Although most aspects of world and self-consciousness are inherently subjective, neuroscience studies in humans and non-human animals provide correlational and causative indices of specific links between brain activity and representation of the self and the world. In this article we review neuroanatomic, neurophysiological and neuropsychological data supporting the hypothesis that different...
New title, or subtitle: „Current knowledge on the neurobiology of classical hallucinogens and their relevance for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders‘ Hallucinogenic substances have been used for millenia. Still, the scientific investigation into the effects and mechanisms of classical hallucinogens in humans has only commenced with the discovery of LSD by Albert Hofmann in 1943. In the...
After decades of research, blindsight is still a mysterious and controversial topic in consciousness research. Currently, many researchers tend to think of it as an ideal phenomenon to investigate neural correlates of consciousness, whereas others believe that blindsight is in fact a kind of degraded vision rather than "truly blind". This article considers both perspectives and finds that both...
Spirituality encompasses a wide range of meanings between holistic wellbeing and mysticism. We explored advanced cancer patients' spiritual experiences of transcendence. A total of 251 patients with advanced cancer were included and observed (participant observation) over 12 months by a psycho-oncologist/music-therapist. She recorded and documented patients' spontaneously expressed spiritual...
Blindsight is a kind of residual vision found in people with lesions to V1. Subjects with blindsight typically report no visual awareness, but they are nonetheless able to make above-chance guesses about the shape, location, color and movement of visual stimuli presented to them in their blind field. A different kind of blindsight, sometimes called type 2 blindsight, is a kind of residual...
How does mind fit into nature? Philosophy has long been concerned with this question. No contemporary philosopher has done more to clarify it than Jaegwon Kim, a distinguished analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. With new contributions from an outstanding line-up of eminent scholars, this volume focuses on issues raised in Kim's work. The chapters cluster...
The agentive aspects of communicative religious experiences remain somewhat neglected in the social sciences literature. There is a need for phenomenological descriptions of these experiences and the ways in which they differ from culturally defined psychopathological states. In this semi-structured interview study, eight congregants attending an evangelical church in London were asked to...
Introduction Embodied cognition forms part of an increasingly popular trend in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science which emphasizes the role played by extra-neural and extra-corporeal factors in human cognitive processing (Clark, 2008; Shapiro, 2011). It sits alongside a number of other areas of research, which we can collectively refer to as embodied, embedded, enactive and extended...
The practice of spiritual direction concerns the human experience of God. As praxis, spiritual direction has a long tradition in Western Christianity. It is a process rooted in spirituality with theology as its foundation. This paper explores the convergences between aspects of philosophy (contemplative awareness), psychology (Rogerian client-centered approach) and phenomenology. There are...
Meditation is a self-induced and willfully initiated practice that alters the state of consciousness. The meditation practice of Zazen, like many other meditation practices, aims at disregarding intrusive thoughts while controlling body posture. It is an open monitoring meditation characterized by detached moment-to-moment awareness and reduced conceptual thinking and self-reference. Which...