Alterations of consciousness are critical factors in the diagnosis of epilepsy and seizure disorders. With this alteration in consciousness, some persons report unusual experiences that have been thought to resemble spontaneous mystical experiences. This study was designed to identify and characterize the mystical experiences associated with seizure activity, through the use of a quantitative...
Consciousness is defined and a relation is established between its altered states of consciousness (ASC) and as well to the ways how they are provoked. Phenomenology of ASC is described and related to psychopathology. A short commentary is made about ASC used in some ethnopsychotherapy. Psychotherapy, of western origin, using ASC, specially hypnosis, directed day-dream (reve eleille dirige) of...
NeuropsychologiaApril 2014Guillaume Herbet, Gilles Lafargue, Nicolas Menjot De Champfleur et al.
Neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies including both patients with disorders of consciousness and healthy subjects with modified states of consciousness suggest a crucial role of the medial posteroparietal cortex in conscious information processing. However no direct neuropsychological evidence supports this hypothesis and studies including patients with restricted lesions of this brain...
Recreational drugs are generally used to intentionally alter conscious experience. Long-lasting cannabis users frequently seek this effect as a means to relieve negative affect states. As with conventional anxiolytic drugs, however, changes in subjective feelings may be associated with memory impairment. We have tested whether the use of cannabis, as a psychoactive compound, is associated with...
La ayahuasca es una liana que crece en la Amazonía y con la cual se prepara una sustancia con potentes propiedades psicoactivas, también denominada ayahuasca. Esta sustancia está ligada con la cosmovisión de los pueblos amazónicos que la consideran una planta espiritual y medicinal por las visiones y percepción de los efectos que produce. Las investigaciones en laboratorio muestran que la...
Abstract: In this study, I analyze how economic development projects and the ethnic tourism project in Southwest China have contributed to the failure of the ethnic Kachin villagers to observe taboos involved in shamanic healing rituals. Such a failure, initially as a local response to politico‐economic processes in Southwest China, exacerbates the increasingly poor health status of Kachin...
The origin and development of consciousness is poorly understood. Although it is clearly a naturalistic phenomenon evolved through Darwinian evolution, explaining it in terms of physicochemical, neural, or symbolic mechanisms remains elusive. Here I propose that two steps had to be taken in its evolution. First, living systems evolved an intrinsic goal-directedness by internalizing Darwinian...
Background Sub-anesthetic ketamine infusions may benefit a variety of psychiatric disorders, including addiction. Though ketamine engenders transient alterations in consciousness, it is not known whether these alterations influence efficacy. This analysis evaluates the mystical-type effects of ketamine, which may have therapeutic potential according to prior research, and assesses whether these...
The neural bases of altered consciousness in patients with epilepsy during seizures and at rest have raised significant interest in the last decade. This exponential growth has been supported by the parallel development of techniques and methods to investigate brain function noninvasively with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. In this article, we review the contribution of...