Psychological Bulletin
March 1, 2014
Peter Sedlmeier, Juliane Eberth, Marcus Schwarz
We are grateful to Orme-Johnson and Dillbeck (2014) for raising several potential methodological concerns they have with our meta-analysis of the psychological effects of meditation and for thereby providing us with the opportunity to clarify these points. Orme-Johnson and Dillbeck raised 4 points that they believed might have led to unfair treatment of studies that reported the effects of...
March 1, 2014
Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose
384 citations
The nature of consciousness, the mechanism by which it occurs in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown. We proposed in the mid 1990's that consciousness depends on biologically 'orchestrated' coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum processes correlate with, and regulate, neuronal synaptic and membrane activity,...
Brain and Behavior
February 12, 2014
Kathleen A. Garrison, Dustin Scheinost, R. Todd Constable et al.
80 citations
Loving kindness is a form of meditation involving directed well-wishing, typically supported by the silent repetition of phrases such as "may all beings be happy," to foster a feeling of selfless love. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the neural substrate of loving kindness meditation in experienced meditators and novices. We first assessed group differences in blood...
Frontiers in Psychology
February 5, 2014
Andreas Keller
Although many responses to odorous stimuli are mediated without olfactory information being consciously processed, some olfactory behaviors require conscious information processing. I will here contrast situations in which olfactory information is processed consciously to situations in which it is processed non-consciously. This contrastive analysis reveals that conscious information processing...
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
February 3, 2014
Eric L Garland, Eron G Manusov, Brett Froeliger et al.
Objective: Opioid pharmacotherapy is now the leading treatment for chronic pain, a problem that affects nearly one third of the U.S. population. Given the dramatic rise in prescription opioid misuse and opioid-related mortality, novel behavioral interventions are needed. The purpose of this study was to conduct an early-stage randomized controlled trial of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery...
Archives of Toxicology
February 2014
Daniel José Barbosa, João Paulo Capela, Renata Silva et al.
3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; "ecstasy") is a recreational hallucinogenic drug of abuse known to elicit neurotoxic properties. Hepatic formation of neurotoxic metabolites is thought to play a major role in MDMA-related neurotoxicity, though the mechanisms involved are still unclear. Here, we studied the neurotoxicity mechanisms and stability of MDMA and 6 of its major human...
Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior
February 2014
Peter J Winsauer, Jessie L Sutton
This study examined whether chronic Δ(9)-THC during early adulthood would produce the same hormonally-dependent deficits in learning that are produced by chronic Δ(9)-THC during adolescence. To do this, either sham-operated (intact) or ovariectomized (OVX) female rats received daily saline or 5.6 mg/kg of Δ(9)-THC i.p. for 40 days during early adulthood. Following chronic administration, and a...
arXiv Preprint Archive
February 1, 2014
Eray Özkural
preprint
We frame the question of what kind of subjective experience a brain simulation would have in contrast to a biological brain. We discuss the brain prosthesis thought experiment. We evaluate how the experience of the brain simulation might differ from the biological, according to a number of hypotheses about experience and the properties of simulation. Then, we identify finer questions relating...
Behavioural Pharmacology
February 1, 2014
Kellianne J. Richardson, Keith L Shelton
The abuse-related behavioral effects produced by nitrous oxide (N₂O) gas have been suggested as being unique compared with other abused inhalants. The drug discrimination paradigm in animals can be used to study subjective effects of drugs in humans and to test this hypothesis. The goals of the present experiment were to establish N₂O discrimination in mice and to compare its discriminative...
Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
February 1, 2014
Patrick Thurner, Anna Stary-Weinzinger, Hend Gafar et al.
41 citations
Ibogaine is a psychoactive indole alkaloid. Its use as an antiaddictive agent has been accompanied by QT prolongation and cardiac arrhythmias, which are most likely caused by human ether a go-go-related gene (hERG) potassium channel inhibition. Therefore, we studied in detail the interaction of ibogaine with hERG channels heterologously expressed in mammalian kidney tsA-201 cells. Currents...