The lived experience of remembering a 'good' interview: Micro-phenomenology applied to itself.

Micro-phenomenology is an interview and analysis method for investigating subjective experience. As a research tool, it provides detailed descriptions of brief moments of any type of subjective experience and offers techniques for systematically comparing them. In this article, we use an auto-ethnographic approach to present and explore the method. The reader is invited to observe a dialogue between two authors that illustrates and comments on the planning, conducting and analysis of a pilot series of five micro-phenomenological interviews. All these interviews asked experienced researchers of micro-phenomenology to browse their memories to identify one successful and one challenging instance of working with micro-phenomenology. The interview then focused on this reflective task to investigate whether applying the method to itself might reveal quality criteria. The article starts by presenting a shortened and edited version of the first of these interviews. Keeping the dialogue format, we then outline the micro-phenomenological analysis procedure by demonstrating its application to part of this data and corresponding passages of other interviews. We focus on one unexpected finding: interviewed researchers judge the quality of an interview in part based on a connection or contact between interviewer and interviewee. We discuss these results in the context of the means and intentions of the method and suggest avenues for future research.

Studying the experience of meditation through Micro-phenomenology.

Numerous scientific studies are conducted on the neurophysiological effects of meditation practices and on the neural correlates of meditative states. However, very few studies have been conducted on the experience associated with contemplative practice: what it is like to meditate - from moment to moment, at different stages of different forms of practice - remains almost invisible in contemporary contemplative science. Recently, 'micro-phenomenological' interview methods have been developed to help us become aware of lived experience and describe it with rigor and precision. This article presents the results of a pilot project aiming at applying these methods to the description of meditative experience, and highlights the interest of such descriptions for understanding, practicing and teaching meditation.

Microcognitive science: bridging experiential and neuronal microdynamics.

Neurophenomenology, as an attempt to combine and mutually enlighten neural and experiential descriptions of cognitive processes, has met practical difficulties which have limited its implementation into actual research projects. The main difficulty seems to be the disparity of the levels of description: while neurophenomenology strongly emphasizes the micro-dynamics of experience, at the level of brief mental events with very specific content, most neural measures have much coarser functional selectivity, because they mix functionally heterogeneous neural processes either in space or in time. We propose a new starting point for this neurophenomenology, based on (a) the recent development of human intra-cerebral EEG (iEEG) research to highlight the neural micro-dynamics of human cognition, with millimetric and millisecond precision and (b) a disciplined access to the experiential micro-dynamics, through specific elicitation techniques. This lays the foundation for a microcognitive science, the practical implementation of neurophenomenology to combine the neural and experiential investigations of human cognition at the subsecond level.

Exploring the subjective experience of the "rubber hand" illusion.

Despite the fact that the rubber hand illusion (RHI) is an experimental paradigm that has been widely used in the last 14 years to investigate different aspects of the sense of bodily self, very few studies have sought to investigate the subjective nature of the experience that the RHI evokes. The present study investigates the phenomenology of the RHI through a specific elicitation method. More particularly, this study aims at assessing whether the conditions usually used as control in the RHI have an impact in the sense of body ownership and at determining whether there are different stages in the emergence of the illusion. The results indicate that far from being "all or nothing," the illusion induced by the RHI protocol involves nuances in the type of perceptual changes that it creates. These perceptual changes affect not only the participants' perception of the rubber hand but also the perception of their real hand. In addition, perceptual effects may vary greatly between participants and, importantly, they evolve over time.

A gap in Nisbett and Wilson's findings? A first-person access to our cognitive processes.

The well-known experiments of Nisbett and Wilson lead to the conclusion that we have no introspective access to our decision-making processes. Johansson et al. have recently developed an original protocol consisting in manipulating covertly the relationship between the subjects' intended choice and the outcome they were presented with: in 79.6% of cases, they do not detect the manipulation and provide an explanation of the choice they did not make, confirming the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. We have reproduced this protocol, while introducing for some choices an expert guidance to the description of this choice. The subjects who were assisted detected the manipulation in 80% of cases. Our experiment confirms Nisbett and Wilson's findings that we are usually unaware of our decision processes, but goes further by showing that we can access them through specific mental acts.

Anticipating seizure: pre-reflective experience at the center of neuro-phenomenology.

The purpose of this paper is to show through the concrete example of epileptic seizure anticipation how neuro-dynamic analysis (using new mathematical tools to detect the dynamic structure of the neuro-electric activity of the brain) and "pheno-dynamic" analysis (using new interview techniques to detect the pre-reflective dynamic micro-structure of the corresponding subjective experience) may guide and determine each other. We will show that this dynamic approach to epileptic seizure makes it possible to consolidate the foundations of a cognitive non pharmacological therapy of epilepsy. We will also show through this example how the neuro-phenomenological co-determination could shed new light on the difficult problem of the "gap" which separates subjective experience from neurophysiological activity.

Toothbrush-thinking seizures.

Seizures associated with toothbrushing have been reported in patients with precentral or postcentral partial epilepsy. Seizures precipitated by thinking have been described in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy. We report a patient with intractable partial epilepsy in which seizures were induced both by toothbrushing, and by seeing or thinking about toothbrush and toothpaste. Video-EEG analysis revealed a left temporal lobe origin for these reflex seizures. We discuss how complex multimodal stimuli may trigger these reflex seizures.

Seizure anticipation: are neurophenomenological approaches able to detect preictal symptoms?

Analysis of electroencephalographic signals and several brain imaging studies suggest that a preictal state precedes the onset of seizures. In this study, we used phenomenological strategies to detect modifications in patients' experience before their seizures. We observed that patients with partial epilepsy feeling an aura (n=9) frequently experienced prodromes (n=6). Prodromes were subtle preictal symptoms, varying among patients and having common negative features. They were generally continuous before seizures and could last hours, whereas auras were sudden and intermittent. All patients were able to recognize facilitating factors. We also found that patients spontaneously develop cognitive countermeasures to avoid facilitating factors (n=6), to prevent a seizure (n=1) or to interrupt a seizure (n=5). Prodromes are not specific enough for clinical use, but could refine the behavioral strategies used in the treatment of epilepsy and the pathophysiology of the preictal state.