Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2013
Jana Speth, Clemens Frenzel, Ursula Voss
We present Activity Analysis as a new method for the quantification of subjective reports of altered states of consciousness with regard to the indicated level of simulated motor activity. Empirical linguistic activity analysis was conducted with dream reports conceived immediately after EEG-controlled periods of hypnagogic hallucinations and REM-sleep in the sleep laboratory. Reports of...
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science
September 1, 2013
Carolyn A. Ristau
Cognitive Ethology, the field initiated by Donald R Griffin, was defined by him as the study of the mental experiences of animals as they behave in their natural environment in the course of their normal lives. It encompasses both the problems defined by Chalmers as the 'hard' problem of consciousness, phenomenological experience, and the 'easy' problems, the phenomena that appear to be...
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
September 1, 2013
Marjolein Van Duijl, Wim Kleijn, Joop De Jong
30 citations
As in many cultures, spirit possession is a common idiom of distress in Uganda. The DSM-IV contains experimental research criteria for dissociative and possession trance disorder (DTD and PTD), which are under review for the DSM-5. In the current proposed categories of the DSM-5, PTD is subsumed under dissociative identity disorder (DID) and DTD under dissociative disorders not elsewhere...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 28, 2013
Nicholas J. Wade, Trung T. Ngo
Contributions from 19th Century scholars to binocular rivalry research are well recognized, however, observations concerning the phenomenon commenced centuries earlier and suggest a rich seam of research that is much less well known. This chapter discusses these early investigations, along with conflicting views and observations thereafter. We also discuss the early application of notions of...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 28, 2013
Jan W. Brascamp, Daniel H. Baker
For a given visual stimulus, much can be inferred about its neural representation by measuring an observer’s responses on simple behavioral tasks. This is the essence of psychophysics, the method of examining sensory processing by studying the relation between stimulation and perception or behavior. Binocular rivalry is the phenomenon of alternating perception that occurs when the two eyes...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 28, 2013
Frank Sengpiel
Ever since Horace Barlow (1972) proposed his neuron doctrine for perceptual psychology, the holy grail for neurophysiologists has been to find individual neurons or groups of neurons whose firing correlates with specific percepts or even a state of mind or consciousness. Binocular rivalry is a particularly attractive paradigm for this approach because a stable visual stimulus causes an...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 28, 2013
P. Christiaan Klink, Richard J.A. Van Wezel, Raymond Van Ee
Binocular rivalry is often considered an experimental window on the neural processes of consciousness. We propose three distinct approaches to exploit this window. First, one may look through the window, using binocular rivalry as a passive tool to dissociate unaltered sensory input from wavering perceptual output. Second, the mechanisms underlying binocular rivalry may yield detailed knowledge...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
August 27, 2013
Jimo Borjigin, UnCheol Lee, Tiecheng Liu et al.
The brain is assumed to be hypoactive during cardiac arrest. However, the neurophysiological state of the brain immediately following cardiac arrest has not been systematically investigated. In this study, we performed continuous electroencephalography in rats undergoing experimental cardiac arrest and analyzed changes in power density, coherence, directed connectivity, and cross-frequency...
arXiv Preprint Archive
August 25, 2013
Juan M. Romero, Carlos Trenado, Berenice Aguilar et al.
preprint
In this paper, we address a neural field equation that characterizes spatio-temporal propagation of a neural population pulse. Due that the human brain is a complex system whose constituents interaction give rise to fundamental states of consciousness and behavior, it is crucial to gain insight into its functioning even at relativistic scales. To this end, we study the action of the...
August 22, 2013
Erik Craig
Perhaps the single most essential foundation for a healthy and satisfying existence is a reliable sense that one is, that one has the right to be, the power and authority to be, just as long as one is. Indeed, so foundational is the sense of being and belonging that we take it for granted like the air we breathe and the ground on which we walk. However, when this primordial relation to one's...