I just ran across this do it yourself guide detailing a method for creating your own ganzfeld mask. 'Classic' ganzfeld masks were constructed using ping pong balls. The author of the guide, found on instructables.com, has something else in mind.

If you're wondering what the heck a 'ganzfeld mask' is, it's a device that creates the 'ganzfeld effect' when worn. The ganzfeld effect is experienced when your entire field of vision becomes completely featureless. The brain amplifies the senses when no depth or outlines of objects can be seen. This results in very peculiar psychedelic state similar to dreaming.

This is one of the easiest (and cheapest!) ways to experience an altered state of consciousness. The author even includes a video.

The image above (not exactly an irresistible visual tour de force?) was created by the author of the instructable, but seems to be uncannily similar to the image from the Boston Globe in our previous blog posting.  

Check it out here.

I found the below images while reading the Boston Globe.  (Boston Globe?!)

These are great little examples of how you can trick your senses into perceiving things that you know are not real.  The experiences produced by the experiments are something much like hallucinations.

Try them out for yourself! 

The Ganzfeld Procedure

Incredible Shrinking Pain

The Rubber Hand Illusion

 
;

The Pinocchio Illusion

Purkinje Lights

 

The following is a study used lucid dreamers to determine the subjective measurement of time in dreams - by Daniel Erlacher and Michael
Schredl from Germany.

Time required for motor activity in lucid dreams

Daniel Erlacher - Institute for Sport and Sport Science, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Michael Schredl - Sleep laboratory, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany

Summary

The present study investigated the relationship between the required time for specific tasks (counting and performing squats) in lucid dreams and in the waking state. Five proficient lucid dreamers (26-34 years old, M = 29.8, SD = 3.0; one woman and four men) participated in this study. The results showed that the time needed for counting in a lucid dream is comparable to the time needed for counting in wakefulness, but motor activities required more time in lucid dreams than in the waking state.

Introduction

The relationship between subjectively estimated time in dreams and real time has intrigued scientists for centuries (cf. Hall, 1981). Maury (1861) reported a long and intense dream about the French revolution which ended with the dreamer in the guillotine and the sleeper waking up with a piece of his wooden bed top having fallen on his neck. Because of the logical line of dream action, Maury (1861) hypothesized that the dream was generated backwards by the arousing stimulus. Nowadays, the hypothesis is widely accepted that the subjectively experienced time in dreams corresponds with the actual time (overview: Schredl, 2000). This relationship was first experimentally demonstrated by Dement and Kleitman (1957). In this study, the participants were awakened in a random order either after 5 or 15 minutes of REM sleep. After awakening, participants were asked to estimate whether the elapsed sleep interval was 5 or 15 minutes. From 111 awakenings, 83 % judgments were correct. Furthermore, the elapsed time of the REM period correlated with the length of the dream report (from r=.40 to r=.71). The latter findings were replicated by Glaubman and Lewin (1977), as well as by Hobson and Stickgold (1995). Rosenlicht, Maloney, and Freiberg (1994) found only small differences between time of REM sleep and the reported length of dreams. Overall, these studies support the idea that dreams take the same amount of time the actions would take in waking.

Lucid dreams might be particularly applicable to study time intervals in dreams, because lucid dreamers are able of executing prearranged tasks in their lucid dreams and mark the beginning and the end of the task with eye signals that can be measured objectively by electrooculogram (EOG) recording (cf. Erlacher, Schredl, & LaBerge, 2003). The term “lucid dream” designates a dream in which the dreamer, while dreaming, is aware that she or he is dreaming and she or he can consciously influence the action in the dream (Tholey & Utecht, 1997; LaBerge, 1985). In a pilot study, LaBerge (1985) showed that time intervals for counting from one to ten in lucid dreams (by counting from one-thousand-and-one to one-thousand-and-ten) are close to the time intervals for counting during wakefulness.

We hypothesized, that there is no difference between the time needed for counting or performing a motor activity in a lucid dream and the time needed for the same activities performed in the waking state.

more after the jump

 

This was from yesterday's New York Times - an article called 'Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking'. It talks a little about the concept of lucid dreaming, but also focuses on a new movie being written and directed by Jake Paltrow called "The Good Night".

 


Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking


Established sleep researchers say lucid dreaming is occasionally reported by subjects, though it is difficult to validate scientifically. “Yes, lucid dreaming exists,” said Dr. Rodney Radtke, the medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Duke University. “Yes, people certainly can, within their dream, realize ‘this is just a dream’ and continue to participate.”

