Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1983
Michael A. Persinger
298 citations
Mystical and religious experiences may arise from brief, electrical microseizures in deep temporal lobe structures, particularly the amygdala and hippocampus. The specific brain regions involved shape the content of these experiences, such as out-of-body sensations, distortions of time and space, intense meaningfulness, and dreamlike scenes. While cultural context and personal history influence details, shared temporal lobe properties across humans produce cross-cultural similarities. These experiences exist on a continuum from mild daily highs to intense, recurring religious conversions. Predisposing factors include genetic or biochemical conditions that increase temporal lobe instability. Life crises and near-death situations are common triggers. Because these microseizures activate brain reward regions and reduce death anxiety, they can become learned responses to existential trauma, powerfully shaping human behavior.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1981
Stephen P. La Berge, Lynn E. Nagel, William C. Dement et al.
237 citations
Lucid dreaming—dreaming while aware that one is dreaming—was verified in five selected subjects who signaled that they knew they were dreaming while continuing to dream during unambiguous REM sleep. The signals were specific dream actions with observable physical counterparts, performed according to pre-sleep agreement. This signaling ability allows proficient lucid dreamers to conduct dream experiments, marking the exact timing of dream events to enable precise psychophysiological correlations and systematic hypothesis testing.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1980
Stephen P. La Berge
122 citations
Over three years, a single subject (the author) learned to have lucid dreams—dreams in which the dreamer knows they are dreaming. Without any technique, fewer than one lucid dream occurred per month. Auto-suggestion produced 1 to 13 lucid dreams per month (average 5.4), with at most two per night. A mnemonic technique called MILD yielded 18 to 26 lucid dreams per month (average 21.5), with up to four per night, demonstrating that lucid dreaming can be deliberately induced.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1994
Nisha Rani, P. V. Krishna Rao
88 citations
People who practice hatha yoga have a greater awareness of normal, nonemotive bodily processes than those who do not. A group of 17 yoga practitioners scored higher on the Body Awareness Questionnaire than a control group of 19 non-practitioners, indicating that yoga training is associated with enhanced body awareness.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1993
M. A. Persinger
86 citations
Multiple variants of the sensed presence often precede mystical and religious experiences, which are frequently followed by sudden, permanent changes in self-concept. The model of vectorial hemisphericity proposes that the relative metabolic activity of synaptic patterns between the cerebral hemispheres during transient interhemispheric intercalation determines the affect, content, and type of experience. Depending on the relative activity of the two hemispheres, intrusions of the right hemispheric equivalent of the left hemispheric sense of self generate experimental phenomena including "evil entities," gods, out-of-body experiences, and alterations in space-time. Conditions that facilitate interhemispheric intercalation and the generation of these experiences are discussed.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1984
Daniel Brown, Michael Forte, Michael Dysart
82 citations
After a three-month retreat with 16 hours of daily mindfulness meditation, practitioners showed improved visual sensitivity: they could detect briefer light flashes and distinguish shorter intervals between successive flashes. A control group of retreat staff showed no change. Phenomenological reports suggest mindfulness practice brings normally preattentive visual processes into conscious awareness. These results support Buddhist textual claims about perceptual changes during mindfulness meditation.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
February 1, 2011
Michael Schredl, Daniel Erlacher
81 citations
About half (51%) of a representative sample of 919 German adults reported having had at least one lucid dream—a dream in which the person knows they are dreaming. Women recalled lucid dreams significantly more often than men, and lucid dream recall decreased with age. These differences may be explained by overall dream recall frequency, which correlated moderately (r = .57) with lucid dream frequency. Education, marital status, and income showed no relationship with how often people had lucid dreams. The high prevalence suggests that laboratory research on lucid dreams could further understanding of sleep, dreaming, and consciousness.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
October 1, 1974
Larry A. Hjelle
81 citations
Experienced transcendental meditators report lower anxiety, a greater sense of internal control, and higher self-actualization on 7 of 12 subscales compared with novice meditators. The findings suggest that long-term meditation practice is associated with improved psychological health and may have therapeutic value.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1974
Kenneth R. Pelletier
79 citations
After three months of Transcendental Meditation instruction, volunteers showed increased ego distance and field independence on the autokinetic test, embedded-figures test, and rod-and-frame test. The findings clarify issues in research on perceptual style and meditation.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
August 1, 1983
Paul Tholey
73 citations
Over several years and with over 200 subjects, techniques have been developed for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams. Lucidity can be achieved by practicing a critical-reflective frame of mind, intention and autosuggestion, or using apparatus. Methods to retain lucidity while falling asleep involve concentrating on visual phenomena, the body, or the thinking ego. Intentional acts help induce lucid dreams and manipulate their content. Dreamers can influence dream events within limits, and their desires, emotional state, looks, verbal utterances, and actions are important. Other dream figures can also aid in manipulation.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1982
Robert D. Ogilvie, Harry T. Hunt, Paul D. Tyson et al.
