A topic of common interest to psychologists and philosophers is the spontaneous flow of thoughts when the individual is awake but not involved in cognitive demands. This argument, classically referred to as the "stream of consciousness" of James, is now known in the psychological literature as "Mind-Wandering." Although of great interest, this construct has been scarcely investigated so far....
To locate consciousness in the flow of synaptic activity in the brain, we must first locate it in the flow of information processing in the mind. Two different positions have been debated for centuries. The liberal view maintains that the contents of experience include not only sensory, motor, and affective states, but also concepts and the thoughts they enter into. In contrast, the...
Prescribing Health: Transcendental Meditation in Contemporary Medical Care includes important contributions from leading experts on Transcendental Meditation and health, and provides the reader with the most important, cutting edge health research on the effects of Transcendental Meditation (TM) on serious mental health problems and medical disorders. It features practical, proven programs to...
Reviewed by: Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton by Cunningham, Eric Steve Odin Cunningham, Eric. Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton Eric Cunningham’s Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen and the Psychedelic Eschaton is an adventurous, original, and illuminating work that with deep insight undertakes an...
Basic to all motile life is a differential approach/avoid response to perceived features of environment. The stages of response are initial reflexive noticing and orienting to the stimulus, preparation, and execution of response. Preparation involves a coordination of many aspects of the organism: muscle tone, posture, breathing, autonomic functions, motivational/emotional state, attentional...
Sleep and dreaming do not serve a single biological function, but are multifunctional. Their functions include memory consolidation and integration, emotion regulation, creativity and problem solving, and preparation for waking life. One promising level of description is that of dreaming as a virtual reality: The dreamer interacts with a simulated environment including other simulated avatars....
This commentary aims to find the right description of the pre-reflective brain mechanisms underlying our phenomenal experience of being a subject bound to a physical body (bodily self) and basic cognitive, perceptual, and subjective aspects related to interaction with other individuals (social cognition). I will focus on the proposal by Gallese and Cuccio that embodied simulation, in terms of...
This article starts from the interpretation of subjective experience and narrative hermeneutics, suggesting a cognitive re-evaluation of egotic intentionality from the “first-person perspective” and showing together the conjunction between phenomenology and cognitivism (the egotic self). The article also addresses the phenomenal consciousness according to D. Dennett’s theory of intentionality....
The transition from a relaxed to a drowsy state of mind is often accompanied by hypnagogic experiences: most commonly, perceptual imagery, but also linguistic intrusions, i.e., the sudden emergence of unpredictable anomalies in the stream of inner speech. This study has sought to describe the contents of such intrusions, to verify their association with the progression of sleep onset, and to...
Dextromethorphan (DXM) is a widely available antitussive that has, at elevated dose levels, euphoric and dissociative effects. This article presents the reported patterns and preferences of DXM use, and perceptions of DXM use among adult members of an online DXM community. Analyses were conducted of quantitative and qualitative responses from nine female and 43 male individuals, aged 18-63...