A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the classic hallucinogen psilocybin occa...

Rational cognitive processes are defined as processes controlled by an external system of rules. This control is represented by the conservation of distinctions, where a distinction is conceived as an element of cognitive structuration. Four classes of distinctions (patterns, states, rules, and values) and four classes of distinction processes (conservation, destruction, creation, and creation-...

The main goal of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience. The brain activity of Carmelite nuns was measured while they were subjectively in a state of union with God. This state was associated with significant loci of activation in the right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right middle temporal cortex, right inferior an...