Frontiers in Psychology
August 3, 2018
Joachim Keppler
31 citations
Consciousness arises from the brain's interaction with a universal background field, the zero-point field (ZPF), according to a theoretical framework grounded in stochastic electrodynamics. In the extroverted, stimulus-oriented mode, the brain writes persistent information states into the ZPF during theta cycles to produce streams of consciousness. In the introspective mode, linked to default mode network activity, the brain reads and filters ZPF information states during alpha cycles, enabling the sense of self and memory retrieval. Meditative practices and psychedelics detune this filter, preventing self-referential states and dissolving the ego, while allowing access to a wider spectrum of ZPF modes and expanded consciousness.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 5, 2020
J. Keppler, I. Shani
29 citations
A novel variant of cosmopsychism proposes that the universe contains a ubiquitous field of consciousness (UFC) as a foundational dual-aspect component, with physical and phenomenological manifestations. The neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) indicate the brain's interaction with and modulation of this UFC. Drawing on modern physics, the modulation mechanism is identical to that underlying quantum systems: coherently oscillating neural assemblies acquire phenomenal properties by temporarily liaising with the UFC and extracting specific phenomenal tones from its inherent palette. This hypothesis addresses the origin of subjective experience and the causal generation of specific phenomenal states, and is supported by empirical evidence.
Frontiers in Psychology
November 12, 2018
Ursula Voss, Armando D’Agostino, Luca Kolibius et al.
28 citations
Dreams and psychosis share overlapping features in symptoms and brain activity, offering a testable model for conditions like schizophrenia and delirium. This review examines two key concepts: insight and dissociation. Insight in dreams is central to lucid dreaming, where dreamers become aware they are dreaming and often try to control the narrative, alongside dissociative experiences similar to depersonalization and derealization. These concepts also apply to psychotic illness. While insight may be harmless in lucid dreaming and even beneficial in psychosis, dissociation remains poorly understood. Comparing these phenomena helps clarify their psychological and neurophysiological roles.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 15, 2022
Alexandre Augusto de Deus Pontual, Alexandre Augusto de Deus Pontual, Luís Fernando Tófoli et al.
27 citations
Setting characteristics—social context, comfort, infrastructure, and decoration—moderate the intensity of challenging experiences during ayahuasca ceremonies, explaining 41% of the variance in challenging experience ratings across three traditions (União do Vegetal, Santo Daime, and neo-shamanic groups). Mystical experiences were less strongly associated with setting, with leadership and comfort explaining only 14% of the variance. Social context was rated highest among União do Vegetal members. In neo-shamanic groups, infrastructure, comfort, and decoration correlated more consistently with mystical experiences than in the other traditions. Maximizing setting quality reduces the likelihood of challenging experiences and modestly supports mystical experiences.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 4, 2022
Agnieszka D. Sekula, Luke Downey, Prashanth Puspanathan
27 citations
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PP) shows promise for treating PTSD, anxiety, addiction, and depression, relying heavily on participant mindset and therapeutic environment. Virtual reality (VR) may enhance PP by aiding relaxation, reducing anxiety, promoting mindfulness, inducing altered states of consciousness, and evoking mystical experiences. However, VR's role remains speculative due to a lack of empirical evidence on combined use. Potential disadvantages include sensory overstimulation, cyber-sickness, and triggering traumatic memories. A balanced, evidence-based approach is needed for design and implementation across treatment phases.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 23, 2022
Tomas Frymann, Sophie Whitney, David B. Yaden et al.