“Do I believe that someone could potentially alter or interact with their dreams in such a way that they could change the dream? Yes,” he said. “Do I think that you could essentially design a dream — ‘Oh, I want to go to Honolulu and have this big hunk hit on me’? It’s a bit of a stretch. But I can’t say it can’t happen.”

He added: “Only in New York or California do they worry about this stuff.”

Stephen LaBerge, a psychophysiologist and the founder of the Lucidity Institute (lucidity.com), conducts lucid dream research and
teaches people to do it.

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible,” Dr. LaBerge said. “Fly. Dream sex. That’s what everybody likes to do. There’s also the possibility of creative problem-solving, overcoming nightmares and anxieties, learning more about yourself.”

A student at Stanford University, where Dr. LaBerge conducted much of his research, wrote in The Stanford Daily: “In one of my earliest experiences with lucidity, I announced to an auditorium full of people that I was their god (wasn’t I?). When they did not respond deferentially, I used telekinesis to send one of them flying across the room.”

It can be particularly appealing to those who have nightmares, as it allows them to realize while still asleep that they are just dreaming.

Interest in these potential real-world benefits and the otherworldly freedoms of lucid dreaming — as well as the questions it provokes about the precarious nature of reality — has spurred the invention and evolution of seemingly wacky dream aids. There are masks with lights and sounds; Orwellian devices that announce THIS IS A DREAM! in the middle of the night; and pills.

At the Hawaii gathering next month, attendees will be able to check out Dr. LaBerge’s NovaDreamer, a mask meant to light up during REM sleep and cue the person entangled in the sheets that he or she is dreaming. It is based on the notion that people can make a plan while awake and then execute it in their dreams. A light or sound is meant to remind them of their goal of lucid dreaming without actually waking them up. Participants may also take part in experiments with an herbal version of a drug that impacts acetylcholine, a neurotransmitting compound that affects memory.

As bizarre as these things may sound, there is a scientific rationale for cueing users during REM sleep. “REM-sleep dreams are much more visual,” said Matthew P. Walker, the director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School. “They have a strong narrative that runs through them. They’re hallucinogenic.”

There are several reasons for this, including that the lateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in logical reasoning and working memory, becomes more inactive during REM sleep, while other areas of the brain, like the visual and emotional centers, rev up.

Scientists, however, are still trying to discover the difference between the dreaming brain and the lucid-dreaming brain. The leading candidate, Dr. Walker said, is the lateral prefrontal cortex. He thinks that during REM sleep, the activity level of this logic-oriented part of the brain begins to rise back to waking levels, and when it does, an invisible switch is flipped and the sleeper gains lucidity. “In the next five years, I think somebody will demonstrate that,” he said.

Lucid-dream researchers say there are myriad mental exercises a person can do during waking hours to try to become cognizant while dreaming. One technique involves performing various reality checks many times a day — such as looking at the numbers on a watch, looking away, and then looking at them again to make sure that night has not suddenly become day. The theory is that if a person does this regularly while awake, he or she will likely repeat it while dreaming and will recognize inconsistencies — if, say, the watch is melting in a Dali-esque way. Then the sleeper will think: “This looks surreal. I must be dreaming.”

more after the jump

This paper is called "Consciousness Redux" and is something of a history of theoretical positions on the function of consciousness. It was written by George Mandler of the University of California & University College London.

 

Consciousness Redux

George Mandler

University of California, San Diego and University College London

Copyright (C) 1993 George Mandler


I start with a review of 20 years of proposals on the functions of consciousness. I then present a minimal number of functions that consciouness subserves, as well as as some remaining puzzles about its psychology. In the process I stress a psychologist's functional approach, asking what consciousness is for. The result is an attempt to place conscious processes within the usual flow of human information processing.

PBS's Closer to Truth featuring Christof Koch, Leslie Brothers, Joseph E. Bogen & Stuart Hameroff try to answer this question. These four scientists have the same question but give four different answers.

 

Is Consciousness Definable?


