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.

Inhalt
Preface.- Introduction to States of Consciousness.- Disorders of Consciousness: Coma, Vegetative State and Minimally Conscious States.- 2 Codons of Consciousness: Neurological Characteristics of Ordinary and Pathological States of Consciousness.- Dream Consciousness and Sleep Physiology.- Dream Therapy: Correlation of Dream Contents with Encephalographic and Cardiovascular Activations.- The Substrate That Dreams Are Made On: An Evaluation of Current Neurobiological Theories of Dreaming; J.L. Dawson, R. Conduit.-Sleep Onset Process as an Altered State of Consciousness.- Brain Rate as an Indicator of the Level of Consciousness.- On Physiological Bases of States of Expanded Consciousness.- States of Consciousness Beyond Waking, Dreaming and Sleeping: Perspectives from Research on Meditation Experiences.-Ethno Therapy, Music and Trance An Investigation into a Sound-Trance Induction.- States of Consciousness Redefines as Patterns of Phenomenal Properties: An Experimental Application.-