States of Consciousness: Experimental Insights into Meditation, Waking, Sleep and Dreams (The Frontiers Collection)

"In this accessible overview of current knowledge, an expert team of editors and authors describe experimental approaches to consciousness. These approaches are shedding light on some of the hitherto unknown aspects of the distinct states of human consciousness, including the waking state, different states of sleep and dreaming, meditation and more. The book presents the latest research studies by the contributing authors, whose specialities span neuroscience, neurology, biomedical engineering, clinical psychology and psychophysiology, psychosocial medicine and anthropology. Overall this anthology provides the reader with a clear picture of how different states of consciousness can be defined, experimentally measured and analysed. A future byproduct of this knowledge may be anticipated in the development of systematic corrective treatments for many disorders and pathological problems of consciousness"--Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction to States of Consciousness....Pages 1-27 Disorders of Consciousness: Coma, Vegetative and Minimally Conscious States....Pages 29-55 Codons of Consciousness: Neurological Characteristics of Ordinary and Pathological States of Consciousness....Pages 57-92 Dream Consciousness and Sleep Physiology....Pages 93-108 Dream Therapy: Correlation of Dream Contents with Encephalographic and Cardiovascular Activations....Pages 109-131 The Substrate That Dreams Are Made On: An Evaluation of Current Neurobiological Theories of Dreaming....Pages 133-156 Sleep Onset Process as an Altered State of Consciousness....Pages 157-185 Brain Rate as an Indicator of the Level of Consciousness....Pages 187-201 On Physiological Bases of States of Expanded Consciousness....Pages 203-221 States of Consciousness Beyond Waking, Dreaming and Sleeping: Perspectives from Research on Meditation Experiences....Pages 223-234 Ethno Therapy, Music and Trance: An EEG Investigation into a Sound-Trance Induction....Pages 235-256 States of Consciousness Redefined as Patterns of Phenomenal Properties: An Experimental Application....Pages 257-272 Back Matter....Pages 273-280 Dean Cvetkovic, Irena Cosic, Editors. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 271-272) And Index.