Socioaffective neuroscience & psychology
January 1, 2016
Adam Safron
56 citations
Orgasm remains poorly understood despite being one of the most intense pleasures. A new model proposes that sexual stimulation entrains mechanical and neural oscillatory systems, creating synchronized networks where positive feedback loops deepen sensory absorption and trance, potentially culminating in climax when critical thresholds are surpassed. Rhythmic stimulation and its modulation by salience are central to reaching these thresholds. Differences in orgasmic response between individuals or with different partners may serve as a mechanism for adaptive mate choice, as rhythmic stimulation combines honest fitness indicators with cues about potential investment, influencing the likelihood of continued sexual encounters with specific mates.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
June 20, 2021
Adam Safron
53 citations
Explaining goal-directed behavior may require rethinking mental homunculi and Cartesian theaters as embodied self-models (ESMs)—body maps with agentic properties that function as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. ESMs are proposed as a major organizing principle for neural architectures, providing foundational inductive biases that constrain inference spaces during cognitive and affective development. Drawing on the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference, the account describes how consciously imagined goal states influence action selection via predictive coding and backward-chained imaginings. Embodied experience supplies empirical priors, and bidirectional linkages between sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies infuse perception with somatic-motoric properties, solving frame problems. The manuscript offers neurophenomenological treatments of qualia like pleasure, pain, and desire, and argues that radically embodied minds create foundations for intelligence, consciousness, and will.
November 30, 2020
Adam Safron, Arthur Juliani, Nicco Reggente et al.
44 citations
preprint
Psychedelics may both relax and strengthen beliefs depending on the dose and brain system involved. The REBUS model holds that 5-HT2a receptor activation relaxes prior expectations, enabling new perspectives. This paper proposes that at very high levels of 5-HT2a agonism, opposite effects can occur—termed SEBUS—where synchronous neural activity strengthens beliefs, enhancing meaning-making, hallucinations, and even delusional thinking. The ALBUS framework integrates these opposing effects across the dose-response curve, suggesting psychedelic experiences resemble waking dream states with varying lucidity. The authors provide neurophenomenological models of perceptual synthesis, dreaming, and episodic memory to support this view.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Adam Safron, Arthur Juliani, Nicco Reggente et al.
13 citations
Psychedelics profoundly impact brain and mind by altering belief systems. The REBUS model proposes that 5-HT2a receptor agonism relaxes prior expectations, enabling new perspectives. An alternative but compatible view, ALBUS (Altered Beliefs Under Psychedelics), suggests that at very high levels of 5-HT2a agonism, opposite effects may occur—synchronous neural activity becomes more powerful, leading to strengthened beliefs (SEBUS). These strengthened beliefs align with enhanced meaning-making in psychedelic therapy, hallucinations, and delusional thinking. ALBUS proposes that the balance between REBUS and SEBUS effects varies across the dose-response curve. Psychedelic experiences are described as waking dream states with varying lucidity, involving mechanisms of conscious perceptual synthesis, dreaming, and episodic memory.
May 18, 2023
Arthur Juliani, Adam Safron, Ryota Kanai
9 citations
preprint
Psychedelic therapy shows promise for treating various mental disorders. The REBUS model proposes that psychedelics help by relaxing overly rigid, maladaptive beliefs. The CANAL model extends this by suggesting that canalization—the development of excessively rigid belief structures—may underlie psychopathology. This paper refines the CANAL model by drawing on learning theory from deep neural networks, distinguishing two separate optimization landscapes for belief representation. Each landscape can develop pathologies from either too much or too little canalization, indicating a non-linear relationship with psychopathology. The refined model generates novel predictions about which psychopathologies might respond to psychedelic therapy and which forms of therapy may benefit specific individuals.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2024
Arthur Juliani, Adam Safron, Ryota Kanai
8 citations
Psychedelic therapy shows promise for treating mental disorders, and the "RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics" (REBUS) model explains this by suggesting psychedelics loosen maladaptive high-level beliefs. The newer "CANAL" model proposes that overly rigid belief landscapes (canalization) contribute to psychopathology. This work uses deep neural network learning theory to refine the CANAL model, distinguishing two separate optimization landscapes for belief representation in the brain. Each can develop unique pathologies from either too much or too little canalization, indicating that canalization's link to psychopathology is not simply linear. The refined model makes novel predictions about which aspects of psychopathology psychedelic therapy may treat and which therapy forms might benefit a given individual.
