Surgeons, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emphasize the importance of managing symptoms and improving the quality of life of cancer survivors. A 2008 meta-analysis of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) concluded that this technique might improve patients' adjustment to their disease. However, randomized controlled trials using standardized measures for...
Sleep paralyses are viewed as pure motor phenomena featured by a dissociated state in which REM-related muscle atonia coexists with a wakefulness state of full consciousness. We present a 59-year-old man diagnosed with narcolepsy experiencing sleep paralysis, who failed to establish the boundaries between real experience and dream mentation during the paralysis: the patient's recall was indeed...
Sleep research is also about the fascination with dreams and consciousness. The current issue of the Journal of Sleep Research contains papers relevant to evolving research trends in this area. Collecting dream reports after induced or spontaneous awakenings is a standard approach in dream research. This approach has established that dreams occur primarily, but not exclusively, during...
We mathematically model Ignacio Matte Blanco's principles of symmetric and asymmetric being through use of an ultrametric topology. We use for this the highly regarded 1975 book of this Chilean psychiatrist and pyschoanalyst (born 1908, died 1995). Such an ultrametric model corresponds to hierarchical clustering in the empirical data, e.g. text. We show how an ultrametric topology can be used...
The science and media had opened great space for meditation, showing especially the physical and mental benefits into mechanic daily life of our age. Although it is not possible to deny these benefits, the meditative practice, especially the Master Dōgen’s Zazen, has indeed much more to do with a little less visible and attractive side. In the place of quick benefits, there is pain and the...
Instead of using low-level neurophysiology mimicking and exploratory programming methods commonly used in the machine consciousness field, the hierarchical operational architectonics (OA) framework of brain and mind functioning proposes an alternative conceptual-theoretical framework as a new direction in the area of model-driven machine (robot) consciousness engineering. The unified brain-mind...
Reviewed by: Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness Benjamin J. Chicka Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness. By B. Alan Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. xi + 158 pp. The project of B. Alan Wallace will be clear by now to those who have been following his career. He seeks the unification of a Buddhist understanding of...
Mindfulness is currently attracting a great deal of attention as a psychotherapy technique. It is defined as bringing one's complete attention to the experiences occurring in the present moment in a nonjudgmental or accepting way. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) was developed to assess individual differences in mindfulness states. The FFMQ is composed of five facets representing...
Depression appears to be somewhat epidemic in the modern world. In prior empirical studies we found depression significantly associated with empathy-based guilt, empathic distress, and an overly active or misattributing moral system. In this study, we compared 98 Buddhists, who were primarily Tibetan meditation practitioners to 438 non-Buddhist, non-practicing community adults on a measure of...
Background. There is very little data describing the long-term health impacts of meditation. Aim. To compare the quality of life and functional health of long-term meditators to that of the normative population in Australia. Method. Using the SF-36 questionnaire and a Meditation Lifestyle Survey, we sampled 343 long-term Australian Sahaja Yoga meditation practitioners and compared their scores...