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From phenomenology to practice
Published in Kay Aranda, Critical Qualitative Health Research, 2020
Kate Galvin, Oliver Thurlow, Rebecca Player
Neurophenomenology is an integrated, promising approach to study and explore consciousness from multiple aspects to aid understanding of what consciousness means to us. It is largely influenced through the philosophical work of Merleau-Ponty, in The Structure of Behaviour; he “argued for the mutual illumination among phenomenology of direct lived experience, psychology, and neurophysiology”. (Varela et al., 1991, p. 15).
Introduction
Published in Yulia Ustinova, Divine Mania, 2017
The aim of this book is to explore Greek cultural phenomena involving alteration of consciousness, which requires elucidating mechanisms and processes behind individual experiences and behaviours, as well as setting them against their historical background. In practical terms, my approach to the study of Greek mania is based on combining the traditional historical methods with the results of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology. For decades, these disciplines have worked in conjunction with anthropology.151 Conceptual integration between the humanities and biology and neuroscience in the study of religion is known as neurotheology or neurophenomenology.152 The pioneer in the field of Classical studies is W. Burkert, whose book Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions not only deals with the psychology of religious phenomena, but rather endeavours ‘to tie historical and philological research to biological anthropology.’153 Theoretical foundations of the cognitive approach to the study of religion began to be formulated during the recent decades,154 and the interaction between cognition and cultural phenomena is explored by experts on cognition, as well as philosophers, historians, and linguists.155 This approach to the study of ancient religion has already been endorsed by several Classical scholars.156 Tremendous opportunities presented by such integrated inquiry are forcefully put forward by E. Slingerland who demonstrates how general models based on the theory of evolution and embodied cognition, alongside domain-specific methodologies and approaches, allow the humanities a breakthrough into the modern intellectual community.157 The study of the alteration of consciousness is still an emerging area of research, and many issues are far from being resolved by the experts. Some of these will be mentioned shortly.
Hypnotic-like Aspects of the Tibetan Tradition of Dzogchen Meditation
Published in International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2020
There are, of course, many important differences between the two traditions (Wickramasekera, 2004) involving their culture, history, and religious points of view. Dzogchen may be a hypnotic-like tradition, but it is not merely hypnosis. One key difference between the traditions of hypnosis and Dzogchen is that yogis have had to build their theories of the nature of mind entirely using an epistemology that emphasizes phenomenology and personal experiences in Dzogchen practice. Dzogchenpas had to develop their practices and theories of mind without the scientific technology that we have today to validate the psychophysiological effects of hypnotic-like practices upon the body using PET and fMRI. Meanwhile, the scientific tradition of hypnosis has tended to flourish using empiricism to cut through many of the false assumptions that people have held around hypnotic phenomena such as the mistaken idea that hypnosis is caused by biomagnetism in some way. However, more recent developments in the field of neuroscience have tended to emphasize that we will need to combine the results of disciplined phenomenological and empirical investigation to make more progress on understanding the nature of mind utilizing a new discipline called neurophenomenology (Lutz & Thompson, 2003; Moustakas, 1990; Pekala & Kumar, 2000; Varela et al., 1991; Wickramasekera, 2015a).
Differing Perspectives in Cross-Cultural Research
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2019
Psychiatric diagnostic categories are cultural constructs. Kirmayer and Ban (2013) warn that current psychiatric diagnostic categories are based on a long Western tradition of describing mental disorders as well as their clinical course and outcomes. Along the way, the categories have become established as the natural way to divide mental disorders. Cultural variations are then seen as minor differences in linguistic description, explanation, or symptom expression reflecting local knowledge and idioms of distress. However, while current psychiatric classification tends to assume that the form of mental disorders reflects underlying neurobiologic processes, symptom experience and expression are influenced by cognitive and social interpretations that are shaped by culture from their earliest beginnings. Therefore, there is no culture-free psychiatric expression that is based on neurophenomenology. Research is needed in the exploration of local experience and expression of suffering with renewed attention to the phenomenology of illness experience and with an enlarged or open set of diagnostic constructs. Clinical course and outcomes also need to be studied from a social and cultural perspective (Kirmayer & Ban, 2013).
Hypnotic Automaticity in the Brain at Rest: An Arterial Spin Labelling Study
Published in International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2019
Pierre Rainville, Anouk Streff, Jen-I Chen, Bérengère Houzé, Carolane Desmarteaux, Mathieu Piché
In addition to the reports of automaticity, hypnotic depth ratings and individual hypnotizability scores were used as predictors of changes in brain activity following hypnotic induction. Analysis of hypnotic depth revealed a single activation site that could not be readily attributed to brain activity as its peak fell in CSF (see Figure 5A), while individuals with higher hypnotizability scores showed a stronger hypnosis-related increase in the posterior cingulate region, a part of the posterior DMN (Figure 5B). This result should be considered with caution as the statistical threshold applied in these analyses may not adequately protect against type I error. However, these results provide yet another case demonstrating the importance of considering the multidimensionality of hypnosis neurophenomenology.