Hypnosis has been mysterious and controversial for hundreds of years. The legacy of this history is still with us. The philosophy of Ryle and of Dennett argue that the usual emphasis placed on states of consciousness and privileged access is misplaced. Cognitive neuroscience supports this by showing that unconscious processes explain much of our functioning and that what we call consciousness...
This article explores the relations among three forms of representations (artistic, mental, and neural) and immersion, considered as an altered state of consciousness, in the context of literary reading. We first define immersive reading as an intensification of our embodied experience of literary representation, in accordance to neuropsychological studies about embodied cognition. We further...
There is an expanding use of new psychoactive substances containing synthetic cannabinoids in the last years. This study was conducted to identify the epidemiologic data of acute and chronic toxicity by synthetic cannabinoids in Upper Egypt patients. All cases included in the presenting study were fifty males. Most users of synthetic cannabinoids were in the adolescence and middle age group...
Clinical ToxicologyMarch 28, 2022S. Ivory, J. Rotella, Jennifer L. Schumann et al.
Abstract Introduction 25B-NBOH is a synthetic hallucinogen closely related to the “NBOMe” family of N-substituted 2C phenethylamine derivatives. There have been no published reports documenting the clinical toxicity of NBOH derivatives. Case series Five patients presented to the Emergency Department (ED) with altered conscious state following exposure to powder sold as “powdered LSD” at a...
Introduction Although the topic of consciousness is both mysterious and controversial, psychedelic drugs are popularly believed to provide unique insights into the nature of consciousness despite a lack of empirical evidence. Methods This study addresses the question of whether psychedelics change the attribution of consciousness to a range of living and non-living entities. A survey was...
There has been a renewed interest in the potential use of psychedelics for the treatment of psychiatric conditions. Nevertheless, little is known about the mechanism of action and molecular pathways influenced by ayahuasca use in humans. Therefore, for the first time, our study aims to investigate the human metabolomics signature after consumption of a psychedelic, ayahuasca, and its connection...
Abstract Rationale LSD is the prototypical psychedelic. Despite a clear central role of the 5HT 2a receptor in its mechanism of action, the contributions of additional receptors for which it shows affinity and agonist activity remain unclear. Objectives We employed receptor-enriched analysis of functional connectivity by targets (REACT) to explore differences in functional connectivity (FC)...
Psychedelics are drugs capable of eliciting profound alterations in the subjective experience of the users, sometimes with long-lasting consequences. Because of this, psychedelic research tends to focus on human subjects, given their capacity to construct detailed narratives about the contents of their consciousness experiences. In spite of its relevance, the interaction between serotonergic...
The fragmented sleep, fragmented mind hypothesis has associated sleep disturbances and dissociative states in subjects with dissociative traits, as supported by neurophysiological theories of consciousness stating that altered states might result from an altered functional interaction among brain modules due to inefficient sleep processes.
The debate about the necessary involvement of any form of self-consciousness in conscious experience has recently shifted its focus to the question of whether there are totally selfless states of consciousness (TSSC). The primary source of evidence for the existence of TSSC is the subjective reports from subjects who either are currently undergoing or have undergone altered experiences such as...