Philosophy of mind

Proposes that psychosis in schizophrenia can be understood as a state of aberrant salience, linking dopamine dysregulation to the formation of delusions and hallucinations.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Proposes that psychosis arises from aberrant assignment of novelty and salience, and that antipsychotics attenuate this aberrant salience rather than eradicating symptoms, with improvement evident in the first few days.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that Shusterman's somaesthetics provides a philosophical approach to overcoming Cartesian mind-body dualism by emphasizing mindful bodily awareness as integral to human experience and self-improvement.

review article

Reviews evidence that psychedelic states can be characterized by three primary dimensions—oceanic boundlessness, anxious ego-dissolution, and visionary restructuralization—and are influenced by both pharmacological and non-pharmacological factors.

review

Reviews controlled laboratory studies showing that psilocybin can occasion complete mystical experiences in the majority of people studied under double-blind conditions, with enduring positive effects on mood, attitudes, and behavior.

review

Proposes that four temporo-spatial mechanisms of brain activity—nestedness, alignment, expansion, and globalization—correspond to different dimensions of consciousness.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Finds that the lived experience of psychosis progresses through distinct stages characterized by core existential themes, from loss of common sense in early phases to grieving and struggling with acceptance in later stages.

co-written bottom-up review

Proposes an enactive, affordance-based model with four aspects (field of affordances, self-experience, relating to the world, existential stance) to capture the phenomenological changes in OCD patients treated with deep brain stimulation.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that drug-induced ego dissolution disrupts subpersonal processes underlying the minimal or embodied self, consistent with Bayesian models of phenomenal selfhood, and challenges theories that consciousness always involves self-awareness.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Reviews Varela's framework integrating biological autonomy, embodiment, and neurophenomenology to explain consciousness as an emergent property of circular causality in living systems.

review

Finds that prior experiences suggestive of transcendence of death are more common among near-death experiencers than among control populations, but prior experiences suggestive of extrasensory phenomena are less common, and subsequent changes in attitudes are more common than in subjects with other psychic experiences.

retrospective study Sample size: 78

Finds a syndrome of ten visual disturbances, lasting up to five years in half of the sample, treatable with benzodiazepines, exacerbated by phenothiazines, and precipitated most commonly by emergence into darkness, with sensitivity to LSD flashbacks dividing the sample into three discrete subgroups.

observational cohort Sample size: 123

Finds that micro-phenomenological interviews can produce rigorous descriptions of meditative experience that are valuable for understanding, practicing, and teaching meditation.

pilot project

Finds that seven categories of experience (internal/external, time, location, self, agency, ownership, and first-person perspective) change as the sense of boundaries dissolves, while the touching/touched structure and bodily feelings remain even when boundaries disappear.

qualitative case study Sample size: 1

Finds that hypnotic depth and spontaneous phenomena after neutral hypnosis vary by hypnotizability level and are related to global functional connectivity and EEG frequency band activity.

observational cohort Sample size: 37

Argues that Donald Griffin's case for animal consciousness rested on three evidentiary avenues: neural correlates, behavioral versatility, and animal communication as a window into animal minds, and that he faced opposition from scientific assumptions rooted in Cartesian views and parsimony concerns.

historical analysis

Argues that teleost fish brains can support sentience without requiring pallium-neocortex homology, advocating a functionalist approach, and that human neural correlates offer a starting point but fish-specific research is needed.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that Reber's claim of sentience as inherent in biological forms rests on unexamined assumptions about continuity and gradual accretion of mental faculties, which are not empirically justified, and that the hard problem remains unresolved.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that Reber's axiom is not supported by evolutionary biology, and that consciousness is linked to behavioral flexibility rather than cell wall flexibility, proposing that determining which species can experience welfare is a more pressing issue than solving the hard problem.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that Reber's theory does not solve the hard problem of consciousness, as it fails to explain why conscious states feel the way they do, though studying simple minds may be methodologically useful.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that behavioral grounds can justify consciousness ascription to non-human animals, including insects, and that Klein & Barron's perspective is reconcilable with global workspace theory's core claims.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that the cortex is not essential for all forms of consciousness in vertebrates and that subjective experience can be supported by midbrain structures, as exemplified by insects, and proposes that functional neurobiological analyses combined with behavioral studies are needed.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that invertebrates merit moral consideration because sentience is not limited to large-brained animals, and that humans should be less human-centered in their ethical treatment of animals.

theoretical or philosophical paper

Argues that Key's denial of fish pain is based on inconsistent reasoning and outdated views on brain evolution, and that current evidence supports the possibility of pain in fish.

commentary

Argues that the term 'consciousness' is scientifically misleading due to its diverse uses and checkered history, despite popular enthusiasm, while acknowledging advances in cephalopod cognition research.

commentary