subjectivity and neuroimaging; bridging the gap

The status of introspective reports in psychology and psychiatry has been
subject to debate. Nevertheless, especially in psychiatry clinicians have no
other means but to rely on subjective reports in order to establish a
diagnosis. Both in mainstream psychiatry and in psychology, the criticism of
introspective methods led to the rejection of virtually all subjective reports
in laboratory investigations.
The focus of modern neuroscientific research in psychology and psychiatry is on
an objective and controllable measurement of verbal reports in response to
presentation of different stimuli.
In actual experimental protocols using cognitive (e.g. visual recognition)
tasks it is assumed that there is a *neutral* baseline condition enabling the
investigator to study the net-effects on brain dynamics of cognitive stimuli.
Thus, in neuroscientific practice, subjective accounts describing inner
experiences are in fact ignored, unless they have been induced by external
stimuli. There are several problems using this approach. There is a large
degree of variability in brain dynamics using most cognitive and emotional
tasks, and this variability is interpreted a *noise*. In the light of recent
evidence it is questionable whether the interpretation of *noise* is correct.
When introspective subjective (*first-person*) data are incorporated in the
experiment it has been shown that depending on strictly defined subjective
characteristics obtained from introspective reports, there is no such thing as
a neutral baseline. Taking this first-person perspective into account has shown
that the brain- response of subjects during *baseline*, and before the actual
cognitive experiment is already different, dependent on the subjective state
the subject is in.

The general aim is to 1) obtain first-person data through an adequate,
rigorous and refined description of inner experience (*lived experience*)
enabling subjects to thematize important but otherwise tacit aspects of
experience, and 2) to use these first-person data to uncover new third-person
data (brain dynamics) about physiological processes that are influenced by
small variations in subjective experience.

It concerns an observational design

In order to investigate whether the effect of training has the effect we
expect, we will as a first condition, include the same control subjects in the
same experiment without the trainig (within-subject design).
In experiment I subjects will receive no instructions before the start of the
task.
In experiment II, the same control-subjects will receive a training in the
neurophenomenological method.

The burden is restricted to the time investment by the participants.
Actualy there is no serious risk associated with participation.