26 citations
Two new psychometric scales, the Integration Engagement Scale (IES) and the Experienced Integration Scale (EIS), were developed to measure different aspects of psychedelic integration—the period after acute drug effects. The IES captures positive behavioral engagement with integration, while the EIS captures internal feelings of being integrated. Scale items were refined with input from experts and clinicians using the Iterative Process Model. Content validity, internal structure, and reliability were assessed through expert surveys, cognitive interviewing, convergent validity analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The data indicate the scales are valid and reliable measures of behavioral and experiential forms of psychedelic integration.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 23, 2017
Kinga Wołoszyn, Mateusz Hohol
26 citations
A long-standing view in cognitive science holds that higher thinking uses abstract, amodal mental representations and brain regions separate from sensorimotor areas. Over recent decades, many researchers have instead argued that cognition is fundamentally grounded in sensorimotor activity and bodily constraints, a position called embodied cognition (EC). However, Goldinger et al. (2016) challenged EC's applicability, asserting that some of its assumptions are unacceptable and others offer nothing new, particularly for experimental psychology. This paper agrees with some criticisms—such as that radical embodiment rejecting mental representation is a dead end—but argues that the authors' methodological perspective on EC is inadequate.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 10, 2022
Adriana Alcaraz-Sánchez, Ema Demšar, Teresa Campillo-Ferrer et al.
25 citations
A state called witnessing-sleep or luminosity sleep, described in classic Indian philosophical traditions, involves awareness without an ordinary object—just awareness itself. In a two-stage research project, 18 participants underwent phenomenological interviews using the micro-phenomenological interview method. Across 12 reported experiences, a common phase labeled "nothingness phase" emerged, characterized by a minimal sense of self (a bodiless self felt to be "somewhere"), non-modal sensations, relatively pleasant emotions, absence of visual experience, wide and unfocused attention, and awareness of the state as it unfolded. This suggests that objectless awareness during sleep can be empirically investigated and may inform consciousness research.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 8, 2020
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
25 citations
Expert texts on Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation describe silence/quietness as a key feature of contentless experiences—states where thoughts, perceptions, and mental images are absent. Using evidence synthesis, 135 expert texts were systematically selected and analyzed. Silence/quietness is closely linked to stillness, absence of concepts, mental activity/noise, thoughts, and disturbance. It may also reflect absence of non-auditory perceptions, mental images, and negative feelings, fitting a conception of complete calm. The texts do not clearly distinguish silence/quietness from other features like stillness. Connections between silence/quietness and other features vary in closeness, revealing fine distinctions and ambiguities that raise new research questions.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 28, 2024
Oliver Robinson, Jules Evans, David Luke et al.
24 citations
After a psychedelic experience, some people face difficulties that last at least a day. An international survey of 608 such individuals found they used a variety of coping strategies. The most common individual strategies were meditation and prayer, followed by self-educational activities like reading and journaling. Social coping most often involved seeking support from friends or family, then from a therapist or coach. Helpful features of social support included feeling heard and accepted, a non-judgmental attitude, and sharing similar experiences. These findings can inform therapeutic interventions and educational resources for those experiencing extended post-psychedelic difficulties.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 23, 2021
Arnfinn Aamodt, André Sevenius Nilsen, Benjamin Thürer et al.
24 citations
Signal diversity in EEG recordings, measured by Lempel-Ziv complexity and other metrics, decreases with deeper non-REM sleep stages, consistent with theories linking consciousness to complex cortical dynamics. However, signal diversity did not significantly differ between dreaming and non-dreaming periods within the same sleep stage. A positive correlation was found between Lempel-Ziv complexity over the posterior cortex and the thought-perceptual quality of dream contents, suggesting that specific aspects of dream experience may relate to local cortical signal diversity.
Frontiers in Psychology
November 17, 2022
Catharina Messell, Lisa Summer, Lars Ole Bonde et al.
22 citations
A new music program, the Copenhagen Music Program, has been developed to accompany the 4–6 hour sessions of medium/high dose psilocybin therapy. The program uses the Guided Imagery and Music framework to choose and sequence music, and the Taxonomy of Therapeutic Music to rate each piece's psychological intensity. Detailed procedural steps and examples are provided to guide others in creating music programs for psychedelic interventions, with the aim that informed music selection can support therapeutic dynamics during the drug's acute effects.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 22, 2019
Caroline di Bernardi Luft, Никита Дрозд, Michael J. Banissy et al.
