Background: Numerous world cultures believe channeling provides genuine information, and channeling rituals in various forms are regularly conducted in both religious and non-religious contexts. Little is known about the physiological correlates of the subjective experience of channeling. Methods: We conducted a prospective within-subject design study with 13 healthy adult trance channels....
I introduce arguments toward a non-representational reflexivity theory of consciousness-as-such to address one of the key issues in the science of consciousness today: lack of understanding of the nature of consciousness itself. An expanded map of consciousness is outlined, which includes, in addition to the well-known contents of awareness and levels of arousal, the indeterminate substrate and...
Many studies have conclusively proven that meditative techniques derived from the Indian systems of philosophy, meditation and ritual classified as "Tantra" can bring about sustained changes in the structure and function of the nervous system of practitioners. The aim of this study is to provide neuroscientists a framework through which to interpret Tantra, and thereby provide a foundation upon...
The study of consciousness within cognitive neuroscience has been dominated in recent years by investigations originating from collaborations between neuroscientific investigators and Buddhist meditation practitioners. The results have been remarkable, particularly when quantitative and qualitative research methods have been combined as they are in the neurophenomenological methodology...
Four states of consciousness are considered here: the hypnagogic state (the transitional state between waking and sleeping); the hypnopompic state (the transitional state between sleeping and waking); lucid dreaming (insight to the fact that one is currently dreaming); and the out-of-the-body experience (perceiving the world from a location outside the physical body). There are different...
Top-down, feedback projections account for a large portion of all connections between neurons in the thalamocortical system, yet their precise role remains the subject of much discussion. A large number of studies has focused on investigating how sensory information is transformed across hierarchically-distributed processing stages in a feedforward fashion, and computational models have shown...
Dreams are usually characterized by primary consciousness, bizarreness and cognitive deficits, lacking metacognition. However, lucid dreaming (LD) is a type of consciousness state during which the dreamer is aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming, without leaving the sleeping state. Brain research has found that LD shares some common neural mechanisms with metacognition such as...
This article examines the therapeutic potential of ibogaine, a powerful oneiric alkaloid derived from Tabernanthe iboga, through exploring the subjective experiences of 44 participants from two observational treatment studies for opioid use disorder. Following treatment with ibogaine HCl, the participants (Mexico, n = 30; New Zealand, n = 14) completed the States of Consciousness Questionnaire...
Over the last fifty years the study of mysticism has been shaped by the debate between ‘perennialists’, who claim that mystical experiences are the same across different cultures, and ‘constructivists’, who claim that mystical experiences are shaped by, and hence specific to, particular religious traditions. The constructivist view is associated with the ‘discursive turn’ that has dominated the...
Auditory verbal hallucinations are common symptoms in schizophrenia patients, and recent magnetic resonance imaging studies have suggested associations between cortical thickness and auditory verbal hallucinations. This article summarises the associations between cortical thickness reduction and auditory verbal hallucinations, conceptualising the findings based on the Research Domain Criteria...