To what extent do I have a sense of agency over my thoughts while I dream? The sense of agency in dreams can alter in a variety of interesting ways distinct from normal, waking experience. In fact, dreams show many similarities to the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia. In this paper I analyze these alterations with a focus on distinguishing between reduced sense of agency and other...
Cell membrane's fatty acids (FAs) have been carefully investigated in neurons and platelets in order to study a possible connection to psychopathologies. An important link between the FA distribution and membrane dynamics appears to emerge with the cytoskeleton dynamics. Microtubules (MTs) in particular have been implicated in some recent quantum consciousness models and analyses. The recently...
Summary In the last decade, Guilio Tononi has developed the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness. IIT postulates that consciousness is equal to integrated information (F). The goal of this paper is to show that IIT fails in its stated goal of quantifying consciousness. The paper will challenge the theoretical and empirical arguments in support of IIT. The main theoretical...
Millennialism, eschatology, and apocalypticism. This aricle consists of four parts. Firstly, it describes briefly and elementarily the origins of millennialism as it manifested in the history of theoligy. Secondly, it reflects on some of the new and challenging ways New Testament scholars nowadays study eschatology and apocalypticism from a social-scientific perspecive on the conception of time...
The visible growth in possession and exorcism in Southern Africa can, amongst others, be attributed to the general impression in Christianity that, since Jesus was a successful exorcist, his followers should follow his example. Historical Jesus research generally endorses a view of Jesus as exorcist, which probably also contributes to this idea, yet there is no or very little reflection about...
The psychological and socio-economic implications of digital technologies call for scholarship that engages questions about the nature of human consciousness, the construction of the self and the ethics of technical development. In this article, I outline a framework for an approach called contemplative media studies. This approach incorporates several different scholarly threads, namely: via...
In this multidisciplinary paper, there are some explanatory sources provided that pertain to the oscillating agent model (OAM), which is an intrinsic part of the novel oscillations- based multiagent system (OSIMAS) paradigm. The agent's oscillating nature is inferred by empirical neuroscience observations. In the OAM, a social agent is understood as a set of characteristic basic mind-brain...
This summer, Europe's Journal of Psychology hosts a fruitful discussion about phenomenology, its method, the possibilities of application in today's context and its current troubled waters stemming from recent historical-ideological debates. Prof. Roberta De Monticelli offers lush and informative answers to provocative issues like overdriving the epoché, Heidegger's dark undertones, the...
In this paper we propose an emotion assimilation function of sleep and dreaming. We offer explanations both for the mechanisms by which waking-life memories are initially selected for processing during sleep, and for the mechanisms by which those memories are subsequently transformed during sleep. We propose that emotions act as a marker for information to be selectively processed during sleep,...
Infertility affects around 80 million people around the world and it has been estimated that psychological problems in infertile couples is within the range of 25-60%. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Mindfulness-based cognitive group therapy on consciousness regarding marital satisfaction and general health in woman with infertility. Recent work is a clinical...