In a neurofeedback paradigm, trainees learn to willfully control their brain dynamics. How this is realized remains an open question. We evaluate the hypothesis that learning success is associated with a specific phenomenology. To address this proposal, we combined quantitative and qualitative analyses of a short neurofeedback training (NFT) session during which participants enhanced...
'Events occur in my mind', Spark has written, 'and I record them'. What does it mean to hear something that isn't there? Hearing inner speech or sounds, not as silent thoughts but as quasi-perceptual events in the world, confounds settled distinctions between perception, memory and imagination that structure our feeling of the real. This essay shows how her capacity for complex 'listening in'...
Brain signal diversity constitutes a robust neuronal marker of the global states of consciousness. It has been demonstrated that, in comparison to the resting wakefulness, signal diversity is lower during unconscious states, and higher during psychedelic states. A plausible interpretation of these findings is that the neuronal diversity corresponds to the diversity of subjective conscious...
For years, phenomenological psychiatry has proposed that distortions of the temporal structure of consciousness contribute to the abnormal experiences described before schizophrenia emerges, and may relate to basic disturbances in consciousness of the self. However, considering that temporality refers mainly to an implicit aspect of our relationship with the world, disturbances in the temporal...
From its earliest days, Buddhism has been closely intertwined with the practice of medicine, both being concerned in their own way in the alleviation and prevention of human suffering. However, while the connection between Buddhism and healthcare has long been noted, there is scarce literature on how Buddhist philosophy can guide health-care practitioners in their professional as well as...
The elevation of consciousness depends on the purity of the leshya. Whenever there is impurity in the leshya, our consciousness moves towards degradation. Meditation has been considered as an important method of purification of leshya-vishuddhi in many ways like self-study, penance etc. in the Jain spiritual practice. Lord Mahavir's whole life has been an experiment ground for special...
Across cultures and throughout history, transcendent states achieved through meditative practices have been reported. The practices to attain transcendent states vary from transcendental meditation to yoga to contemplative prayer, to other various forms of sitting meditation. While these transcendent states are ascribed many different terms, those who experience them describe a similar unitive,...
We summarize our recently introduced Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) (Rudrauf et al., 2017) and relate it to outstanding conceptual issues in the theory of consciousness. The PCM combines a projective geometrical model of the perspectival phenomenological structure of the field of consciousness with a variational Free Energy minimization model of active inference, yielding an account of...
One of the greatest challenges of consciousness research is to understand the relationship between consciousness and its implementing substrate. Current research into the neural correlates of consciousness regards the biological brain as being this substrate, but largely fails to clarify the nature of the brain-consciousness connection. A popular approach within this research is to construe...
The potential psychotherapeutic value of psychedelic drugs has recently generated much scientific and public interest. Many comparative trials have suggested that these drugs can produce significant benefits for individuals suffering from various treatment-resistant psychological disorders. However, recent work in the philosophy of medicine has emphasized the importance of complementing...