Medical Hypotheses
April 1, 2002
M Fritzsche
Schizophrenia, intoxication with tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-THC), and cannabis psychosis induce characteristic time and space distortions suggesting a common psychotic dysfunction. Since genetic research into schizophrenia has led into disappointing dead ends, the present study is focusing on this phenotype. It is shown that information theory can account for the dynamical basis of higher...
2002
M. Simões
The main physiological and induced Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs) aJ:e outlined as well as methods of induction. The phenomenology of ASCs is described and related to psychopathology. A short commentary is given aboutASCs used in some ethnopsychotherapies. Psychotherapies of Western origin using ASCs, especially hypnosis, Holotropic BJ:eathwork, and Personalized Experiential...
Brain Research Bulletin
November 15, 2001
Franz X. Vollenweider, Mark A. Geyer
Increasing evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies suggests that functional disturbances within cortico-striato-thalamic pathways are critical to psychotic symptom formation in drug-induced and possibly also naturally occurring psychoses. Recent basic and clinical research with psychotomimetic drugs, such as the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor antagonist, ketamine, and...
Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging
November 1, 2001
Dietrich Lehmann, Pascal L Faber, Peter Achermann et al.
212 citations
Multichannel EEG of an advanced meditator was recorded during four different, repeated meditations. Locations of intracerebral source gravity centers as well as Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA) functional images of the EEG 'gamma' (35-44 Hz) frequency band activity differed significantly between meditations. Thus, during volitionally self-initiated, altered states of...
Contemporary Justice Review
2001
S. Boyd
This essay will examine the regulation of altered states of consciousness and the criminalization of specific drags against the backdrop of Christian ideology, colonization, and capitalism. In addition, this essay reveals how the regulation of altered states of consciousness contributes both to race, class, and gender Inequality as well as to the regulation and suppression of spiritual belief,...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
September 1, 2000
Anette Kjellgren, Torsten Norlander
14 citations
The purpose of this study was to provide information about experiences obtained by illegal drug users and evaluate if these are consistent with Stanislav Grof's expanded model of the human unconscious. Sixteen anonymous former drug users answered a questionnaire about use, experiences, circumstances, and influences of their life. All of them have had some experiences similar to Grof's...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
October 1, 1999
Andrzej Kokoszka
9 citations
Superficially Altered States of Consciousness (SACS) and Profoundly Altered States of Consciousness (PASC) are described as a result of analyses of results of a questionnaire survey of 295 subjects—adolescents and adults. The comparison of the experiences accompanying these states indicates that SASC are characterized by disturbances in experiencing the reality, one's self, and in cognitive...
Cults
May 20, 1999
Marc Galanter
Abstract: People are more vulnerable to social influence when they are made to think, sense, and feel differently than usual, when someone or something disrupts their emotional balance. Such changes in subjective experience (or alterations in consciousness) can undermine the psychological matrix in which our views are rooted, so that we lose track of customary internal signposts. They may also...
Pharmacopsychiatry
July 1, 1998
A. Dittrich
597 citations
The APZ questionnaire was developed in order to explore hypotheses on ASCs. First -- in a series of 11 experiments using different induction methods on N = 393 healthy subjects -- the hypothesis was tested that ASCs have major dimensions in common irrespective of the mode of their induction. In the International Study on Altered States of Consciousness (ISASC) the external validity of the...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
April 1, 1998
John A. Palmer
Pseudoscience is not an appropriate label for parapsychology. Although the noise reduction model of extrasensory perception (ESP) is explanatory only in a limited sense, research does exist addressing the correlation between ESP and altered states of consciousness (ASCs). The term anomaly is not appropriately applied to experiences such as out of body experiences (OBEs) per se, but only to the...