Cambridge University Press eBooks
January 6, 2011
Wesley J Wildman
INTRODUCTION Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture was recently launched with great fanfare, thanks to a controversial article in its very first issue. Benny Shanon, a Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published a speculative hypothesis about “biblical entheogens” (Shanon 2008). This hypothesis involves Moses ingesting mind-altering...
Progress in Brain Research
2011
Athena Demertzi, Andrea Soddu, M-E Faymonville et al.
Resting state fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) acquisitions are characterized by low-frequency spontaneous activity in a default mode network (encompassing medial brain areas and linked to self-related processes) and an anticorrelated "extrinsic" system (encompassing lateral frontoparietal areas and modulated via external sensory stimulation). In order to better determine the...
PLoS One
2011
Sakari Kallio, Jukka Hyönä, Antti Revonsuo et al.
Hypnosis has had a long and controversial history in psychology, psychiatry and neurology, but the basic nature of hypnotic phenomena still remains unclear. Different theoretical approaches disagree as to whether or not hypnosis may involve an altered mental state. So far, a hypnotic state has never been convincingly demonstrated, if the criteria for the state are that it involves some...
Unitn-eprints PhD
2011
Lisandro Kaunitz
What we consciously see in our everyday life is not an exact copy of the information that our eyes receive from the external world. Our brain actively elaborates and transforms the light that impinges onto the two dimensional surface of our retinas to create complex three dimensional scenes full of colorful objects of different shapes and sizes, motion and depth. Our visual perception is not a...
Brain
January 2011
Dominic H Ffytche, Semir Zeki
A compelling single case report of visual awareness (visual qualia) without primary visual cortex would be sufficient to refute the hypothesis that the primary visual cortex and the back-projections to it are necessary for conscious visual experience. In a previous study, we emphasized the presence of crude visual awareness in Patient G.Y., with a lesion of the primary visual cortex, who is...
Behavioural Neurology
2011
Andrea E. Cavanna, Fizzah Ali
24 citations
Alterations in consciousness are central to epileptic manifestations, and involve changes in both the level of awareness and subjective content of consciousness. Generalised seizures are characterised by minimal responsiveness and subjective experience whereas simple and complex partial seizures demonstrate more selective disturbances. Despite variations in ictal origin, behaviour and...
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis
2011
Ronald J Pekala
7 citations
Wagstaff (2010) reviews and comments on two recent papers by Pekala et al. (2010a, 2010b), concluding that "many of the problems relating to the definition and conceptualization of terms associated with hypnosis... may stem from insufficient attention to the role of suggestion and expectancies in producing hypnotic phenomena, and an over-reliance on the role of the procedures and mechanics of...
RUNE
2011
Natasha M. Loi
This thesis set out to investigate the role of dissociation in the human response to traumatic events. The overarching aim was to determine if different forms of exposure to trauma are related to an individual's ability to employ dissociations in experience to self-regulate emotional responses. The role of individual differences in the related personality traits of absorption, fantasy...
cIRcle (University of British Columbia)
2011
Wolfgang G. Jilek
This study is based on analysis of ethnographic literature; personal observation of contemporary spirit dance and healing ceremonies in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia; individual interviews with Coast Salish Indian leaders, ritualists, and other spirit ceremonial participants; and on five years of close contact with the Upper Stalo Indians as physician and regional mental health officer....
PEARL
2011
Diana Slattery
1 citation
Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are encountered, their...