22 citations
In an artist who experiences vivid visual imagery during meditation, occipital gamma power (30-70 Hz) increased during the deepest meditation stages and was higher during visions than during non-vision periods. Alpha-frequency brain stimulation made her images sharper, shorter, and more frequent, but the sharpened images were too detailed for her art. Gamma and sham stimulation had no effect on imagery content. These findings suggest occipital gamma may be a neural marker of spontaneous visual imagery in experienced meditators.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 12, 2023
Jakub Greń, Filip Tylš, Michał Lasocik et al.
21 citations
Mental health professionals increasingly encounter clients who have had psychedelic experiences, yet graduate training in psychiatry, psychology, and counseling does not prepare them for this work. To address this gap, an international bottom-up project used literature reviews and roundtable discussions to develop comprehensive guidelines for psychedelic integration. The guidelines cover theoretical and practical aspects, including psychedelic effects, a definition of integration, theoretical considerations, a model for organizing integration practice, an overview of current models, and specific interventions from various psychotherapeutic approaches. These guidelines are intended as a resource for any mental health specialist supporting individuals with psychedelic experiences.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 3, 2024
Darius Parvizi-Wayne, Lars Sandved-Smith, Riddhi J. Pitliya et al.
20 citations
Flow is a state of optimal performance experienced across domains like art, athletics, gaming, and writing. Its puzzling features include a reported loss of self-awareness despite skilled agency, and effortlessness despite task complexity. Using the active inference framework—where action and perception minimize variational free energy—the authors propose that flow arises from high precision weighting on expected sensory consequences of action and beliefs about sequential action. This draws the embodied system to exploit pragmatic affordances while restricting counterfactual planning, leading to inhibition of the sense of self as a temporally extended object and higher-order self-conceptualization. However, self-awareness is not entirely lost; it remains pre-reflective and bodily.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 7, 2022
Katherine V. Sparks, Christopher Ring
20 citations
A 6-week rowing-specific mindfulness intervention, combining generic and rowing-specific practices, increased flow, mindfulness, and rowing performance in rowers, while decreasing conscious motor processing from pre-test to post-test. However, the intervention did not change mindfulness or reinvestment more than the control condition. Participants evaluated the intervention positively. These results provide preliminary evidence that sport-specific mindfulness training can benefit athletes.
Frontiers in Psychology
August 6, 2021
Daniel Meling
20 citations
The enactive approach in cognitive science holds that cognition is sense-making: organisms enact a meaningful world rather than receiving a pre-given one. This sense-making has no fixed, substantial ground; it arises from a dynamic web of relations and is therefore groundless. The article argues that this groundlessness is not merely a theoretical concept but is directly accessible in lived experience. It explores what it means to know groundlessness and how one can come to know it, describing how this knowing fits within enactive theory and can be experienced when certain conditions are met. A reflexive analysis highlights the context-dependency and observer-relativity of these claims.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 25, 2020
Leonor Irarrázaval
20 citations
Phenomenology in psychiatry and psychology is best suited to qualitative research, particularly through phenomenological interviews. This article clarifies what makes an interview phenomenological, why such interviews are conducted with patients, and how they should be performed and analyzed. It argues that merely testing phenomenological hypotheses or concepts does not do justice to patients' involvement. The article also points to the broader scientific paradigm of phenomenology, which holds that reality is mind-dependent, and suggests future directions for research.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 17, 2020
Eric van Lente, Michael Hogan
19 citations
Experienced meditators describe oneness experiences as involving changes in the sense of space (unboundedness), time, identity, wholeness, and flow, with these aspects forming an interrelated system. The study used a collective intelligence method called Interactive Management across five groups to identify and model these perceptions, which were consistent across sessions. Findings suggest that shifts in self-perception during meditation—toward a sense of non-separation from the world—may be a key mechanism linking mindfulness practice to well-being outcomes.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 28, 2021
Dylan Thomas Lott, Tenzin Yeshi, N. Norchung et al.
