The Behavioral and brain sciences
July 22, 2025
François Stockart, Maor Schreiber, Pietro Amerio et al.
20 citations
The scope of unconscious processing remains hotly debated, driven by diverse methods for manipulating and measuring perceptual awareness. Through dialogue among researchers with varied theoretical backgrounds, ten recommendations and nine outstanding issues are provided for designing experimental paradigms, analyzing data, and reporting results. These guidelines aim to evoke discussion about norms in studying unconscious processes and help researchers make informed decisions. While some recommendations may not align with existing approaches and will likely evolve, they are intended to foster a more convergent understanding of the extent and limits of unconscious processing.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 28, 2024
Ophir Netzer, Noa Magal, Yonatan Stern et al.
7 citations
preprint
Survivors of the October 7, 2023 Supernova festival attack in Israel who were under the influence of MDMA during the trauma reported feeling less overwhelmed, had more social interactions, better sleep quality, and reduced psychological distress compared to survivors not using any substance. In contrast, those who consumed cannabis or alcohol during the attack reported higher psychological distress, more PTSD symptoms, and worse sleep quality. The findings suggest MDMA's known effects of reducing negative emotions and increasing prosociality may have buffered trauma impact, while cannabis and alcohol had deleterious effects. The study included 772 adult survivors assessed one to four months after the attack.
Amir Harduf, Roy Salomon
preprint
The sense of self, normally experienced as unified and embodied, can be altered in psychosis and by psychedelic compounds. Using the Moving Rubber Hand Illusion with 75 participants—psychosis patients, people with substantial psychedelic experience, and controls—the study found that psychosis patients had reduced Body Ownership and Sense of Agency during volitional action. The psychedelic group reported subjective long-lasting changes to the sense of self, but no differences between control and psychedelic participants were found. The results suggest that psychedelics induce acute and enduring subjective changes in the sense of self that are not manifested at the level of the bodily self, while bodily self-processing related to volitional action is disrupted in psychosis.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
September 6, 2024
Amit Regev Krugwasser, Reina Van der Goot, Geffen Markusfeld et al.
preprint
A reduction in the sense of agency—the feeling of being in control of one's own actions—is linked to decreased attenuation in the alpha frequency band and increased power in the theta frequency band of brain activity. Using electroencephalography and a virtual reality paradigm where visual feedback of a finger movement was altered, trials with sensorimotor alterations could be decoded from brain signals with up to 68% accuracy starting around 200 milliseconds after movement onset. Cross-decoding analyses revealed similar neural patterns for reduced agency in both anatomical and spatial alteration conditions starting around 500 milliseconds. These findings support a two-level formation of the sense of agency: an early, domain-specific implicit component and a later, domain-general explicit component.