Recent neuro-psychoanalytic literature has emphasized the view that our subjective identity rests on ancient subcortical neuro-psychic processes expressing unthinking forms of experience, which are "affectively intense without being known" (Solms and Panksepp, 2012). Devoid of internal representations, the emotional states of our "core-Self" (Panksepp, 1998b) are entirely "projected" towards...
Meditation has been included in mental health care and the treatment of hypertension and pain. Zazen is a method of entering the meditative state. We have carried out R&D on a wearable system (earable ZEN) that casually and simply allows the subject to perform zazen without going to a temple or even having a zazen monitor present. In zazen, it is important to prepare one's breathing and...
Editor’s Note The study of subjective experience represents a significant challenge to cognitive scientists, but one that is beginning to be increasingly addressed. Subjectivity renders experience less amenable to traditional objective scientific measurements than other subject matter. Our authors believe that when seeking to understand the mind, subjectivity must ultimately be investigated and...
A socially intelligent robot must be capable to extract meaningful information in real time from the social environment and react accordingly with coherent human-like behavior. Moreover, it should be able to internalize this information, to reason on it at a higher level, build its own opinions independently, and then automatically bias the decision-making according to its unique experience. In...
Many psychopathologists have approached symptom complexes without prejudging them as physical deficits or diseases, an approach suitable to connections with normal mind, to a broad dimensional and anthropological view of mental disorders. It contrasts with the prevailing orientation in psychiatry toward the medical model of delimited diseases. Discussions of this order centered on symptom...
It is often thought that contemporary neuroscience provides strong evidence for physicalism that nullifies dualism. The principal data is neural correlates of consciousness (for brevity NCC). In this chapter I argue that NCC are neutral vis- à-vis physicalist and dualist views of the mind. First I clarify what NCC are and how neuroscientists identify them. Subsequently I discuss what NCC...
The mind and brain sciences began with consciousness as a central concern. But for much of the 20th century, ideological and methodological concerns relegated its empirical study to the margins. Since the 1990s, studying consciousness has regained a legitimacy and momentum befitting its status as the primary feature of our mental lives. Nowadays, consciousness science encompasses a rich...
The psychological enquiry in India needs to focus on belief in the supernatural, and its role in mental health. Perhaps a key to this new direction lies in the functional approach to supernatural beliefs. The functional approach is most appropriate for creating a setting for reconciliation between believers and non-believers in the supernatural. The proposal rests on a thesis that in every...
The consciousness is the expression of an enormous and complex variety of neurobiological events, phenomenological and psychological that, from the early stages of development, prepare the emergence soil of the Self. It is a complex of tangible and intangible characters distinct from one another - neural infrastructure, awareness, temporality, qualitative subjectivity, intentionality - to such...
This chapter is an introduction to the volume "Psychedelic Neuroscience" of Elsevier's Progress in Brain Research addressing the neurobiological mechanisms of psychedelic drugs, the resulting changes in brain activity and integration of traditional viewpoints. As the field is relatively new, there are discrepancies in the literature related to classification, composition and effects of the...