We lose waking consciousness spontaneously and regularly over the circadian cycle. It seems that every time we fall asleep, reflective thinking gradually gives way to our interactions with an imaginary, hallucinatory world that brings multimodal experiences in the absence of adequate external stimuli. The present study investigates this transition, proposing a new measure of hallucinatory...
Self-ratings of dream experiences were obtained from 144 college women for 788 dreams, using the Subjective Experiences Rating Scale (SERS). Consistent with past studies, dreams were characterized by a greater prevalence of vision, audition, and movement than smell, touch, or taste, by both positive and negative emotion, and by a range of cognitive processes. A Principal Components Analysis of...
Abstract A fundamental question for consciousness science is what changes in the brain when phenomenal experience arises or restructures. Current EEG metrics of consciousness fall into two classes: empirically calibrated clinical indices (Bispectral Index, Odd Ratio Product) and theoretically motivated complexity measures (Lempel-Ziv complexity, Perturbational Complexity Index). Both classes...
Some of the most compelling evidence supporting an association between cannabinoid agonists and psychosis comes from controlled laboratory studies in humans. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover laboratory studies demonstrate that cannabinoid agonists, including phytocannabinoids and synthetic cannabinoids, produce a wide range of positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms...
Throughout history, in almost every society, persons have claimed to experience God or some ultimate reality in the same sort of immediate way that they experience physical objects through their senses. Their experiences have been quite diverse, running the gamut from extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences of some underlying unity into which the experient is totally or partially...
Terence McKenna (1946–2000) spent thirty years advocating for the religious use of hallucinogenic substances. Picking up where Timothy Leary left off, McKenna inspired later generations of Psychonauts (“consciousness explorers”) and continues to do so even today. McKennan religion treats humanity as in flux, with imminent evolutionary milestones rapidly approaching. These metamorphoses will...
How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent...
We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences ("hearing voices") and auditory verbal agency (inner speech, and specifically "talking to (imaginary) voices or characters") in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants' implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences (VE) and...
Background: Schizophrenia is characterized by positive and negative symptoms, but recently anomalous self-experiences, e.g. exaggerated self-consciousness (hyperreflectivity), receive more attention as an important symptom domain in schizophrenia patients. The semi-structured interview, the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE) [Psychopathology 2005;38:236-258], examines experiences...
Shamanic practices frequently create hypnotic-like states, with altered states of consciousness, heightened suggestibility, and a perception of an abundance of meaning in everyday events. Jaguar medicine (JM) is a form of shamanic healing with roots in the indigenous cultures of South and Central America. Recent years have seen increasing interest in translating shamanic practices for use in...