Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche—id, ego, and super-ego—is being reexamined through neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience within the interdisciplinary field of neuro-psychoanalysis. In 2010, Robin Carhart-Harris and Karl Friston proposed that the ego correlates with the default-mode network, a large-scale brain network. This article critiques that view and offers an original theoretical hypothesis, supported by a literature review, suggesting that the central-executive network and the salience network are the true brain representatives of the Freudian ego, rather than the default-mode network.
The Altered States Database (ASDB) is an open science project that compiles psychometric questionnaire data on altered states of consciousness experiences induced by various methods. This update reports a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines, where 431 items were screened and data from 23 eligible journal articles were extracted, covering literature up to December 31, 2022. The complete dataset is publicly available on the Open Science Framework.