Certain first-person narrations of mental processes, especially internal monologues in which an author declares actual thoughts aloud, are particularly suitable for modeling streams of consciousness. A narrative method to extract and depict conscious processes from such texts requires three steps: operational criteria for selecting a phenomenological text, a system for detecting text items indicative of conscious contents and processes, and a procedure for representing these items in formal dynamic system devices like Petri nets. The method is applied to an interior monologue from James Joyce's Ulysses, and an inter-subjective evaluation of mental attributions from Miguel de Unamuno's Intimate Journal is presented using mathematical tools.
A multidisciplinary investigation of Salvia divinorum and its active compound salvinorin A examines whether the plant's ethnobotany, chemistry, mental effects, and neuropharmacology explain its experienced effects and divinatory uses. Field research from 1973-1983 describes traditional Mazatec practices where a water potion of crushed leaves produced short-lasting light-headedness, dysphoria, tactile and proprioceptive sensations, depersonalization, amplified sound perception, and increased visual and auditory imagery, but not actual hallucinations. These effects are attributable to salvinorin A but cannot be explained solely by its potent kappa-opioid receptor agonist activity.