Intrinsic and historical weaknesses delayed the spread of a sound neurobiological investigation on dreaming. Nevertheless, recent independent findings confirm the hypothesis that the neurophysiological mechanisms of encoding and recall of episodic memories are largely comparable across wakefulness and sleep. Brain lesion and neuroimaging studies converge in indicating that...
We mathematically model Ignacio Matte Blanco's principles of symmetric and asymmetric being through use of an ultrametric topology. We use for this the highly regarded 1975 book of this Chilean psychiatrist and pyschoanalyst (born 1908, died 1995). Such an ultrametric model corresponds to hierarchical clustering in the empirical data, e.g. text. We show how an ultrametric topology can be used...
Standard accounts of delusion explain them as responses to experience. Cognitive models of feature binding in the face recognition systems explain how experiences of mismatch between feelings of "familiarity" and faces can arise. Similar mismatches arise in phenomena such as déjà and jamais vu in which places and scenes are mismatched to feelings of familiarity. These cognitive models also...
Riassunto: Il progetto husserliano mira a fondare una scienza rigorosa dell’esperienza e le linee guida di questo lavoro si intravedono già nel suo manifesto fenomenologico del 1911. Questo progetto prende la psicologia come proprio element focale e nello specifico, Husserl tenta di salvarla dalla tentazioni del naturalismo per ripristinare il suo vero compito: una analisi rigorosa dei fenomeni...
The combination of electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been shown to have great potential for providing a greater understanding of normal and diseased states in both human and animal studies. Simultaneous EEG-fMRI is particularly well suited for the study of epilepsy in that it may reveal the neurobiology of ictal and interictal epileptiform...
Reviewed by: Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness Benjamin J. Chicka Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness. By B. Alan Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. xi + 158 pp. The project of B. Alan Wallace will be clear by now to those who have been following his career. He seeks the unification of a Buddhist understanding of...
The continuum model of psychosis has been extremely influential. It assumes that psychotic symptoms, such as auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), are not limited to patients with psychosis but also occur in healthy, non-clinical individuals - suggesting similar mechanisms of origin. Recent debate surrounding this model has highlighted certain differences, as well as similarities, in the...
This paper seeks to explore the possibility of Gaian Consciousness or the existence of an Earth Consciousness based on the hypothesis of the planet as a self-regulating system/living organism. It seeks to define the nature of this consciousness as transpersonal and it presents the author’s research, ‘Therapeutic transpersonal encounters with dolphins’, other research, and well-established...
In a recent series of experiments we recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) response to a direct cortical stimulation in humans during wakefulness, NREM sleep, REM sleep and anesthesia by means of a combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and high-density EEG (hd-EEG). TMS/hd-EEG measurements showed that, while during wakefulness and REM sleep the brain is able to sustain...