a 33 yr old man, previously diagnosed with hypothyroidism, presented with decreased level of consciousness and generalized tonic-clonic (gtc) seizure to namazi hospital, shiraz, iran, during april 2015. the patient later referred with another episode of seizure like attack for which he received phenytoin, carbamazepine and levothyroxine and was discharged. during his last admission, the patient...

Why does a relentless stream of experiences normally fill your mind? No answer is entirely satisfactory. We are not sure how the normal operation of the human brain might exude subjective experiences. Consciousness can thus seem miraculous, and research on consciousness a waste of time and money, ultimately doomed to fail. Yet, there are good reasons for optimism that should be shared with the ...

The analysis of extreme states of consciousness (perinatal experience and transpersonal experience) is outside the sphere of normal science. Experience goes beyond the empirically evidenced frames of consciousness and become transcendental towards rational manifestations. The author offers hypothesis of possible worlds with emphasis on the authenticity of the experience in the role of the facto...

In this article first some general aspects of near-death experience will be discussed, followed by questions about consciousness and its relation to brain function. Details will be described from our prospective study on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest in the Netherlands, which was published in the Lancet in 2001. In this study it could not be shown that physiological, psyc...

Consciousness, as a complex phenomenon, arises on a hierarchy of human rhythms and their interaction with environment. We present here a model of consciousness represented as a parallel distributed multiprocessing system with rhythmic scanning within a set of active modules. Dominant "gestalt" activity is then created by global exchange of information on "system bus" and by means of common elec...

6 Abstract It may eventually be possible to identify completely the temporal 7 sequences of electrical microstates that underlie consciousness. From these “codons 8 of consciousness” a DNA-like mathematical model of normal sequencing of the 9 “atoms of thought” could be constructed and matched to subjective experience and 10 behaviour. This would allow the prediction of thought and behaviour fr...

Consciousness has been defined as an awareness of oneself and one’s environment (1). This simple definition fails to account for the many discrete yet interrelated components of conscious awareness. We still do not have a complete understanding of how these components are integrated to produce conscious awareness, partly because consciousness is such a subjective, ephemeral subject. Nonetheless...

Consciousness is a state so essentially entwined with human experience, yet so difficult to conceptually define and measure. In this article, we explore how a bidimensional model of consciousness involving both level of arousal and subjective awareness of the contents of consciousness can be used to differentiate a range of healthy and altered conscious states. These include the different sleep...

In science and philosophy, there is still no general agreement on what ‘consciousness’ is. But how do normal people (with no education in psychology or philosophy) use the term in their everyday life? What is the folk understanding of the word “conscious”? We conducted an online study on how the general public uses the word “consciousness” in their daily life. Participants (n=445) answered the ...