A fascinating cornucopia of new ideas, based on fundamentals of neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry and therapy, this book extends boundaries of current concepts of consciousness. Its eclectic mix will simulate and challenge not only neuroscientists and psychologists but entice others interested in exploring consciousness. Contributions from top researchers in consciousness and related fields project diverse ideas, focused mainly on conscious nonconscious interactions: 1. Paving the way for new research on basic scientific - physiological, pharmacological or neurochemical - mechanisms underpinning conscious experience ( bottom up approach); 2. Providing directions on how psychological processes are involved in consciousness ( top down approach); 3. Indicating how including consciousness could lead to new understanding of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, dementia, and addiction; 4. More provocatively, but still based on scientific evidence, exploring consciousness beyond conventional boundaries, indicating the potential for radical new thinking or quantum leaps in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. (Series B)"

A fascinating cornucopia of new ideas, based on fundamentals of neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry and therapy, this book extends boundaries of current concepts of consciousness. Its eclectic mix will simulate and challenge not only neuroscientists and psychologists but entice others interested in exploring consciousness. Contributions from top researchers in consciousness and related fields project diverse ideas, focused mainly on conscious nonconscious interactions: 1. Paving the way for new research on basic scientific - physiological, pharmacological or neurochemical - mechanisms underpinning conscious experience (‘bottom up’ approach); 2. Providing directions on how psychological processes are involved in consciousness (‘top down’ approach); 3. Indicating how including consciousness could lead to new understanding of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, dementia, and addiction; 4. More provocatively, but still based on scientific evidence, exploring consciousness beyond conventional boundaries, indicating the potential for radical new thinking or ‘quantum leaps’ in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. (Series B)

A neuroscientist and Zen practitioner interweaves the latest research on the brain with his personal narrative of Zen. Aldous Huxley called humankind's basic trend toward spiritual growth the "perennial philosophy." In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a "perennial psychophysiology"—because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence. In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative. Along the way, Austin examines such topics as similar states in other disciplines and religions, sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and the social consequences of the advanced stage of ongoing enlightenment.

Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality presents a variety of perspectives by leading thinkers on contemporary research into the brain, the mind and the spirit. This volumes aims at combining knowledge from neuroscience with approaches from the experiential perspective of the first person singular in order to arrive at an integrated understanding of consciousness. Individual chapters discuss new areas of research, such as near death studies and neuroscience research into spiritual experiences, and report on significant new theoretical advances. From Harald Walach’s introductory essay, “Neuroscience, Consciousness, Spirituality – Questions, Problems and Potential Solutions,” to the concluding chapter by Robert K. C. Foreman entitled “An Emerging New Model for Consciousness: The Consciousness Field Model,” this book represents a milestone in the progress towards an integrated understanding of spirituality, neuroscience and consciousness. It is the first in a series of books that are dedicated to this topic.

The work aims to provide an overview of the field of contemporary hallucinations research. It will consist of 28 chapters, the writing of which will be put out to international experts specialized in the specific fields at hand. The work aims to be unique, in that it intends to cover many different types of hallucination, and to approach the subject matter from four different perspectives, i.e., conceptual, phenomenological, neuroscientific, and therapeutic.

Over the last years, a large body of experimental data have been generated in the attempt to understand consciousness and its neural underpinnings. In this respect, particular interest has been paid to the attempt to distinguish between conscious experience and unconscious states which however may still be considered as mental states (e.g., in virtue of their representational nature). This is of course not without reason. A deep understanding of that which specifically characterizes conscious states, including neural correlates and cognitive functions, may crucially inform the ambition of understanding the relation between experience and the physical world. Nevertheless, the question has historically been challenged by the fact that consciousness is available in the first person only – not to other people, including scientists. Different methodological traditions and choices have led to quite different understandings of how conscious and unconscious states relate, and diverse empirical work has been inspired and guided by various cognitive and neurobiological theories of consciousness. The very diverse viewpoints include such different positions as the idea that unconscious states are associated with the very same functional characteristics as conscious states, and the idea that no informational state that is available for action can be completely unconscious. The Research Topic “Transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness” is therefore devoted to this particular question, how to understand the relation and transition between consciousness and unconsciousness. We hope that the reader will find the collected articles both informative and thought-provoking, and that this Research Topic will stimulate the scientific debate.

Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? It may be surprising that the seemingly straightforward answers "from the mind" or "from the brain" are in fact an incredibly recent understanding of the origins of spontaneous thought. For nearly all of human history, our thoughts - especially the most sudden, insightful, and important - were almost universally ascribed to divine or other external sources. Only in the past few centuries have we truly taken responsibility for their own mental content, and finally localized thought to the central nervous system - laying the foundations for a protoscience of spontaneous thought. But enormous questions still loom: what, exactly, is spontaneous thought? Why does our brain engage in spontaneous forms of thinking, and when is this most likely to occur? And perhaps the question most interesting and accessible from a scientific perspective: how does the brain generate and evaluate its own spontaneous creations? Spontaneous thought includes our daytime fantasies and mind-wandering; the flashes of insight and inspiration familiar to the artist, scientist, and inventor; and the nighttime visions we call dreams. This Handbook brings together views from neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, history, education, contemplative traditions, and clinical practice to begin to address the ubiquitous but poorly understood mental phenomena that we collectively call 'spontaneous thought.' In studying such an abstruse and seemingly impractical subject, we should remember that our capacity for spontaneity, originality, and creativity defines us as a species - and as individuals. Spontaneous forms of thought enable us to transcend not only the here and now of perceptual experience, but also the bonds of our deliberately-controlled and goal-directed cognition; they allow the space for us to be other than who we are, and for our minds to think beyond the limitations of our current viewpoints and beliefs.

Consciousness is central to the quest for being human and for what the world is made of. While there is widespread agreement on the significance of consciousness for clarifying the human condition, there is no agreement on the phenomenon in search of theorising. Although there is no shortage of theories and concepts of consciousness in current consciousness research, the dominant critical analysis of consciousness research in this study, although based on existing analyses, is (as far as I can see) new and unique in arguing for a crisis in consciousness research. This book touches on most aspects of consciousness research (the hard problem of conscious-ness, neural correlates of consciousness, brain models and consciousness, consciousness and dualistic thinking, etc.) but is a critical analysis of consciousness research. It is not an insider but a third-person perspective on current consciousness research. In this regard, it differs from most introductions and overviews where these topics are presented from a first-person perspective (the insiders' claim about their research). Representing the broad spectrum of consciousness research in terms of the theoretical framework of a neuro-ecological perspective is a new and innovative move.

For most native speakers of English, the meanings of ordinary words like "blue," "cup," "stumble," and "carve" seem quite natural and self-evident. It turns out, however, that they are far from universal, as shown by recent research in the discipline known as semantic typology. To be sure, the roughly 6,500 languages around the world do have many similarities in the sorts of concepts they encode. But they also vary greatly in numerous ways, such as how they partition particular conceptual domains, how they map those domains onto syntactic categories, which distinctions they force speakers to habitually attend to, and how deeply they weave certain notions into the fabric of their grammar. Although these insights from semantic typology have had a major impact on the field of psycholinguistics, they have been mostly neglected by the branch of cognitive neuroscience that studies how concepts are represented, organized, and processed in our brains. In Concepts in the Brain, David Kemmerer exposes this oversight and demonstrates its significance. He argues that as research on the neural substrates of semantic knowledge moves forward, it should, to the extent possible, expand its purview to embrace the broad spectrum of cross-linguistic variation in the lexical and grammatical representation of meaning. Otherwise, it will never be able to achieve a truly comprehensive, pan-human account of the cortical underpinnings of concepts. Richly illustrated and written in an accessible interdisciplinary style, the book begins by elaborating the different perspectives on concepts that currently exist in the parallel fields of semantic typology and cognitive neuroscience. It then shows how a synthesis of these approaches can lead to a more unified and inclusive understanding of several domains of concrete meaning--specifically, objects, actions, and spatial relations. Finally, it explores a number of intriguing and controversial issues involving the interplay between language, cognition, and consciousness.

There are myriad questions that emerge when one considers emotions and decision-making: What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? What is the relationship between emotion, reward value, and subjective feelings of pleasure? How is the value of 'good' represented in the brain? Will neuroeconomics replace classical microeconomics? How does the brain implement decision-making? Are gene-defined rewards and emotions in the interests of the genes? Does rational multistep planning enable us to go beyond selfish genes to plans in the interests of the individual? The Brain, Emotion, and Depression addresses these issues, providing a unified approach to emotion, reward value, economic value, decision-making, and their brain mechanisms. The evolutionary, adaptive value of the processes involved in emotion, the neural networks involved in emotion and decision making, and the issue of conscious emotional feelings are all considered. The book will be valuable for those in the fields of neuroscience, neurology, psychology, psychiatry, biology, animal behaviour, economics, and philosophy from the advanced undergraduate level upwards, and for all interested in emotion and decision-making.