Journal of medical case reports • July 13, 2026 • Kei Torii, Ryo Nishitani
A 48-year-old Japanese man with severe chronic primary low back pain reported over 360 dreams during insight-oriented psychotherapy from 2009 to 2025. In 2014, he received five low-dose intravenous ketamine infusions (15 mg; 0.23 mg/kg) and described a void-like dissociative state during the first session. After coding a random subset of 50 dreams, obstruction decreased from pre- to post-ketamine periods (treating clinician: 6/9 vs 4/30; external psychiatrist: 6/9 vs 7/30), while a social-interaction/role-completion motif increased post-ketamine (2/9 pre; 10/30 and 11/30 post). Dream content shifted from recurrent obstruction toward imagery of movement, interpersonal engagement, and everyday role completion. These hypothesis-generating observations describe ketamine-associated phenomenology and longitudinal dream-content change without making efficacy claims.
Vertex (Buenos Aires, Argentina) • July 10, 2026 • Marco Fierro, Abel Guerrero, Juan Toro
This narrative review describes the concept of the basic or minimal self and its alterations in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and the prodrome. The basic self is an implicit, pre-reflective sense of self-presence that grounds all experience from a first-person perspective. Anomalous self-experiences, where this first-person perspective is distorted, are considered core features of schizophrenia. The review highlights that publications on these topics are scarce in Spanish-language psychiatry.
Voprosy filosofii • July 10, 2026 • Viktor D. Bakulov, Danil R. Melnikov
A reflection on the collective monograph "Kant and the Philosophy of Mind" examines how Kant's critical project informs current analytic philosophy of consciousness. It asks which features of experience can be conceptually articulated and scientifically explained, and which point to principled limits of investigation. The paper discusses views of leading analytic Kantians—P.F. Strawson, W. Sellars, J. McDowell, H. Putnam—focusing on debates about phenomenal consciousness. It also considers mysterianism and panpsychism, showing how the same epistemic gap between the physical and the phenomenal can yield opposing conclusions: that consciousness is unknowable or that mentality is fundamental. Kant's question "What can I know?" retains methodological significance, delineating a productive space that avoids metaphysical dogmatism and epistemic skepticism while emphasizing examination of underlying assumptions.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) • July 10, 2026 • Tenzin Trepp
A distinctive form of intersubjective experience called shared minimal-dual awareness (MDA) or the "intercorporeal present" can be jointly enacted by two embodied persons. In this mode, each person's habitual self-narrative falls silent while a mutual salience-space forms between them, without erasing their separateness. This is not mere empathy or coordination but a qualitatively different we-consciousness grounded in ongoing embodied coupling. The authors propose a three-layer taxonomy of we-consciousness: coordination-we, affective-we, and presence-we. They introduce the concept of "resonant alterity" where the other's full alterity is alive yet self-centered narrative does not dominate. The paper sketches a neurophenomenological model predicting that shared MDA correlates with reduced default-mode activity and enhanced inter-brain synchrony in attention and salience networks, and outlines an experimental program using dual-EEG/fNIRS hyperscanning.
Philosophies • July 8, 2026 • O. Varypaiev
Working with large language models risks normalizing a practice where a machine-generated text is accepted as a justified claim before the user has checked its sources or taken responsibility for it. This crisis of rationality stems not from a technical flaw but from a shift in how justification works: fluent textual coherence is mistaken for genuine understanding and rational judgment. Drawing on 4E cognition and postphenomenology, the analysis frames LLMs as multistable moral-epistemic mediators, not as rational subjects or neutral tools. A four-cluster protocol for attributing rationality is proposed, introducing an epistemic pause between a generated formulation and its acceptance as a claim. The core danger is not machine consciousness but the normalization of accepting ready-made text as a ground.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) • July 8, 2026 • Karel Hrubec
Consciousness should not be treated as an inner observer or private theater, but as the biologically constrained stabilization of organismic regulation into an access-field that becomes lived as inner presence. The explanatory gap is not across consciousness as an undefined whole, but at the transition between stabilized organismic access and lived presence. The framework introduces a recurrent feedback loop in which projected presence can re-enter subsequent organismic regulation through attention, affective weighting, threat evaluation, memory, action-readiness, and correction uptake. The contribution is theoretical and methodological, offering a disciplined research scaffold for future work on consciousness, embodiment, agency, and selfhood.
