3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a substituted amphetamine derivative that is widely abused as the street drug “ecstasy”. Despite its high abuse liability, the neuropharmacology of MDMA remains poorly understood. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in fully conscious rhesus monkeys to characterize the neuroactivational effects of MDMA and its...
The idea that conscious states are about both the world and themselves is an old one, tracing its roots back to Brentano and perhaps even as far back as Aristotle. There is, according to this picture, an intrinsic reflexiveness at the heart of conscious experience. In his important and provocative book Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory, Uriah Kriegel approaches this...
OBJECTIVE. The objective of this study was to determine the health disturbances and to assess the severity of the incidents as reported during a 9-year experience of gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB)-related First Aid Attendees attending First Aid Stations at rave parties. DESIGN. This study was a prospective observational study of self-referred patients from the year 2000 to 2008. During rave...
In the philosophy of perception, typically, everything is illuminated. Discussions of perceptual experience primarily focus on subjects situated in illuminated environs. Rarely do we see treatment of putative perceptual experience involving darkness. In this paper, I will carefully canvas and characterize the nature of experiences of darkness, marking a substantive distinction between two such...
A central task of philosophy of mind in recent decades has been to come up with a comprehensive account of the mind that is consistent with materialism. To this end, philosophers have offered useful reductive accounts of mentality in terms that are ultimately explainable by neurobiology. Although these accounts have been useful for explaining some psychological states, one feature—phenomenality...
Several overlapping features have frequently been described between psychosis and the subjective experience of dreaming from the neurobiological to the phenomenological level, but whether this similarity reflects the cognitive organization of schizophrenic thought or rather that of psychotic mentation independent of diagnostic categories is still unclear. In this study, 40 actively psychotic...
According to the monitoring theory of consciousness, a mental state is conscious in virtue of being represented in the right way by a monitoring state. David Rosenthal, William Lycan, and Uriah Kriegel have developed three different influential versions of this theory. In order to explain colour experiences, each of these authors combines his version of the monitoring theory of consciousness...
This paper proposes to evaluate the relationship of scientific criteria to parapsychology. It is herein argued that the most effective ways for the discipline of parapsychology to progress, are: a) to face psi, firstly, as a conceptual problem; b) to combine several approaches containing psi in their essence; and c) to try to build a psi “hard core” through a theoretical approach to resolving...
Evidence that placebo acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic pain presents a puzzle: how do placebo needles appearing to patients to penetrate the body, but instead sitting on the skin’s surface in the manner of a tactile stimulus, evoke a healing response? Previous accounts of ritual touch healing in which patients often described enhanced touch sensations (including warmth,...