms and therapeutic effects. Similarities between models and potential mediators for therapeutic effects are highlighted. The review argues that the therapeutic effect of SAPT may be mediated by intra- and interpersonal variables within the therapeutic context rather than specific therapeutic models per se. It provides a basis for developing future investigations, therapeutic models, and training programs, while discussing limitations and future directions.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Miguel Segundo-Ortin
39 citations
Agency—the capacity to act—remains a puzzle for non-representationalist theories of mind. Ecological psychologists and enactivists both locate agency in the organism–environment relation but emphasize different aspects. This theoretical paper proposes a radical embodied account that merges the two approaches: enactivism explains how acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, biasing which affordances an agent acts upon, while ecological psychology shows how perceptual information actualizes those schemes without requiring internal representations, inferences, or computations. The account suggests that socio-cultural norms shape agency by influencing this ecological-enactive dynamic.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 25, 2022
Yun‐Chen Chang, Chang‐Fang Chiu, Chih-Kai Wang et al.
38 citations
An Internet-based Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (iMBSR) program improved anxiety, body image, and self-efficacy in women with breast cancer in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixty-seven women were assigned to a 6-week iMBSR program or a waitlist control group. iMBSR did not significantly reduce depression or stress compared to the control group, but it did improve anxiety with a medium effect size and showed large benefits for body image and self-efficacy. The findings suggest that iMBSR can support mental health and well-being in this population, and that internet-based clinical health education may be useful during a pandemic.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 18, 2020
Thomas Rabeyron
38 citations
The replicability crisis in psychology was influenced by nine experiments that were presented as evidence for precognition. This paper argues that the debate around those experiments offers an opportunity to develop original thinking about psychology and replicability. After discussing psi and scientific epistemology, the authors describe a paradox that questions the suitability of the scientific method for psi research, highlighting problems in how such experiments are conducted and potential consequences for mainstream psychology. Two classical experiments—the Ganzfeld protocol and the Bem studies—are analyzed to illustrate the paradox. Mainstream research is examined in the context of the replication crisis, decline effect, and questionable research practices. The conclusion proposes future research directions and emphasizes the heuristic value of psi studies for psychology.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 8, 2016
Natália B. Mota, Adara Resende, Sérgio Mota-Rolim et al.
38 citations
People with psychosis report more control over their lucid dreams than non-psychotic individuals, contrary to the hypothesis that lucid dreaming might be therapeutically beneficial for psychotic patients. Among 45 subjects with psychotic symptoms (25 with schizophrenia, 20 with bipolar disorder) and 28 non-psychotic controls, psychotic lucid dreamers reported controlling their dreams more frequently (67% of schizophrenia and 73% of bipolar patients) than non-psychotic lucid dreamers (23% of controls). However, lucid dreamers with psychosis showed no clinical advantage, even on measures of judgment and insight. The findings suggest psychosis may enhance the ability to control internal reality, and that training lucid dreaming in psychotic populations could potentially strengthen delusions and hallucinations rather than provide therapeutic benefit.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Helané Wahbeh, Dean Radin, Cedric Cannard et al.
37 citations
Consciousness remains a profound mystery. Mainstream neuroscience assumes it arises solely from brain neurons, but the origin of subjective experience (qualia) is unexplained. David Chalmers called this the 'hard problem.' This review argues the hard problem may stem from flawed materialist assumptions. It examines phenomena suggesting consciousness can extend beyond the brain and body in space and time, called non-local properties. These effects vaguely resemble quantum entanglement, but mechanisms are highly speculative. The authors suggest post-materialistic models may be needed to resolve the conceptual impasse.