Although it is a familiar experience for everyone, in the vast majority of cases we discover the importance of consciousness only when in front of someone who no longer appears to possess it: someone ‘absent’, with their eyes fixed in the void, while the heart beats vigorously and their muscle tone is intact; or a patient with a psycho-organic syndrome or brain trauma, who is awake, even alert, but no longer in contact with the surrounding environment. Despite the fact that millions of people around the world enter and leave the state of consciousness every day, neurophysiological and clinical knowledge about consciousness is still far from forming a coherent scientific corpus. In fact, nowadays, there is no general shared definition of an altered state of consciousness. In this paper we propose a structured model of the phenomenon of consciousness, viewed as a multivariate combination of independent factors, which includes the variations and transitions of consciousness from a normal state of wakefulness to a psychopathological condition (with discrete deviations in subjective experience), and to severe clinical-neurological pictures.
Modal Structure and Altered States of Consciousness / Maldonato, Nelson Mauro; Bottone, Mario; Muzii, Benedetta; di Corrado, Donatella; Sperandeo, Raffaele; D’Andrea, Simone; Esposito, Anna. - 184:(2021), pp. 595-605. [10.1007/978-981-15-5093-5_51]
Modal Structure and Altered States of Consciousness
Maldonato, Nelson Mauro
Primo
;Bottone, Mario;Muzii, Benedetta;Sperandeo, Raffaele;
2021
Abstract
Although it is a familiar experience for everyone, in the vast majority of cases we discover the importance of consciousness only when in front of someone who no longer appears to possess it: someone ‘absent’, with their eyes fixed in the void, while the heart beats vigorously and their muscle tone is intact; or a patient with a psycho-organic syndrome or brain trauma, who is awake, even alert, but no longer in contact with the surrounding environment. Despite the fact that millions of people around the world enter and leave the state of consciousness every day, neurophysiological and clinical knowledge about consciousness is still far from forming a coherent scientific corpus. In fact, nowadays, there is no general shared definition of an altered state of consciousness. In this paper we propose a structured model of the phenomenon of consciousness, viewed as a multivariate combination of independent factors, which includes the variations and transitions of consciousness from a normal state of wakefulness to a psychopathological condition (with discrete deviations in subjective experience), and to severe clinical-neurological pictures.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.