Space Oddity: microgravity as a neurocognitive catalyst for transformative consciousness experiences
Frontiers in Psychology June 12, 2026 Annahita Nezami, Elisa Raffaella Ferrè
Earth's gravity acts as a deeply ingrained '1G super-prior' in the brain's predictive architecture, stabilizing how the brain integrates sensory information and organizes large-scale networks. When people enter microgravity, disrupted vestibular signals destabilize this super-prior, causing widespread prediction errors that force recalibration across brain systems. This process extends beyond sensorimotor adaptation to reshape conscious experience—altering self-location, emotional regulation, and perceptual coherence, and potentially triggering transformative phenomena. Drawing computational parallels with psychedelic states, the authors propose that microgravity transiently relaxes high-level priors and enhances global integration, offering a non-pharmacological way to probe the foundations of human awareness.