Study Objectives: Trauma nightmares are a core feature of PTSD, with potentially devastating implications for mental health outcomes. Treatments remain unsatisfactory and nightmares are poorly understood, both biologically and phenomenologically; measurement methods are limited. The aims of the current analyses were to (1) characterize distressing dreams in trauma survivors, (2) examine the...
There has been much focus in recent years on plant intelligence and the possibility of communication between trees, but very little on the possibility of communication between humans and trees. This dissertation centres on people’s encounters with trees— moments of connection during which a humans experience the ‘beingness’ of trees. I use the definition of ‘encounter’ given by Stephan Harding...
Comment on "Role of meditation on the essence of self in the psychological profile, quality of life and lifestyle -a comparative study" Dear Editor,We read with great interest the study by Arantes et al., which explores the psychosocial correlates of Gurusakāsha, a third-phase meditative practice rooted in tantric philosophy, using a battery of validated psychological and lifestyle scales. 1...
Mindfulness and compassion meditation practices have repeatedly been shown to have a positive impact on empathy and prosocial behavior. This study examines the perceived influence of compassion meditation on the psychotherapist’s empathy and clinical practice, beyond benefits already gained from a practice of mindfulness meditation. Three psychotherapists, who had already been practicing...
Mental disorders are commonly encountered in pregnancy complications, and women with a preconception history of mental disorders or other psychosocial vulnerabilities are at increased risk. Mental disorders, such as depression, can persist postnatal and adversely affect mother-infant bonding and infant development. Consequently, it is important to address prenatal mental health. The aim of this...
While the beneficial impacts of meditation are increasingly acknowledged, its underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. We examined the electrophysiological brain signals of expert Buddhist monks during two established meditation methods known as Samatha and Vipassana, which employ focused attention and open-monitoring technique. By combining source-space magnetoencephalography...
Modern approaches to certain methodological psychological and philosophical issues in the field of AI as a science are considered. In particular, such concepts as “artificial consciousness”; “artificial personality”; “strong” and “weak” AI; “easy” and “hard” problems of consciousness; “properties of internal sensory experience (qualia)”, “philosophical zombie”, “machine understanding” are...
This study explores the layered coherence within human cognition as measured through EEG. Signals were collected from two groups (meditators vs. non-meditators) across six conditions: Meditation, Scrambled Words, Ambiguous Images, Math Mind, Sentences, and Video Watching. We analyzed the EEG data using Shannon Entropy, Pearson's Skewness, Total Power, and Dominant Frequency indices, now taken...
In this study, we explore how the notion of meta-representations in higher-order theories (HOT) of consciousness can be implemented in computational models. HOT suggests that consciousness emerges from meta-representations, which are representations of first-order sensory representations. However, translating this abstract concept into a concrete computational model, such as those used in...
The signals registered by our senses are inherently ambiguous. Subjective experience, by contrast, is informative: it portrays one's interpretation of the sensory environment at a time while discarding competing alternatives. This is exemplified by bistable perception, where ambiguous sensory information induces prolonged intervals of alternating unambiguous perceptual states. According to...