Revista Brasileira de Plantas Medicinais
2011
Priscila Alves de Souza
15 citations
Dentre as inúmeras plantas alucinógenas utilizadas por populações indígenas da bacia amazônica, talvez nenhuma delas seja mais interessante ou complexa em termos botânicos, químicos ou etnográficos, como a bebida alucinógena conhecida como ayahuasca, hoasca, medicina, vegetal ou daime. Ayahuasca é bebida psicotrópica da América do Sul de destacado uso no xamanismo de muitas tribos indígenas da...
The Primitive Mind and Modern Man
December 30, 2010
John Alan Cohan
53 citations
Trance and possession states are a worldwide phenomena, usually voluntarily induced. Practically everyone has at one time or another fallen into a trance or possession state, either spontaneously or induced by drugs or by circumstances such as extreme stress, physical exertion or deprivation. In the West, trance and possession phenomena are for the most part associated with bad things-demonic...
PLoS One
December 8, 2010
Hui Kuang, Longnian Lin, Joe Z. Tsien
Ketamine is a widely used dissociative anesthetic which can induce some psychotic-like symptoms and memory deficits in some patients during the post-operative period. To understand its effects on neural population dynamics in the brain, we employed large-scale in vivo ensemble recording techniques to monitor the activity patterns of simultaneously recorded hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells and...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
December 1, 2010
Frederick R Dannaway
24 citations
This paper seeks to emphasize what may be the most primary mode of altering consciousness in the ancient world: namely, the burning of substances for inhalation in enclosed areas. While there is abundant literature on archaic uses of entheogenic plants, the literature on psychoactive incenses is quite deficient. From the tents of nomadic tribes to the small meditation rooms of Taoist adepts,...
arXiv (Cornell University)
November 22, 2010
Chetan S. Mandayam Nayakar, R. Srikanth
preprint
Both deterministic and indeterministic physical laws are incompatible with control by genuine (non-illusory) free will. We propose that an indeterministic dynamics can be $weakly$ compatible with free will (FW), whereby the latter acts by altering the probability distribution over allowed outcomes. In the quantum physical world, such a FW can collapse the wave function, introducing deviations...
Anesthesiology
November 1, 2010
UnCheol Lee, Gabjin Oh, Seunghwan Kim et al.
Background: Loss of consciousness is an essential feature of general anesthesia. Although alterations of neural networks during anesthesia have been identified in the spatial domain, there has been relatively little study of temporal organization. Methods: Ten healthy male volunteers were anesthetized with an induction dose of propofol on two separate occasions. The duration of network...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Elaine K. Perry, Valerie L. Laws
Among agents which alter the boundary between conscious and non conscious cognition, the ritualistic use of plant species (often in a spiritual context, hence ‘plants of the gods’) provides an example of long-standing empirical knowledge subsequently verified by scientific (chemical, pharmacological and psychological) evidence. Based on such an impressive record of acquired knowledge,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Biyu J. He, Marcus E. Raichle
We propose a neurophysiological hypothesis on the emergence of consciousness, which postulates that the slow cortical potential (SCP) recorded from the surface of the brain provides an index of the activities of superficial-layer pyramidal neurons that directly contribute to the emergence of conscious awareness. This hypothesis is supported by existing data from manipulations of conscious...
Missiology: An International Review
October 1, 2010
Jim Harries
Context-dependence of meaning resulting in serious loss of content of theological language between the West and Africa, leads to the conclusion that genuine African theology must occur using African languages. To verify this conclusion, this article considers the use of distinct labels for reference to God arising from different “cultures,” followed by a study of altered states of consciousness...
Drug and Alcohol Dependence
October 1, 2010
Matthew J. Baggott, Earth Erowid, Fire Erowid et al.
78 citations
There is growing use of Salvia divinorum (SD), a psychoactive plant that produces hallucinogen-like effects through a kappa opioid receptor (KOR) mechanism. Little is known about KOR agonist effects in humans and about users of SD. To characterize the reasons, methods, and reported consequences of SD use. Individuals reading SD-related pages of a drug-information website were invited to...