Neuropsychopharmacology
August 2015
Jose A Cortes-Briones, Patrick D. Skosnik, Daniel H. Mathalon et al.
Gamma (γ)-band oscillations play a key role in perception, associative learning, and conscious awareness and have been shown to be disrupted by cannabinoids in animal studies. The goal of this study was to determine whether cannabinoids disrupt γ-oscillations in humans and whether these effects relate to their psychosis-relevant behavioral effects. The acute, dose-related effects of...
Croatian Medical Journal
August 1, 2015
L. Konopka
The cycle of life starts with conception and progresses to birth, maturity, old age, and death. We know a significant amount about what happens during most of these stages; however, the final step, death, defies many of our attempts to study and comprehend it. The cultural rituals that surround death attest to our fascination with this concluding stage of life. Cultures often look at death as a...
Psychopharmacology
July 31, 2015
Michael Kometer, Thomas Pokorny, Erich Seifritz et al.
165 citations
RationaleDuring the last years, considerable progress has been made toward understanding the neuronal basis of consciousness by using sophisticated behavioral tasks, brain-imaging techniques, and various psychoactive drugs. Nevertheless, the neuronal mechanisms underlying some of the most intriguing states of consciousness, including spiritual experiences, remain unknown.ObjectivesTo elucidate...
Frontiers in Psychology
July 29, 2015
Jakub Jonkisz
14 citations
Within theoretical and empirical enquiries, many different meanings associated with consciousness have appeared, leaving the term itself quite vague. This makes formulating an abstract and unifying version of the concept of consciousness - the main aim of this article -into an urgent theoretical imperative. It is argued that consciousness, characterized as dually accessible (cognized from the...
Dreaming
July 20, 2015
Jennifer Windt
The chapter confronts the epistemological problem of dream deception with evidence of scientific dream research with the aim of investigating the empirical plausibility of different scenarios of dream deception. I argue that a majority of dreams do not fulfill the conditions for counting as deceptive experiences in any interesting sense. At the same time, a number of real-world candidates for...
Neuroscience
July 9, 2015
Renate Rutiku, M Martin, Talis Bachmann et al.
A common scientific strategy toward understanding consciousness is to study neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) for a particular conscious percept. This can be done by contrasting conditions in which subjects are aware and unaware of a particular visual stimulus. However, recent findings have been contradictory and this approach appears not to reveal only the NCC, but also the...
July 1, 2015
David R. Cerbone
This paper examines Moore’s account of Husserl in chapter 17 of The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics. I consider in particular the threat of a gap between natural sense-making, which takes place within what Husserl calls the “natural attitude,” and phenomenological sense-making, which is made from within the perspective afforded by the phenomenological reduction. Moore’s concerns are an echo, I...
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities
July 1, 2015
Tanatchaporn Kittikong
1 citation
This article offers some in-depth reflections on the body in Buddhism, and particularly the concept of ‘impermanence’ and ‘mindfulness of body’. I explore here, how the body is classified and intellectualized in Buddhist culture and tradition, with a focus on definitions and practices of Buddhist Theravada, including: Satipatthana, Vipassana Meditation, Nama-Rupa and Kayagatasati. I offer...
Consciousness and Cognition
July 1, 2015
Vanessa Charland-Verville, Zulay Lugo, Jean-Pierre Jourdan et al.
Memories of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) most often are recounted as emotionally positive events. At present, no satisfactory explanatory model exists to fully account for the rich phenomenology of NDEs following a severe acute brain injury. The particular population of patients with locked-in syndrome (LIS) provides a unique opportunity to study NDEs following infratentorial brain lesions. We...
JRSM Open
July 1, 2015
Ann M Cox
Sleep paralysis is a relatively new term to describe what for hundreds of years many believed to be a visitation by a malevolent creature which attacked its victims as they slept. The first clinical description of sleep paralysis was published in 1664 in a Dutch physician’s case histories, where it was referred to as, ‘Incubus or the Night-Mare [sic]’. In 1977, it was discovered more than 100...