18 citations
Recent EEG studies on the early postmortem interval suggest the persistence of electrophysiological coherence and connectivity in the brain of animals and humans, reinforcing the need for further investigation of brain activity during the dying process. Under the direction of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, research was conducted in India on a postmortem meditative state (tukdam) cultivated by some Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, in which decomposition is putatively delayed. For healthy baseline and postmortem subjects, resting state EEG, mismatch negativity, and auditory brainstem response data were collected. Living subjects displayed well-defined MMN and ABR responses, but no recognizable EEG waveforms were discernable in any of the tukdam cases.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 3, 2023
Daniel Meling, Milan Scheidegger
17 citations
Psychedelics are psychoactive substances whose effects involve changes in biochemistry, brain activity, and subjective experience, but how these levels relate is debated. Two current views are the integration view and the pluralistic view. This article proposes an enactive perspective that re-evaluates the molecule-brain-experience relationship. It applies the concept of autonomy to the causal link between the drug and brain activity, and dynamic co-emergence to the link between brain activity and experience. This enactive view emphasizes interdependence and circular causality across multiple levels, supporting and enriching the pluralistic view by offering a principled account of how layered processes interact. It has implications for understanding causality in psychedelic therapy and research.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 3, 2022
Débora González, Marc Aixalà, Robert A. Neimeyer et al.
15 citations
A woman suffering from complicated grief after her mother's suicide participated in an ayahuasca ceremony followed by Restorative Retelling sessions to process the psychedelic experience. The case report describes how ayahuasca evoked key psychological content related to her loss, and how the adapted Restorative Retelling technique helped integrate that content into autobiographical memory, fostering meaning-making. Evaluations before the ayahuasca experience and after Restorative Retelling suggest reductions in symptoms of complicated grief and general psychopathology. The authors propose that Restorative Retelling can effectively process and integrate psychedelic experiences, though they note limitations of a single case.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 28, 2021
Bernd Brabec de Mori
15 citations
Ayahuasca has become popular among non-Indigenous people outside the Amazon, often promoted as an ancient natural remedy for shamanic healing. However, this neo-shamanic and recreational use differs fundamentally from traditional Indigenous practices and modern medical research. Indigenous use treats ayahuasca as a means to amplify communication with non-human beings in animal, plant, or spirit realms, where efficacy depends on correct interaction with these powers, not the drug itself. Modern medicine focuses on neurochemical processes like MAO inhibition and DMT activity to trigger psychological and somatic responses for treating mental conditions. The author argues an ontological incommensurability exists between Indigenous and medicinal concepts, so one cannot legitimate the other, and the coloniality of appropriating Indigenous practices must be questioned.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 23, 2021
Alexandre Augusto de Deus Pontual, Luís Fernando Tófoli, Carlos Fernando Collares et al.
14 citations
A new questionnaire, the Setting Questionnaire for the Ayahuasca Experience (SQAE), measures the physical and social context in which ayahuasca is consumed. Developed from a literature review, interviews with 19 users, and a survey of 2,994 participants, the scale's structure was tested using exploratory graph analysis and multidimensional item response theory. Six dimensions emerged—Leadership, Decoration, Infrastructure, Comfort, Instruction, and Social—though the original theoretical model fit the data better than the exploratory model. The instrument shows evidence of validity and can support future research on how setting influences the ayahuasca experience, with potential applications for studying psychedelic use more broadly.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 14, 2024
Caspar Montgomery, Timo Torsten Schmidt, Ioanna Amaya
13 citations
Flicker light stimulation (FLS), a non-pharmacological method that induces altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and hallucination-like phenomena, can enhance emotional responses to music. In a study with twenty participants, listening to emotionally evocative music while undergoing FLS significantly increased reported music-evoked emotion, particularly emotions related to “Joyful Activation.” The intensity of the FLS experience correlated with higher levels of emotional arousal. These results suggest that FLS may serve as a method for inducing ASCs and that visual stimulation can interact with music-evoked emotion, paralleling effects seen with classic psychedelics like LSD.