Explorations of the Mind

A conscious journey.

Thomas R. Verny M.D.

Near-Death-Experience

The Quantum Mind: From NDEs to Post-Materialist Science

Extrasensory perception or ESP, near-death-experiences (NDEs) and past life recollections challenge classical science explanations.

Waves and Particles

The Quantum Mind

It is time to move the dial on the scientific clock and dispute the commonly accepted deterministic view of the mind as an epiphenomenon of the brain.

Exploring the Nature of Mind Over Matter

Several years ago, I visited a large NICU with 36 babies. About half of them were named, and the other half were not. Guess who did better?

Consciousness, Free Will, and the Mind

Old-school neuroscientists have ascribed to the brain a singular and dominant importance that has long discouraged research into differences between brain and mind.

The Significance of Interoception

Tools such as the frisson device help us understand links between interoception (our sense of our body's internal state) and interoception-related disorders like addiction.

Stress and Pregnancy: How It Affects an Unborn Child's Brain

For people considering having children, avoiding the harmful effects of stress will make a big difference to the development of their children’s brains, minds and personality.

4 Theories That Could Explain Near-Death Experiences

The mind can work through the brain but is not necessarily produced by the brain.

Brain Head Psychology Closed

How the Heart Regulates the Mind

The heart, and cycles of the heart, play a surprising role in shaping perception and cognition. See new research data on interoception and selfhood.

The Significance of the Heart-Brain Connection

The heart acts as a sophisticated information encoding and processing center able to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independently of the brain.

Brainless But Not Mindless

Cases of hydrocephaly provide convincing support for the argument that the size of a human brain is unrelated to its information content, intelligence, or capacities.

The Psychobiology of Conception

A variety of factors such as stress, obesity, smoking, and age could be linked to infertility or pregnancy complications.

Stick figure

Laughing Your Way to Health and Joy

Laughter is a long-overlooked mind–body modality that is easily practiced to help create and sustain benefits to the body as well as create a more optimistic outlook on life.

The coronavirus

COVID-19 and Our Immune System

The cells of the immune system develop into a long-lasting “memory population,” that protects the body against future infections.

The Case Against Cesareans on Demand

Women who deliver by cesarean section may have more negative perceptions of their birth experience and higher rates of postpartum depression.

From Birth Psychology to the Embodied Mind

The fascinating journey that took a 13-year-old boy from reading Freud to a 78-year-old psychiatrist writing on epigenetics and the quantum mind.

An engraving for the Abolitionist Society

PTSD and Historical Trauma

A touch, smell, sound, and even certain types of weather can act as triggers to chronic trauma and bring the past suddenly into the present.

Supporting a Pregnant Woman’s Physical and Mental Health

Attending to mothers’ physical and mental health during pregnancy is critical not only for moms, but their babies too.

Tuskless Female Elephants: Epigenetics for Beginners

Genes don’t make us who we are; gene expression does. And gene expression varies depending on the life we live.

How Smart Is Your Gut?

Considering the important part that the “the thoughtful bowel” plays in our behavior and thinking, when somebody says, “I had this gut feeling,” don’t reflexly discount it.

Mysteries of the Human Cell

We do not generally think of somatic cells as intelligent or storing data other than those relevant to their function. Recent scientific findings teach us otherwise.

We Are the Architects of Our Lives

Healthy behaviors promote a stronger sense of coherence and higher levels of optimism and self-efficacy.

Heart Transplants, Personality Transplants?

It is comforting for the donors’ families to see evidence of their loved ones giving someone a chance at life and to know that a part of them lives on within the recipient.

Brain-Body Approaches to Reduce Dementia Risk

Only by recognizing the many pathways that connect the brain to the rest of the body are we going to make progress in treating age-related dementia and Alzheimer's.

We Are the Architects of Our Lives

New studies add to a growing body of research on the contribution an optimistic outlook makes to health.

Investigating the Embodied Mind

Birth psychology to the embodied mind, genetics, and cellular biology examined.