Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities, Tel-Hai College.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2020 May;15(3):794-808. doi: 10.1177/1745691620901546. Epub 2020 Apr 29.
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.
在本文中，我提出了“分娩意识”的概念，这是一种女性在自然和不受干扰的分娩过程中可能出现的心理生理改变状态。我证明了这种意识改变状态（ASC）具有低额叶功能的现象学和认知特征；因此，分娩意识可能与暂态低额叶功能理论（THT）所假设的类似大脑机制有关。我认为，直到最近（随着现代医疗干预的出现），从进化的角度来看，缺乏这种特定大脑机制倾向的女性成功繁殖的机会较低。因此，我提出了一个关于 THT 的一般和初步假设：分娩意识是与暂态低额叶功能相关的适应性疼痛诱导 ASC 的一个例子。
