The Spontaneous Brain
September 14, 2018
Georg Northoff
How can we account for the existence and reality of consciousness and mental features in general? The present chapter complements the previous one by shifting the focus from the ontological determination of the brain to consciousness. I characterized the brain’s existence and reality by world-brain relation for which I presupposed relation and structure as basic units of existence and reality....
September 13, 2018
Alistair M C Isaac
4 citations
Modern computationalism unites two distinct ideas: the first that reasoning, more generally mental activity, may be decomposed into simple, formal steps; the second that these simple steps may be functionally realized by a physical system. These two ideas follow separate trajectories in the pre-history of the computational mind. This chapter surveys the mechanization of psychological phenomena,...
Journal of medical systems
September 11, 2018
A Devipriya, N Nagarajan
Meditation improves positivity in behavioral as well as psychological changes, which are brought elucidated by knowing neuro-physiological consequences of meditation. In the field of cognitive science, neuroscience and physiological research, Electroencephalogram (EEG) is extensively utilized. The primary tasks of EEG signal analysis is to identify the noisy signal as well as enormous data that...
Annals of Behavioral Neuroscience
September 7, 2018
Lawrence Wile
Neurotheology is the study of the neurobiological correlates of religious experiences. A key problem for this nascent field is that interpretations of religious experiences range from a regression to the oceanic oneness of the womb to supersensory apprehensions of transcendent realities. Identifying appropriate subjects is therefore problematic. Correlating the complex array of neurobiological...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
September 5, 2018
James B. Leonard, Bruce D. Anderson, Wendy Klein‐schwartz
85 citations
Background: Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are serotonergic hallucinogens that are used primarily for recreational abuse. Small studies evaluated the efficacy of LSD and psilocybin for several psychiatric conditions. There are limited safety or toxicity data for either of these substances, especially in large populations. Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of...
September 4, 2018
Marc Wittmann
What altered states of consciousness—the dissolution of feelings of time and self—can tell us about the mystery of consciousness. During extraordinary moments of consciousness—shock, meditative states and sudden mystical revelations, out-of-body experiences, or drug intoxication—our senses of time and self are altered; we may even feel time and self dissolving. These experiences have long been...
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
While research on peyote accelerated in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany during the last decade of the nineteenth century, Mexican scientists remained largely ignorant of the properties of the cactus. This changed when Mexico’s Instituto Médico Nacional (IMN) sponsored a series of peyote studies at the turn of the century. In part, those studies relied on historical accounts and...
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
In this chapter, we consider the moment when European and American scientists “discovered” peyote. John Briggs was one of the first Americans to write about peyote (in 1887), followed shortly by James Mooney, who recounted his experiences among the Kiowa of Oklahoma at the Anthropological Association in Washington DC in 1891. Around this time, the German scientist Louis Lewin encountered peyote...
September 3, 2018
Peter Fenwick
3 citations
Religious experience is very common in the population and there are many studies of mystical or religious experience. There is as yet no explanation of religious experience that satisfies both those who have had the experiences and those who seek a scientific basis for them. The problem for neuropsychiatry is that there appears to be no place in the brain for consciousness or mind. The chapter...
September 3, 2018
Michael Bernard Kelly
This chapter explores the two foundational “ways” of the Christian mystical life: the cataphatic and the apophatic. First, it discusses whether, in studying these “ways”, we are dealing with modes of discourse, types of theology, categories of mystical experience, or comprehensive ways of living one’s spiritual path. Second, each way is examined in turn, drawing on both ancient and contemporary...