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Birthing Consciousness as a Case of Adaptive Altered State of Consciousness Associated With Transient Hypofrontality

Orli Dahan1

  • 1Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities, Tel-Hai College.

Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science
|April 30, 2020
PubMed

In this article, I present the concept of "birthing consciousness," a psychophysical altered state of women that can occur during natural and undisturbed birth. I demonstrate that this altered state of consciousness (ASC) has phenomenological and cognitive features of hypofrontality; thus, birthing consciousness probably shares a similar brain mechanism to that postulated by the transient-hypofrontality theory (THT). I argue that until recently (with the advent of modern medical intervention), in evolutionary terms, women lacking the proclivity for this specific brain mechanism had a lower chance of reproducing successfully. Hence, I suggest a general and preliminary hypothesis concerning THT: Birthing consciousness is one example of an adaptive pain-induced ASC associated with transient hypofrontality.

Keywords:
altered state of consciousnessbirthing consciousnessevolutionary psychologynatural birthtransient-hypofrontality theory

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