DSpace Repository :: Browsing by Author "Herrero, Nerea"

Browsing by Author "Herrero, Nerea"

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Can we be “out” of our body? Characterization and clinical implications of out-of-body experiences during sleep paralysis: Preliminary results
(2021) Herrero, Nerea; Gallo, Francisco; Forcato, Cecilia
"Sleep paralysis is a period of transitory immobility which occurs during sleep onset or offset. It is characterized by the inability to perform voluntary movements when the person feels awake and conscious about the environment. During an episode of sleep paralysis can occur different types of hallucinations: The Intruder, characterized by the sense of an evil and threatening presence, visual and tactile hallucinations. The Incubus, characterized pressure on the chest and other body parts, breathing difficulties, feelings of suffocation, choking, pain and morbid thoughts of imminent death. Unusual body experiences which includes Illusory Movement Experiences (IMEs) and Out of Body Experiences (OBEs). IMEs are vestibular sensations such as the sensation of rolling or floating, and/or motor sensations of displacement without a visual component.The OBEs are an altered state of consciousness, defined as the experience in which an observer perceives the world from a point of view outside of their physical body. Unlike the other two components (incubus and intruder), during IMEs and OBEs the person may not feel body paralysis, and they are considered as more pleasant. OBEs during sleep paralysis can occur spontaneously or it can be induced with training by the recognition of an aura that precedes the experience. Here, we will discuss preliminary results of an online survey with subjects who had unusual sleep experiences, such as OBEs and Sleep Paralysis and its clinical implications."
Dream content during lucid dreams and out-of body experiences, differences and similarities
(2021) Gallo, Francisco; Herrero, Nerea; Tommasel, a; Gleiser, Pablo; Godoy, Daniela; Forcato, Cecilia
"During sleep, humans experience offline visual content that we call dreams, which are typically emotional and lack rational judgment about their strangeness. However, during lucid dreaming (LD), subjects know they are dreaming and can control the dream content. Another type of awere dream experience is the out-of-body experience (OBE) initiated from sleep paralysis. Although the differences between non-LD, LD and OBEs are evident, there is no record in the literature of such differences in dream content and some researchers describe OBEs as a type of LD. We conducted interviews with subjects who experienced LD and subjects who had OBEs frequently. A portion of them kept a dream journal for two months with precise instructions on how to write down their dreams. The collected dreams were analyzed by automatic methods of analysis of emotions such as EmoLex and Sentisense, also with classifiers such as Empath. The dream stories provided by the participants were scored with a series of ratings using a method based on Hall and Van de Castle's dream content scoring system upon which we developed variations and additional measures to adapt to the requirements of our task. The scoring was divided into sections, hought/emotion/action, presence of entities/characters and social interactions, sensory descriptions, spatial references, fantasy content, among others. Here we present the preliminary progress of this study of oneiric content."
Out of body experience during sleep paralysis: an altered state of consciousness. Preliminary results
(2020) Herrero, Nerea; Gallo, Francisco; Gleiser, Pablo; Forcato, Cecilia
"We understand consciousness as the subjective experience the "How is it..." to perceive a scene, recognize a face, hear a sound, or reflect on the experience itself. It can be considered a dynamic process and it can be temporarily divided into states. The states of consciousness depend one’s subjective experience and8 it’s associated neurobiological correlates, and they can be divided in physiological, pathological or altered states. The Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) are an altered state of consciousness, defined as the experience in which an observer perceives the world from a point of view outside of their physical body. OBEs reflect an alteration in the multisensory association cortexes, with the parieto-temporal junction (TPJ) playing a fundamental role. These experiences can occur during sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is caused by an intrusion of Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM) into wakefulness. It is a state which can occur when waking up or falling asleep, in which a person is aware but unable to move or speak. It can be accompanied by a sense of a presence, auditory and visual hallucinations and in some cases OBEs. OBEs during sleep paralysis can occur spontaneously, or they can be induced by training. Here, we conducted an interview with subjects who had spontaneous OBE during sleep paralysis (S-OBE) and subjects who apply techniques to induce it (I-OBEs)."
Role of dream content in memory processing during sleep: Preliminary setup
(2021) Pretel, Matías; Herrero, Nerea; Fernández Sande, Joaquín; Brusco, Luis Ignacio; Ramele, Rodrigo; Kaczer, Laura; Forcato, Cecilia