61 citations
Among 10 good dream recallers, awakenings from REM sleep periods with high alpha brain activity produced significantly higher ratings of lucidity compared to low-alpha REM periods. Alpha feedback training before sleep did not affect lucidity or alpha levels during REM. The authors discuss parallels between lucid dreaming and meditative states.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1976
Kristian Holt‐hansen
51 citations
When nine participants simultaneously tasted beer and listened to a rhythmic sound whose pitch could be varied, certain frequencies produced a reported harmony between taste and sound. At these harmonious pitches, participants described characteristic experiences, including an optimum taste of the beer, rhythmic sensations in the head, and tickling sensations in the jaws and mouth. Three participants also reported experiences resembling those described by people under the influence of drugs such as mescaline, psilocybin, LSD, and cannabis.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1975
Joel Younger, Wayne Adriance, Ralph J. Berger
37 citations
During Transcendental Meditation, most experienced practitioners showed clear signs of physiological sleep in their EEG and EOG recordings, with 6 out of 8 subjects spending considerable portions of their meditation periods asleep.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1979
John Michael Williams
2 citations
LSD produces visual distortions and analgesia. Visual effects likely stem from reduced light-evoked input to the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus from retinal pathways, especially affecting slower or complex-receptive-field afferents. LSD's analgesic effect, accompanied by severe psychotic symptoms, appears to result from actions on a centrifugally controlled pain system involving midbrain raphe neurons.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
February 1, 2005
Among 71 medical students, those who more often recalled their dreams also tended to score higher on measures of proneness to altered states of consciousness and dissociation. However, when all factors were considered together, neither altered states of consciousness, dissociation, sex, nor age significantly predicted how frequently someone recalled their dreams. The relationship differed by sex: for women, dream recall frequency was linked to dissociation, while for men it was linked to altered states of consciousness.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1985
Harry T. Hunt
A previously developed cognitive theory of mystical and altered states is extended. The theory holds that these states directly exteriorize normally hidden processes of semantics or 'felt meaning.' The human ability to 'turn around on the schemata' for symbolic recombination is based on cross-modal or synaesthetic embodiment of geometric and luminosity patterns afforded by disassembling visual-spatial perception. Orthodox accounts that treat synaesthesias and geometric imagery as primitive or nonsymbolic are rejected. This reinterpretation offers new understanding of ordinary insight, body-percept changes in schizophrenia, yoga chakra experience, and the mystical void. The psychology of thought and of altered states mutually illuminate each other.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
October 1, 1966
J. Antrobus, J. Singer, S. Greenberg
A model links spontaneous cognitive events like daydreams to ongoing responses to external stimuli. In experiments using a simple signal-detection task under partial sensory deprivation, faster signal presentation or higher short-term memory demands significantly reduced reports of task-irrelevant thoughts and imagery. Graded financial rewards for accurate detection progressively decreased extraneous fantasies. Distressing information given before trials significantly increased reports of spontaneous daydreaming during the detection task.