For the past 20 years and more, arguments about the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness and mind theory have been mounting. On the one side are traditional neuroscientists who believe that the way to understanding the brain is through looking at the nerve cells. On the other side are various physicists who suggest that the laws of quantum mechanics may have an influence on the dynamics...
In this comment, we contrast different conceptions of mind wandering that were presented in 2 recent theoretical reviews: Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). We also introduce a new perspective on the role of executive control in mind wandering by integrating empirical evidence presented in Smallwood and Schooler with 2 theoretical frameworks: Watkins's elaborated control theory...
Drawing from practices of mindfulness, martial arts, and psychotherapy, we present a dialogue and inquiry into how educators can attend to experience through inner work.It is our conviction that schools that undertake education as a participatory endeavour in both knowledge and knowing, having and being, will depend greatly on our capacity, as educators, to see and attend to the different, yet...
When researchers use the term mind wandering for task-unrelated thoughts in signal detection tasks, we may fall into the trap of believing that spontaneous thoughts are task unrelated in a deeper sense. Similar negative connotations are attached to common terms like cognitive failures, resting state, rumination, distraction, attentional failures, absent-mindedness, repetitiveness, mind lapses,...
Adapted from a Shin Buddhist style of meditation, Naikan (“inner-looking”) is a week-long contemplative practice that involves reviewing one's life from the perspectives of others and has been called an indigenous Japanese psychotherapy due to its effectiveness in treating a variety of disorders. Data collected during an extended ethnographic study of Naikan in both Japan and Austria reveal...
Quantum spirituality—the idea that some aspect of consciousness plays a fundamental role in the universe and that advanced physics should be interpreted as having to some extent already incorporated this principle—has had distinguished representation among both physicists and philosophers. It has generated an upsurge of grassroots enthusiasm because of the widespread sense that science and...
When the mind wanders, conscious thoughts come to mind that are only loosely related to the task being performed. This phenomenon produces tension within the cognitive sciences because the interfering nature of these thoughts is at odds with the assumption that such processes are functional in daily life. In their comment, McVay and Kane (2010) suggested that failures in executive control can...
Stress has significant adverse effects on health and is a risk factor for many illnesses. Neurobiological studies have implicated the amygdala as a brain structure crucial in stress responses. Whereas hyperactive amygdala function is often observed during stress conditions, cross-sectional reports of differences in gray matter structure have been less consistent. We conducted a longitudinal MRI...
INTRODUCTION When David Chalmers introduced the notion of the “hard problem of consciousness” (1995), he contributed to a revolution in the neuroscience of consciousness and cognition as well as in the philosophy of mind. The main point of the hard problem is that, even if we could discover the “neural correlates of consciousness,” we still would not have answered the “harder” question: Why do...
The author emphasizes the therapist's well-integrated and matured personality as the crucial element for being a good psychotherapist; therefore, it is essential for a psychotherapist to make ceaseless efforts regarding his own personality growth with his ongoing therapeutic experiences. Nevertheless, nowadays students are apt to satisfy themselves with or cling to the theories and techniques...