An inadvertent consequence of advances in stem cell research, neuroscience, and resuscitation science has been to enable scientific insights regarding what happens to the human brain in relation to death. The scientific exploration of death is in large part possible due to the recognition that brain cells are more resilient to the effects of anoxia than assumed. Hence, brain cells become...
ABSTRACT Background Dissociative disorders (DDs) are characterized by interruptions of identity, thought, memory, emotion, perception, and consciousness. Patients with DDs are at high risk for engaging in dangerous behaviours, such as self-harm and suicidal acts; yet, only between 28% and 48% of individuals with DDs receive mental health treatment. Patients that do pursue treatment are often...
Chapter 9 concerns what contemporary philosopher David Chalmers has called the “hard problem of consciousness”—the problem of explaining how conscious experience arises. The chapter provides an in-depth reconstruction of Vivekananda’s Sāṃkhya-Vedāntic solution to the hard problem of consciousness and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. The chapter first outlines...
Holotropic Breathwork (HB) is a method of self-exploration developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof. Research has only just begun to investigate the effects of HB, while the possible influence of the context and other features of HB within the experience and its impact have not been studied in depth. This qualitative study investigated the perceived impact of HB on 6 women and 6 men (ages...
Abstract Objective Reports have indicated possible uses of ayahuasca for the treatment of conditions including depression, addictions, post‐traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and specific psychoneuroendocrine immune system pathologies. The article assesses potential ayahuasca and N,N‐dimethyltryptamine (DMT) integration with contemporary healthcare. The review also seeks to provide a summary of...
There are at least two approaches to the definition of consciousness. In the first case, certain aspects of consciousness, called qualia, are considered inaccessible for research from a third person and can only be described through subjective experience. This approach is inextricably linked with the so-called "hard problem of consciousness", that is, the question of why consciousness has...
Through an autoethnographic account that interweaves academic observations, my story of how I came to study Santa Muerte in Mexico and the entangled, emotive tale of Abby, a Santa Muerte devotee whom I grew very close to, I discuss the topic of belief in the ethnography of the occult and the “politics of integration”, derisively referred to “as going native”. I reveal how being an ethnographer...
Differences in conscious experience of reality occur between waking, dreaming, and psychotic states. Between these states, there are systematic differences in the judgment about the reality of the experience when being confronted with bizarre breaks. However, the mechanisms underlying experience of reality in these different states are still unknown. To investigate the effect of bizarre breaks...
Abstract: A brief review of the history of the science of consciousness suggests that since the 1990s, important studies from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have been sidelined, to make room for rather speculative metaphysical and physics-centric theorizing. Some arguments are given in favor of restoring this balance. These include some considerations about the longevity and...
Abstract: The chapter begins by questioning whether the prefrontal cortex plays a causal role in conscious perception. The dorsolateral prefrontal areas and the frontal polar cortex of the prefrontal cortex are identified as important because they seem to have survived the controls for all three kinds of confounders discussed in this volume: stimulus, report, and performance capacity. However,...