A cognitive-linguistic analysis of interviews with a healthy volunteer after moderate-to-high psilocybin doses reveals that the participant consistently used metaphors framing abstract introspective events in terms of concrete, visible, and interpersonal events, instantiating a cognitive frame called the Observer's Model. These metaphors imply cognitive defusion and heightened metacognitive awareness during the sessions. Literal descriptions of hallucinatory visual experiences correlated semantically with metaphorical expressions, suggesting metaphorical thinking plays a role in motivating those experiences. The findings are linked to neuroscientific research on psychedelics and have psychological and therapeutic implications.
Awe, a positive emotion linked to well-being and social behavior, was studied using EEG and autonomic physiology in 23 healthy older adults watching a nature film. Awe was the dominant emotion reported, though joy was also common. During awe events, skin conductance decreased, and EEG alpha and theta power decreased—changes associated with low arousal and positive emotion. Awe also increased Lempel Ziv Complexity (LZC), a measure of neural signal entropy linked to richer conscious experience. LZC correlated positively with awe intensity and negatively with skin conductance. Three additional datasets using different induction methods (video clips and DMT) showed similar occipital LZC increases, suggesting LZC may be a generalizable neurophysiological marker of awe.