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences • July 6, 2026 • Jacob Berger, Lori M. Curtindale
A method for determining whether nonverbal organisms like human infants are conscious, called the marker methodology, has gained attention but is fundamentally flawed. This approach uses markers thought to correlate with consciousness instead of relying on theories of consciousness. The authors argue that this method is unlike other scientific investigations because its markers are derived neither from theory nor from commonsense conceptions of the target phenomenon. They contend the marker method should be abandoned and propose using commonsense markers instead to explore infant and other forms of consciousness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) • July 3, 2026 • Amalie Stepperud-antonsen
Psychosis may leave a person's core cognitive architecture intact while altering how they attribute reality to their experiences. Drawing on predictive processing, dreaming, and the Cognitive Languages framework, this hypothesis argues that the subjective experience of psychosis reflects the brain's existing representational systems rather than an entirely new way of thinking. The paper offers several testable predictions meant to guide future empirical research in computational psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience, and mechanism-based mental health treatment.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) • July 2, 2026 • Betül Yıldız
F. H. Bradley, a British Idealist, argued that immediate experience is a primary, non-relational unity that precedes thought, judgment, and the subject-object distinction. However, any attempt to analyze or describe this experience in philosophical language objectifies it, destroying its pristine immediacy and creating a paradox of reflection. This paper contends that Bradley's methodological dilemma parallels contemporary debates on phenomenal consciousness, qualia, Thomas Nagel's 'what it is like to be' question, and non-conceptual content theories. Despite difficulties in Bradley's idealist metaphysics and the problem of ineffability, his approach remains a provocative resource for consciousness studies by challenging entrenched epistemic and cognitive assumptions.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews • July 1, 2026 • Athanasia Kontouli, Michael J Hove, Alexandre Lehmann et al.
Trance states induced by music, from shamanic rituals to electronic dance music raves, share common musical features and cultural narratives. Anthropological and neuroscientific evidence suggests that different forms of trance engage partially overlapping neural dynamics, including increased low-frequency brain wave synchronization and a shift from executive control networks to limbic and default mode networks. These patterns reflect the interplay of cognitive, emotional, and sensory systems, though current empirical evidence remains fragmented and methodologically heterogeneous. The review emphasizes trance as both a cultural and biological phenomenon and calls for integrating phenomenological and neurophysiological data to build comprehensive models of music-induced non-ordinary states of consciousness.
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) • June 1, 2022 • Paolo Fusar-Poli, Andrés Estradé, Giovanni Stanghellini et al. • 225 citations
Psychosis unfolds through distinct stages, each with its own core existential experiences. Early phases (premorbid and prodromal) involve loss of common sense, perplexity, lack of immersion in the world, heightened salience, a feeling that something important is about to happen, perturbation of the sense of self, and a need to hide inner turmoil. The first episode brings transitory relief from delusions, intense self-referentiality, permeated self-world boundaries, internal noise, and dissolution of self with social withdrawal. Later stages (relapsing and chronic) involve grieving losses, feeling split, and struggling to accept inner chaos, a new self, diagnosis, and uncertain future. Treatment experiences include both positive and negative aspects, with recovery understood as reconstructing personhood and re-establishing bonds toward meaningful goals.
Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) • September 1, 2020 • Alan K Davis, John M Clifton, Eric G Weaver et al. • 144 citations
Inhaling N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) can trigger encounters with seemingly autonomous entities. A survey of 2,561 people (average age 32, 77% male) found that these encounters primarily involve visual and extrasensory perception, such as telepathy. Entities are most often described as beings, guides, spirits, aliens, or helpers. Although 41% of respondents felt fear, the dominant emotions were love, kindness, and joy, both in the respondent and attributed to the entity. Most believed the entity was conscious, intelligent, and benevolent, existing in a real but different dimension. 69% received a message, and 19% a prediction. Over half of those who were atheist before no longer identified as atheist afterward.
Current Opinion in Psychology • October 25, 2018 • Claire Petitmengin, Martijn van Beek, Michel Bitbol et al. • 163 citations
Meditation research mostly examines neurophysiology, but the actual moment-to-moment experience of meditating—what it feels like at different stages and in different practices—remains largely unstudied. This article reports a pilot project that used 'micro-phenomenological' interview methods to help meditators describe their lived experience with rigor and precision. The results show that such detailed descriptions can deepen understanding of meditation, improve practice, and inform teaching, revealing a valuable but overlooked dimension of contemplative science.
Curr Top Behav Neurosci • January 1, 2018 • 268 citations
Classic hallucinogens such as psilocybin and LSD can induce profound mystical experiences characterized by feelings of unity, sacredness, and ineffability. These subjective states are linked to specific changes in brain activity, including decreased activity in the default mode network, which is associated with self-referential thought, and altered connectivity across brain networks. The phenomenology of these experiences often includes a sense of encountering ultimate reality and can lead to lasting improvements in personal well-being. The neural correlates suggest that these compounds temporarily disrupt usual brain organization, enabling a state of heightened plasticity and insight.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews • September 1, 2017 • Georg Northoff, Zirui Huang • 235 citations
The brain's intrinsic time and space are fundamental for consciousness. The Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness (TTC) proposes four distinct neuronal mechanisms that correspond to different dimensions of consciousness: (1) temporo-spatial nestedness of spontaneous activity accounts for the level or state of consciousness, serving as a neural predisposition; (2) temporo-spatial alignment of pre-stimulus activity accounts for the content or form of consciousness, acting as a neural prerequisite; (3) temporo-spatial expansion of early stimulus-induced activity accounts for phenomenal consciousness, as neural correlates; and (4) temporo-spatial globalization of late stimulus-induced activity accounts for cognitive features, as neural consequences.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience • May 23, 2017 • Raphaël Millière • 216 citations
High doses of hallucinogenic drugs can produce a profound alteration of self-experience known as drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED), where the sense of self dissolves and boundaries between self and world disappear. Three classes of drugs induce this: classical psychedelics, dissociative anesthetics, and kappa opioid receptor agonists. Neuroimaging of DIED may reveal neural correlates of the self, but results must be interpreted cautiously—they may show necessary but not sufficient conditions for selfhood. The phenomenon likely disrupts the minimal or embodied self, a basic sense of self rooted in multimodal sensory integration, consistent with Bayesian models of phenomenal selfhood. DIED challenges philosophical views that consciousness always involves self-awareness and suggests ordinary experience includes a minimal self-awareness that fades during ego dissolution.
Consciousness and cognition • December 1, 2015 • Yochai Ataria, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana • 158 citations
Based on detailed self-reports from a long-term mindfulness practitioner with about 20,000 hours of meditation experience, the sense of boundaries (SB) can shift through three stages: default, dissolving, and disappearing. During these shifts, seven overlapping categories change, including senses of internal versus external, time, location, self, agency, ownership, and the first-person perspective. Two categories—the touching/touched structure and bodily feelings—persist even when the SB disappears entirely. The findings suggest that the sense of boundaries is not a single, fixed experience but a composite of multiple, separable dimensions that can be altered through meditative practice.
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior • February 1, 2013 • Etzel Cardeña, Peter Jönsson, Devin B Terhune et al. • 151 citations
After a hypnotic induction, people who are highly or moderately hypnotizable often report spontaneous changes in consciousness, but few studies have controlled for the demands of specific suggestions or examined the brain activity underlying these experiences. In a neurophenomenological study of 37 individuals with high, medium, and low hypnotizability, participants reported their depth and spontaneous experiences at baseline, after induction, and after rest periods, while EEG measured brain activity. Perceived hypnotic depth increased substantially after induction, especially among highly and moderately hypnotizable individuals, but remained almost unchanged among those low in hypnotizability.
