Equinox Publishing Ltd. eBooks
October 30, 2012
G. John
93 citations
Born from extensive international research, Global Tribe documents a little understood global dance culture that has mushroomed all over the world since its beginnings in diverse psychedelic music scenes flourishing in Goa, India, in the 1970s and 1980s. From small parties to major international events such as Portugal’s Boom Festival, the paramount expression of this movement has been the...
Journal of Neuroscience
October 24, 2012
Jaan Aru, Nikolai Axmacher, Anne T A Do Lam et al.
Which neural processes underlie our conscious experience? One theoretical view argues that the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) reside in local activity in sensory cortices. Accordingly, local category-specific gamma band responses in visual cortex correlate with conscious perception. However, as most studies manipulated conscious perception by altering the amount of sensory evidence,...
Experimental Neurobiology
September 1, 2012
Seung-Hyun Jin, C. Chung
Consciousness has become a legitimate theme of neuroscientific discourse over the last two decades. Neuroscientific investigation seeking neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) has ranged from the neuronal level to the system level. Regarding system level studies, there is a large body of evidence supporting the idea that functional connectivity studies can help in examining NCC. Functional...
Journal of Forensic Sciences
August 17, 2012
Cristiana Gambelunghe, Remo Marsili, Kyriaki Aroni et al.
25 citations
Abstract Peyote, a cactus containing the hallucinogen mescaline, is used to induce altered states of consciousness in religious ceremonies or for recreational purpose. This study reports a case of an underage boy suspected of mescaline abuse. For this purpose, we analyzed a dark green liquid sample found in the bedroom of the boy whose urine and hair samples were collected shortly after the...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Consciousness in Interaction is an interdisciplinary collection with contributions from philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and historians of philosophy. It revolves around the idea that consciousness emerges from, and impacts on, our skilled interactions with the natural and social context. Section one discusses how phenomenal consciousness and subjective selfhood are grounded...
The open neuroimaging journal
July 27, 2012
A. Fingelkurts, Sergio Bagnato, Cristina Boccagni et al.
The default mode network (DMN) has been consistently activated across a wide variety of self-related tasks, leading to a proposal of the DMN’s role in self-related processing. Indeed, there is limited fMRI evidence that the functional connectivity within the DMN may underlie a phenomenon referred to as self-awareness. At the same time, none of the known studies have explicitly investigated...
Università del Salento
July 24, 2012
Francesco Tarantino
The hypnotic trance is common to various altered states of consciousness including: the ecstasies, the stigmata, miraculous healings, hallucinations, OBEs (out of body experiences), the hypnagogic state, near-death experiences, mystical death and the lucid dream. The author after analyzing the aforementioned states of consciousness, focuses on hypnosis and trance, exposing his own model,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Stephanie Huette, Michael J. Spivey
This chapter explores the consequences of treating consciousness as a fuzzy dynamical system. A fuzzy dynamical system is one in which labeled concepts and percepts are altered as a function of context and conditions, and these changes occur continuously in time. We offer speculations on the groundwork for a consciousness state space in which the sets of trajectories over time form tube-like...
July 1, 2012
M. Winkelman
This article reviews the origins of the concept of the shaman and the principal sources of controversy regarding the existence and nature of shamanism. Confusion regarding the nature of shamanism is clarified with a review of research providing empirical support for a cross-cultural concept of shamans that distinguishes them from related shamanistic healers. The common shamanistic universals...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
July 1, 2012
Mitchell B. Liester, James I. Prickett
78 citations
Ayahuasca is a medicinal plant mixture utilized by indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon River basin for healing purposes. The "vine of the soul" or "vine of death," as it is known in South America, contains a combination of monoamine oxidase inhibitors and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). When ingested together, these medicines produce profound alterations in consciousness. Increasingly,...