March 13, 2022
Anna Ciaunica, Adam Safron
8 citations
preprint
Humans across cultures have intentionally sought to lose or escape their ordinary self, radically changing how they perceive themselves and the world. This paper contrasts the feeling of losing familiarity with one's self and body in depersonalisation experiences with similar changes induced by psychedelics and meditation, using the Active Inference Framework. The authors suggest that controlled alteration of prior expectations can flexibly modulate self- and world models, allowing individuals to leave behind habitual perceptual rigidities and open to new ways of integrating information. In contrast, depersonalisation involves an uncontrolled, rigid disintegration of habitual self-models, leaving a person feeling stuck in their mind and potentially leading to adverse clinical outcomes.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Chris Fields, Mahault Albarracin, Karl Friston et al.
6 citations
The free-energy principle (FEP) constrains possible models of consciousness, especially those of attentional control and imaginative experiences like episodic memory and planning. The paper first reviews classical and quantum formulations of the FEP, focusing on multi-component systems where only some parts interact directly with the environment. It discusses internal boundaries structured as Markov blankets, which act as classical information channels. The analysis shows how this framework supports models of attention and imagination, explaining how imaginative experience can use the same spatio-temporal and object-recognition frames as ordinary perception, and how it can be internally generated yet still surprising. The paper concludes with implications for implementation, phenomenology, phylogeny, and the large variability of imaginative experience in humans.
September 8, 2022
Adam Safron, Matthew Johnson
5 citations
preprint
Classic psychedelics, which act on the serotonin 2A receptor, show potential for treating depression and addictive disorders with surprising efficacy. The review covers mechanisms of action, clinical and non-clinical uses, and mediators like mystical experiences and psychological flexibility. It also discusses how these compounds challenge current understandings of brain and mind, noting a renaissance in scientific and public interest. The authors split the review between established knowledge and theoretical speculation to help readers navigate a rapidly changing field.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
April 15, 2024
Arthur Juliani, Veronica Chelu, Laura Graesser et al.
4 citations
preprint
Serotonergic psychedelics show promise for treating mood and anxiety disorders, but their therapeutic mechanism remains debated. A popular theory holds that strong 5-HT2a receptor activation disrupts cortical dynamics, loosening rigid, maladaptive beliefs and making them open to revision. This work extends that perspective by developing a simple energy-based model of cortical dynamics rooted in predictive processing and neuromodulation. The model simulates hypothetical computational mechanisms for both 5-HT2a and 5-HT1a agonism, and its results account for several existing empirical observations about psychedelics' effects on cognition and affect. The model provides a theoretically grounded hypothesis for the clinical success of LSD, psilocybin, and DMT, and identifies biased 5-HT1a agonist psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT as potentially fruitful for developing more effective and tolerable psychotherapeutic agents.
Proceedings of the AAAI Symposium Series
May 18, 2026
Adam Safron, Victoria Klimaj, Zahra Sheikhbahaee
The Human Consciousness Hypothesis (HCH) and Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) converge on a view of consciousness as a process of building coherent, probabilistic world models. HCH defines consciousness through three principles: Genesis (an early learning algorithm), Coherence (maximizing representational consistency), and Second-Order Perception (meta-awareness). IWMT proposes that phenomenal consciousness is the feeling of being a spatiotemporally coherent generative model for an embodied agent. Mechanistically, IWMT identifies self-organizing harmonic modes (SOHMs) as neural complexes that perform Bayesian inference, generating conscious experience as maximum a posteriori estimates of sensory states. This architecture implies consciousness could potentially be realized in artificial systems with appropriate recurrent dynamics and embodied grounding.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2026
Jonas Mago, George Deane, Lars Sandved-Smith et al.
People under the influence of psychedelics often report encountering autonomous entities such as spirits, elves, or ancestors. A neurocomputational model, grounded in the active inference framework, explains these experiences by proposing that psychedelics reduce the predictability of sensory perceptions, leading the brain to interpret both internal and external perceptions as coming from non-self agents. The model synthesizes earlier theories including the entropic brain model, computational accounts of felt presence, and sensory attenuation theories of self-other discrimination. It aims to account for how the brain supports entity encounters and for the diversity and similarity of these experiences across cultural contexts.