The recreational use of nitrous oxide (N2O; laughing gas) has largely expanded in recent years. Although incidental use of nitrous oxide hardly causes any health damage, problematic or heavy use of nitrous oxide can lead to serious adverse effects. Amsterdam care centres noticed that Moroccan-Dutch young adults reported neurological symptoms, including severe paralysis, as a result of...
This paper assesses two different theories for explaining consciousness, a phenomenon that is widely considered amenable to scientific investigation despite its puzzling subjective aspects. I focus on Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which says that consciousness is integrated information (as ϕMax) and says even simple systems with interacting parts possess some consciousness. First, I...
bioRxivMay 21, 2021K. Kishida, L. P. Sands
preprint
The private and dynamic nature of conscious subjective experience poses an empirical challenge that has led neuroscience-based theories about consciousness to note the importance of ‘the hard problem’ of explaining how subjective phenomenal experience can arise from neural activity but set it aside and focus on the ‘easier’ problems associated with information representation and behavior. This...
Rituals of incorporation (utarnu) of numinous ontologies in Himalayan Tantric ritualisms represent an interesting field for developing a reflection on different phenomenologies of the body. From the physical body of the tantrika (Tantric practitioner), the formal remains of an individual atman-Self, I investigate the experiences that make it a receptacle for a numinous Other. This article is an...
Traditionally, dreams have been seen as experiences that one cannot control, as something that happensto the dreamer (at times through involvement of supernatural powers), without the dreamer’s permission,volition or agency. This view was famously challenged in the advent of psychoanalysis: in his Interpretation ofDreams, Freud proposed that while we may not be consciously in control of our...
Approximately 45% of young cancer survivors (18-40 years) are cigarette smokers. Continued smoking after cancer diagnosis leads to lower survival rates. A major logistical problem with smoking cessation efforts in this group is their geographic dispersion which makes them hard to reach. In addition, depression is a major predictor of smoking relapse and its rates are roughly twice as high in...
We provide a critical review of mindfulness research, focusing on three core areas and questions. First, a meta-review and bibliometric analysis on mindfulness research trends identified a large number of meta-analyses published in the last 20 years, which tend to show positive effects on average, despite continuing questions on research quality, unclear pathways and uncertainty about the...
Why would we do anything at all if the doing was not doing something to us? In other words: What is consciousness good for? Here, reversing classical views, according to many of which subjective experience is a mere epiphenomenon that affords no functional advantage, we propose that the core function of consciousness is precisely to enable subject-level experience. “What it feels like” is...
With a growing body of research highlighting the therapeutic potential of experiential phenomenology which diminishes egoic identity and increases one's sense of connectedness, there is significant interest in how to elicit such 'self-transcendent experiences' (STEs) in laboratory contexts. Psychedelic drugs (YDs) have proven particularly effective in this respect, producing subjective...
BACKGROUND: Mental retardation (MR) is a developmental condition that is associated with significant intellectual and adaptive behavioral limitations, whereas dissociative trance disorder (DTD) is a dissociative condition characterized by a temporary altered state of consciousness formed by one’s culture. Comorbidity between these two disorders has rarely been reported. CASE REPORT: We found a...