Alisha Vabba, Giuseppina Porciello, Maria Serena Panasiti et al.
preprint
The conscious processing of body signals influences higher-order psychological and cognitive processes, including self-awareness and body image. Dysfunctions in the processing of these signals has been connected to neurological and psychiatric disorders characterized by altered states of self-consciousness. Studies indicate that the process of perceiving the body through interoceptive signals...
Julia Mossbridge, Kirsten Cameron, Mark Boccuzzi
preprint
Precognition, the capacity to use non-ordinary means to accurately predict future events that are seemingly unpredictable, has been well established by examining performance on laboratory- based free-response precognitive remote viewing (PRV) tasks. However, advancements in the understanding of precognition mechanisms are slowed at least partly because state, trait and target parameters seem to...
Muzamil Hussain
preprint
The experience of ego dissolution and self-transcendence induced by psychedelic substances offers a profound challenge to our conventional understanding of the self and our relationship with the natural world. This paper delves into the philosophical underpinnings and implications of this phenomenon, exploring how the temporary breakdown of ego boundaries during a psychedelic experience may...
Fiorenzo Artoni, Julien Maillard, Juliane Britz et al.
preprint
Abstract It is commonly believed that the stream of consciousness is not continuous but parsed into transient brain states manifesting themselves as discrete spatiotemporal patterns of global neuronal activity. Electroencephalographical (EEG) microstates are proposed as the neurophysiological correlates of these transiently stable brain states that last for fractions of seconds. To further...
Paul Dennison
preprint
Most if not all research into consciousness in neuroscience and philosophy has dealt with the consciousness we all live within from birth, which in Dennison (2019) I termed the “human default sensory consciousness”. This was to contrast this mode to a quite different form of consciousness that develops in the Buddhist practice of jhāna meditation. This little known practice implicitly requires...
Anira Escrichs, Ana Sanjuán, Selen Atasoy et al.
preprint
Abstract Over the past 2,500 years, contemplative traditions have explored the nature of the mind using meditation. More recently, neuroimaging research on meditation has revealed differences in brain function and structure in meditators. Nevertheless, the underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. In order to understand how meditation shapes global activity through the brain, we...
Rolando Calero, Gerardo Herrera
preprint
This article explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and consciousness through an integrated scientific and philosophical perspective. Advances in large language models (LLMs) and multimodal generative architectures, such as GPT-4, have intensified debates on whether artificial systems can transcend behavioral mimicry to approximate conscious awareness. Centered on the concept of...
Rui Dai, Hyunwoo Jang, Anthony G. Hudetz et al.
Understanding the relationship of conscious states to large-scale brain dynamics remains a central challenge in neuroscience. Here, diverse pharmacological and physiological perturbations, including psychedelic states, sleep, and propofol sedation, were used to examine integration-segregation organization of brain networks across altered states of consciousness in humans using functional MRI....
Glenn Hartelius, Igor Berkhin
Transpersonal psychology has at times employed Buddhist terminology in ways that do not reflect distinctions that underlie these tightly defined terms. From a Buddhist perspective, attempts to equate Buddhist terms with language from other traditions are misdirected, and produce results that no longer represent Buddhism. For example, it is an error to translate certain Buddhist terms as...
Alex Jinich-Diamant
preprint
Psychedelics, contemplative practice, and fasting are physiologically unrelated interventions that nevertheless converge, across cultures and centuries, on a common experiential endpoint: the mystical state. Here I propose that this convergence reflects shared disruption of a single computational architecture, the precision-weighted predictive hierarchy, through three mechanistically distinct...