Currently different classes of psychoactive substances are easily available for abuse, including several hundred novel psychoactive substances (NPS). Some of these drugs occur naturally in plants and animals or are chemically modified from plant or animal compounds and have been abused by humans over millennia. Recently, the occurrence of a new "drug culture" (e.g., psychonauts) who consume a...
The new psychoactive substances phenomenon continues to represent a considerable public health challenge. Synthetic cathinones are β-keto amphetamine analogues, also known as legal highs, research chemicals, bath salts. These drugs have surfaced as a popular alternative to other illicit drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, MDMA, and methamphetamine, due to their potent psychostimulant and...
Both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrophysiological recordings have revealed that resting-state functional connectivity is temporally variable in human brain. Combined full-band electroencephalography-fMRI (fbEEG-fMRI) studies have shown that infraslow (<.1 Hz) fluctuations in EEG scalp potential are correlated with the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI signals and...
With an extreme range of terms for psychedelic drugsfrom "schizotoxic" to "entheogenic" -"psychedelic," nonetheless remains the most salient one.These substances manifest or disclose aspects of the mind of those who take them as well as the mind of those who study them.Proponents for the innumerable terms for these drugs are all able to adduce supportive evidence.Necessarily, this evidence is a...
I The Center for Drug Addiction Treatment and Research on Traditional Medicines -Takiwasi, is a 25 years' Non-Governmental-Organization (NGO) specialized in the treatment of drug addiction and mental health disorders based on modern psychotherapy and biomedical approach, as well as the use of herbal Traditional Amazonian Medicine (TAM). Part of this latter therapeutic resources are obtained...
The fact that dreams occur when waking consciousness is diminished is one way of understanding Sigmund Freud&s;s dictum that dreams are the via regia to the unconscious. Most dreams are reported just prior to waking and the average dream lasts for several minutes. Although the phenomenology of dreams has been exhaustively catalogued, no overarching theory of dreams has been developed. C. G....
The Freudian approach seems to depend on &s;the progress of neurological, psychological and pathological knowledge&s;. Hereby, medical knowledge is at once the transcendental limit of psychoanalysis, and also the condition of its possibility. Indeed, Freud arrived at the threshold of the psychical unconscious by the rigour of his neurological reasoning. The chapter aims to illustrate this...
BACKGROUND: Neuroimaging studies imply that the regular use of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), the major constituent of ecstasy pills, alters the brain's serotonergic system in a dose-dependent manner. However, the relevance of these findings remains unclear due to limited knowledge about the ecstasy/MDMA use pattern of real-life users. AIMS: We examined the representativeness of...
To meet specific goals, athletes frequently have to deal with several demands that may deplete their limited self-control resources, which may in turn negatively affect their subsequent performance in a wide variety of sports-related tasks (e.g., coordinative, psychological, and physical tasks). Mindfulness meditation may be beneficial for mechanisms involved during self-control exertion,...
When we dream, it is often assumed, we are isolated from the external environment. It is also commonly believed that dreams can be, at times, accurate, convincing replicas of waking experience. Here I analyse some of the implications of this view for an enactive theory of conscious experience. If dreams are, as described by the received view, “inactive”, or “cranially envatted” whilst...