NeuroethicsAugust 1, 2025Brandon Long, David Resnik
Recent advancements in brain research have drastically increased the need for serious ethical consideration. Postmortem brain research has taken a significant step in the development of BrainEx. The technology can metabolically resuscitate pig brains from pigs that were "clinically dead" for hours. Ethical discourse around organoids ranges from being overly cautious and sensational to highly...
This paper is a French translation of the Examination of Anomalous Fantasy and Imagination (EAFI), an instrument for a semi-structured, phenomenological exploration of psychopathology of imagination, particularly within the schizophrenia-spectrum. In this paper, we provide a French translation of the EAFI together with an introduction about the phenomenology of imagination and its experiential...
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the conceptual and empirical study of altered states of consciousness (ASCs), induced pharmacologically or otherwise, driven by their potential clinical applications. To draw attention to the rich history of research in this domain, we review prominent classification schemes that have been proposed to introduce systematicity into the...
These two cases highlight the utility of a focused, structured clinical phenomenological interview in measuring treatment effectiveness in subjective experience. Two male patients, aged 35 and 27, of Serbian ethnicity with treatment-resistant depression were treated with nasal esketamine, with clinical progress monitored using both the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the...
Temsilcilik, çağdaş zihin felsefesinde çok sayıda taraftarı olan bir yaklaşımdır. Genel olarak zihnin yönelimsel karakterini öne çıkaran temsilcilik, yönelimselliğe en az kendisi kadar büyük önem atfeden eylemcilik ve buyrukçuluk gibi alternatif yaklaşımlar karşısında birlikli bir tutum sergiler. Ancak bu durum temsilciliğin birbirlerinden ayırt edilmesi gereken farklı bakış açılarına izin...
According to a widely shared belief, an explanation of phenomenal experience in terms of neural mechanisms is impossible in principle. The reason for this "Explanatory Gap" is supposed to be a basic incompatibility between phenomenal and neuroscientific knowledge: while the latter is framed in terms of functional relationships, it is impossible to capture phenomenal experience in functional...
The psychopathology of schizophrenia is a complex amalgamation of features that span across different dimensions. These dimensions range from the experience of altered time and space through self-disorders to perceptual, positive, and negative symptoms. The relationship between these different psychopathological dimensions remains unclear. Addressing this gap was the aim of our study. We...
The science of consciousness has been successful over the last decades. Yet, it seems that some of the key questions remain unanswered. Perhaps, as a science of consciousness, we cannot move forward using the same theoretical commitments that brought us here. It might be necessary to revise some assumptions we have made along the way. In this piece, I offer no answers, but I will question some...
Consciousness is traditionally viewed as a by-product of neurophysiological processes. This work proposes an alternative hypothesis: consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain, but a manifestation of a universal spiritual field — the soul of the Universe. The study integrates concepts from quantum physics, information theory, phenomenology, and transpersonal psychology to offer a...
The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) has long served as a paradigm for understanding multisensory integration and body ownership. Traditional interpretations emphasize neural mechanisms and cognitive suggestibility, but they fall short of identifying the illusion’s fundamental cause. This paper proposes the Soul-Drift Hypothesis (SDH), a novel conceptual framework that attributes the RHI not to...