"After acquisition memories are in a labile state followed by a period of stabilization known as consolidation. This process is particularly favored by sleep, where the new information is spontaneously reactivated in the hippocampus, transferred and redistributed in neocortical networks facilitating long term consolidation. Also, during sleep, specifically during REM sleep, new memories are integrated into the stored information. From a neuroscientific perspective, dream content is proposed to be a consequence of the memory processes that occur during sleep. Thus, the incorporation of elements about the learned tasks during wakefulness in the content of a dream, can predict the performance of the task after sleep. Here, we developed a new paradigm to study whether dream content related to a new word learning task correlates with consolidation of new words and integration into the pre-existed semantic networks."
Spontaneous and induced out-of-body experiences during sleep paralysis: Emotions, “AURA” recognition, and clinical implications
(2022) Herrero, Nerea; Gallo, Francisco; Gasca-Rolín, Miguel; Gleiser, Pablo M.; Forcato, Cecilia
"Sleep paralysis is characterized by the incapacity to perform voluntary movements during sleep/wake transitions, and could bring great discomfort. During sleep paraly sis, out-of-body experiences can occur. Out-of-body experiences refers to the sensation of being outside of the physical body and perceiving the world from this outside perspective; however, they are pleasant in comparison with other sleep paralysis hallucinations. Lucid dreams are dreams in which a subject becomes aware of being dreaming while the dream occurs. Here, we designed an online survey to study the predominant and specific emotions during sleep paralysis and/or out-of-body experience events as well as the somatosensory perceptions that preceded their occurrence. The sample (N = 329) was divided into experimental groups depending on the presence/absence of out-of-body experiences, capacity to induce (or not) out-of body experiences, and perception/no-perception of the sleep paralysis. We showed that more positive emotions were associated with out-of-body experiences and more negative emotions were associated with sleep paralysis episodes, and for those who claim the ability to induce out-of-body experiences, positive emotions were more frequent in their episodes. We found that subjects perceived auditory, tactile and visual sensations before sleep paralysis episodes, and we proposed that these could be an “aura” of sleep paralysis. Furthermore, subjects that had out-of-body experiences but had never felt the sleep paralysis, perceived tactile and visual sensations to the same extent as subjects with out-of-body experiences that felt the sleep paralysis." Therefore, we proposed that the “aura” recognition could be used under controlled conditions for out-of-body experiences induction in patients with sleep paralysis to diminish the negative symptoms associated with sleep paralysis episodes
Structural differences between non-lucid, lucid dreams and out-of-body experience reports assessed by graph analysis
(2021) Gallo, Francisco; Tommasel, Antonela; Herrero, Nerea; Forcato, Cecilia; Godoy, Daniela; Gleiser, Pablo
"It has been recently found using graph theory that measures of network structure can predict ratings of dream complexity, where increases in connectedness and decreases in randomness are observed in relation to increasing dream report complexity. This approach proved to be useful to differentiate dream reports in the pathological population as well as NREM and REM dream reports, but it has not yet been used to study the differences between different oneiric experiences. In this work we analyze dream reports that include non-lucid, lucid dreams and out-of body experiences initiated from sleep paralysis. The reports are presented as directed graphs, where each different word plays the role of a node, and consecutive words are connected by a directed, unweighted edge. We analyze different network measures to compare the graphs. Preliminary results presented here suggest that both local measures, such as the degree of nodes, and global measures, such as clustering and the number of strongly connected components, allow for a categorization of different dream experiences."
Visuospatial perception in subjects with out-body-experiences
(2021) Vische, Alejandro; Herrero, Nerea; Forcato, Cecilia; Gallo, Francisco
"Visual imagery typically refers to the voluntary creation of the conscious visual experience of an object or scene in its absence, solely in the mind. There are individuals who have no experience of imagery at all –their minds are completely blind: aphantasia. Hyperphantasia is at the other end of the imagery spectrum: strong and often photo-like imagery. One of the key limitations to studying visual imagery has been its internal private and subjective nature. An intrinsic characteristic of the imagery experience is its degree of vividness, the clarity and richness of the mental representation. The most commonly used questionnaire is the vividness of visual imagery questionnaire (VVIQ)."

Browsing by Author "Herrero, Nerea"

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