Frontiers in human neuroscience • January 1, 2013 • Sanneke De Haan, Erik Rietveld, Martin Stokhof et al. • 218 citations
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) produces profound changes beyond symptom reduction, altering patients' entire way of being in the world. Standard psychiatric scales fail to capture these global effects. The authors propose an enactive, affordance-based model describing four aspects of the person-world interaction: the perceived field of affordances (width, depth, and height); self-experience including mood and feelings; the mode of relating to the world; and the existential stance—the second-order evaluation of these changes. This model aims to specify the phenomenological effects of DBS treatment.
Journal of Speculative Philosophy • January 1, 2008 • Cynthia Gayman • 440 citations
This review article examines Richard Shusterman's 2008 book 'Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics', which argues for a philosophy that integrates bodily experience into conscious awareness, challenging Cartesian dualism that separates mind from body. The reviewer discusses how Shusterman's concept of somaesthetics offers a framework for understanding the body as both a source of sensory experience and a site for self-cultivation. The work positions itself within the field of body studies and philosophy, proposing that mindful attention to bodily states can enhance human flourishing and knowledge.
Schizophr Res • November 1, 2005 • 510 citations
The paper proposes a revised understanding of psychosis by linking dopamine dysregulation to altered salience processing. It argues that aberrant assignment of salience to irrelevant stimuli, driven by dopamine, underlies the formation of delusions and hallucinations. This framework integrates biological, pharmacological, and phenomenological perspectives, suggesting that antipsychotics work by dampening this aberrant salience, allowing patients to re-engage with reality. The synthesis offers a coherent model bridging neurobiology and subjective experience in psychosis.
Am J Psychiatry • January 1, 2003 • 2,813 citations
A framework is proposed in which psychosis in schizophrenia arises from a dysregulated, dopamine-driven process of aberrant salience. Normally, dopamine mediates the attribution of salience—the process by which stimuli and thoughts become noticeable and guide behavior. In schizophrenia, this system becomes dysfunctional, causing patients to experience heightened or inappropriate salience for ordinary events and internal thoughts. This aberrant salience leads to the formation of delusions as cognitive explanations for these strange experiences, and hallucinations as direct perceptual experiences of salience. The framework integrates biological, phenomenological, and pharmacological evidence, explaining how antipsychotics work by dampening salience, and how this model can guide future research and treatment.
Biological research • January 1, 2003 • David Rudrauf, Antoine Lutz, Diego Cosmelli et al. • 194 citations
Francisco Varela's work on subjectivity and consciousness is reviewed, presenting a view of subjectivity as deeply intertwined with biological and physical roots. His theory of concrete, embodied dynamics, grounded in autonomous systems, posits that biological autonomy defines life and identity as emergent, circular self-producing processes. Embodiment explains how a cognitive self arises from an organism's internal regulation and sensorimotor coupling, with global subjective properties emerging from component interactions and constraining local processes through recursive morphodynamics. Neurophenomenology uses first-person methods to examine experience, creating mutual constraints between biophysical data and subjective accounts, aiming to ground disciplined insight in biophysical emergence. Varela's contribution is framed as a "biophysics of being."
Archives of General Psychiatry • August 1, 1983 • Henry David Abraham • 172 citations
Among 123 people who had used LSD, a syndrome of ten specific distance visual disturbances was identified, persisting for five years in half of the group. The condition responded to benzodiazepines, worsened with phenothiazines, and could be triggered by 19 different stimuli, most often entering a dark environment. Compared with 40 control participants, the data suggest that sensitivity to LSD, as indicated by flashbacks, divides the sample into three distinct subgroups, and a genetic basis for this sensitivity may exist.