Frontiers in Psychology
July 10, 2013
Jean Askenasy, Joseph Lehmann
Subjectivity, intentionality, self-awareness and will are major components of consciousness in human beings. Changes in consciousness and its content following different brain processes and malfunction have long been studied. Cognitive sciences assume that brain activities have an infrastructure, but there is also evidence that consciousness itself may change this infrastructure. The two-way...
Medical Hypotheses
July 6, 2013
Sérgio Mota-Rolim, John Fontenele Araújo
50 citations
Several lines of evidence converge to the idea that rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) is a good model to foster our understanding of psychosis. Both REMS and psychosis course with internally generated perceptions and lack of rational judgment, which is attributed to a hyperlimbic activity along with hypofrontality. Interestingly, some individuals can become aware of dreaming during REMS, a...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
July 1, 2013
Anette Kjellgren, Kristoffer Jonsson
75 citations
Methoxetamine (MXE), a ketamine analogue, is one of the new "legal highs" sold on the Internet. The aim of this qualitative study was to provide an initial understanding of what characterizes the experiences induced by MXE. Anonymously written reports (33 persons) on the effects of MXE were collected from public Internet forums and analyzed using the Empirical Phenomenological Psychological...
Frontiers in Psychology
June 25, 2013
Isabella Pasqualini, J. Llobera, Olaf Blanke
Over the centuries architectural theory evolved several notions of embodiment, proposing in the nineteenth and twentieth century that architectonic experience is related to physiological responses of the observer. Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of embodiment (or bodily self-consciousness) enable empirical studies of architectonic embodiment. Here, we investigated how architecture...
June 24, 2013
J. Prendergast
Abstract This investigation is a practice-based inquiry. It takes place in the context of writing and editing a novel manuscript: The earth does not get fat (Prendergast 2012). The unpublished novel manuscript is a fractured narrative, a tale told in multiple first-person voices. One of the problems the writer encountered, as the novel developed, was a problem from the perspective of logic and...
Journal of Neuroscience
June 19, 2013
Michael Kometer, André Schmidt, Lutz Jäncke et al.
357 citations
Visual illusions and hallucinations are hallmarks of serotonergic hallucinogen-induced altered states of consciousness. Although the serotonergic hallucinogen psilocybin activates multiple serotonin (5-HT) receptors, recent evidence suggests that activation of 5-HT2A receptors may lead to the formation of visual hallucinations by increasing cortical excitability and altering visual-evoked...
BMC Psychiatry
May 25, 2013
Petr Bob, Petra Selesova, Jiri Raboch et al.
Background: Somatoform dissociation is a specific form of dissociation with somatic manifestations represented in the form of 'pseudoneurological' symptoms due to disturbances or alterations of normal integrated functions of consciousness, memory or identity mainly related to trauma and other psychological stressors. With respect to the distinction between psychological and somatoform...
Neural Plasticity
May 22, 2013
Michael R. Hagerty, Julian Isaacs, Leigh Brasington et al.
We report the first neural recording during ecstatic meditations called jhanas and test whether a brain reward system plays a role in the joy reported. Jhanas are Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) that imply major brain changes based on subjective reports: (1) external awareness dims, (2) internal verbalizations fade, (3) the sense of personal boundaries is altered, (4) attention is highly...
Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research
May 8, 2013
Samarth Shukla, Sourya Acharya, Devendra Rajput
Understanding the true nature of an individual, be it a child or an adult, a male or a female, is almost an impossible task. The vast abyss like behaviour of a human mind is virtually unfathomable. Yet, with the advent of neurosciences, it can be said that we, as the medical fraternity, have been in a position to decipher a considerable part of the human mind. This review accepts the fact that...
Anthropology of Consciousness
May 1, 2013
Nathan Porath
AbstractAnthropologists working on altered states of consciousness (ASC) have suggested that we should do away with psychologizing concepts and use people's own terms for these experiences. With material drawn from the Orang Sakai of Sumatra this paper shows that practitioners who utilizeASCdo recognize the alteration of states of awareness as preconditions for numinous interactions. Also...