One problem is that there are too many definitions! And getting these four guests to agree on what consciousness is and what causes it, is a fun but hopeless task that is revelatory at the same time. These four leading brain scientists couldn't even agree on at what level a simple "memory" was stored, whether as a gross "brain circuit," at the synapse between nerve cells, or in the microstructure of the nerve cells as some sort of quantum effect. But why should it be any different now? Philosophers have debated the "mind-body problem" and the existence of "free will" for thousands of years. However, never before have we been in a position to examine the brain with such precision. Even as we begin to understand the deep science that underlies our cognitive processes, there is no letup in arguments whether we are anything other than automata, just reacting to stimuli -- vastly more complex than a bacterium to be sure -- but fundamentally little different.


Although this spirited and highly qualified group manages to disagree on just about everything, in the midst, they give off a tremendous amount of information about the key issues involving the understanding of consciousness today: Are our "minds" just the artificial integration of multiple brain systems? Are our feelings of self, that unique personal sense of mental "qualia" (e.g., does the color "red" look the same to you as it does to me?) anything other an "epiphenomenon," seemingly real but in reality an illusion? How do firings of neurons, or ultimately vibrations of atoms, emerge up into human self-awareness? Psychiatrist/author Leslie Brothers firmly believes that there is something of the mind that is not in the brain, but it is not spirit or soul. To her, the seat of consciousness resides in the social interaction of living things between brain and brain in society. Says Brothers, without others to reflect ourselves off of, there would be no consciousness.

Click 'Read More' below to download the video

Paul Stamets is a well-known mycologist from the Pacific Northwest. He has some interesting theories about consciousness that are discussed in this interview. Specifically - that mushrooms are conscious and that their mycelial network is something like a neural net.

 

This is via a site called PersonalLifeMedia.com

What is fungal intelligence? Paul Staments, the “Mycelium Messenger” reveals the great ecological purpose of mycelium – earth’s new internet. Beginning with his magic mushroom, psychedelic work covered with a DEA License and evolving into a much more robust work that his “mother is happy about” – this interview will prepare you to see a whole new world the next time you walk into the forest. 

Hear stories from Paul’s new book, “Mycelium running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World” and listen to a deep discussion on mushroom consciousness with the man behind this 21st century manual for healing the earth. You’ll understand why mycelium solutions bring new opportunities to detoxifying and purifying polluted water, toxic spills and other ecological issues of today.

We're going to try and post an interesting paper on consciousness at least once a week. There are debates among those philosophers and scientists who study consciousness about pretty much every aspect of consciousness - especially about what consciousness actually is. Many of these are surprisingly easy to read, given the nature of their arguments.

This first paper called 'Being Conscious of Ourselves' was written by David M. Rosenthal and published in The Monist issue 82, 2 (April 2004) in a special issue on self-consciousness.

BEING CONSCIOUS OF OURSELVES

Abstract: I argue that we can explain how we are
conscious of ourselves by appeal to essentially indexical
thoughts we have about ourselves, in particular
about our own current mental states. I show that being
conscious of ourselves in that way doesn't require that
we are aware of ourselves in some privileged way that's
antecedent to the higher-order thoughts we have about
our own mental states. The account successfully
resists, moreover, challenges based on the so-called
immunity to error through misidentification. And an
account based on such higher-order thoughts, finally,
also does justice to the way we identify and locate
ourselves as creatures in the world.

A study in June that was revealed in the Journal of Psychiatric Research used an 'amnesia' drug to 'dampen' the memories of trauma victims. The drug they used was called propranolol - a drug normally used to treat hypertension, but causes memory problems.

A new study published in Science by neuroscientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehobot, Israel, uses a protein to wipe out long-term memories in rats.

 

Yadin Dudai and Reut Shema are trying to show that memories can last for years or even a lifetime, but they are constantly maintained by an active process that can be disrupted.

First they trained rats to avoid the sweet smell of sacharin by giving them a chemical that made them sick whenever they were exposed to it. They quickly learned to avoid it. They then injected the rat cortex with a protein called ZIP. ZIP silences an enzyme called PKM-zeta, which is believed to be the key to perpetuating long-term memory. After the injection, the rats lost their memory of the association and once again drank the water containing saccharin.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but these recent studies that revolve around erasing memories are really disturbing. Let's just hope that these techniques don't fall into the wrong hands.

The theme for ASSC 11 this year was The Magic of Consciousness. This year ASSC has a number of magicians who "were hand-picked because of their specific interest in the cognitive principles underlying the magic. Among the performers were James Randi, Johnny Thompson, Mac Kind and Teller (of Penn and Teller).