Frontiers in Psychology
May 11, 2023
Hannah Thurgur, Meg J. Spriggs, Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner et al.
13 citations
A framework called Access, Reciprocity and Conduct (ARC) is proposed to build an ethical and equitable infrastructure for psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT). ARC rests on three pillars: ensuring equal access to PAT for those needing mental health treatment, promoting safety for those delivering and receiving therapy, and respecting traditional and spiritual uses of psychedelic medicines. The framework is being developed through a dual-phase co-design approach, first co-creating ethics statements with stakeholders from research, industry, therapy, community, and Indigenous settings, then inviting broader collaborative review. The authors aim to spark dialogue and help organizations and practitioners address complex ethical questions in PAT.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Janina Nielsen, Tillmann H. C. Krüger, Uwe Hartmann et al.
13 citations
People with synaesthesia who experience sensory crossovers during sex—such as seeing colors or feeling textures from arousal—report deeper states of sexual trance but lower sexual satisfaction than those without synaesthesia. Among 19 synaesthetes and 36 controls, synaesthetes scored higher on measures of oceanic boundlessness and visionary restructuralization, indicating more intense altered states during intercourse. They also showed better overall sexual function, particularly in sexual appetite, yet felt less satisfied. Qualitative interviews revealed that the idiosyncratic perceptions can create a sense of isolation. The findings suggest that sexual synaesthesia amplifies trance-like immersion without improving satisfaction.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 4, 2022
Zuzanna Rucińska, Thomas Fondelli
11 citations
Metaphors are effective therapeutic tools because they connect to action words, allowing a client's embodiment and agency to be explored within dialog. Drawing on embodied, enactive, and ecological ideas, the authors propose a dialogical-enactive account in which metaphors are used to enact change in systemic collaborative therapy. Rather than requiring explicit performances, metaphoric engagement stays within linguistic dialog as an act of participatory sense-making. Two examples with adolescents illustrate how enacting metaphors in shared communication helps clients connect to action and explore their own agency. Talking is seen as a form of doing, unfolding through embodied interaction.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 29, 2022
Amalia Casas-Mas, Juan Ignacio Pozo, Ignacio Montero
11 citations
Two flamenco guitar apprentices with contrasting learning profiles—reproductive and transformative—were studied to examine how bodily practices and verbal discourse reflect embodied cognition in an oral tradition. The analysis, using the SAPIL system, revealed that flamenco learners show a fusion of verbal, body language, and musical discourse, unlike musically literate cultures. Music is embedded in their family and social life, transcending musical activity itself. The transformative apprentice differed from the reproductive one in active learning processes. Flamenco learning relies on listening and temporary external representations rather than notation, with the body central to holistic rhythm processing through singing, playing, and dancing. The embodied mind is a product of the learning culture, reflected through body and gesture.
Frontiers in Psychology
August 27, 2021
Leor Roseman, Nadeem Karkabi
11 citations
Ayahuasca rituals involving both Israelis and Palestinians can produce feelings of unity, but these feelings may mask a political status quo that marginalizes Palestinians. Interviews and observations of 31 participants revealed that the ritual structure avoided recognizing Palestinian national identity or acknowledging Israeli injustice. However, ayahuasca occasionally triggered revelatory events where individuals confronted the oppressive reality between the groups. These events evoked pain, anger, and guilt, leading to resistance against the hegemonic ritual structure and a desire to deliver an emancipatory message, often through song. This fidelity to the revealed truth sometimes expanded ayahuasca practices to other Palestinians and politicized the practice, illustrating the egalitarian revolutionary potential of psychedelics as analyzed through Badiou's theory.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 28, 2022
Giorgio Marchetti
9 citations
Conscious information processing is distinguished by its phenomenal aspect (PAC), the what-it-is-like for an agent to experience something, which provides a sense of self and informs how the self is affected by the agent's own operations. The PAC originates from attention detecting the state of the self (S), a hierarchy of innate and acquired values expressed via the nervous system that maps the agent's body, cognitive capacities, and environmental interactions. This detection modulates the energy level of the organ of attention (OA), its neural substrate, generating the PAC. The PAC has five dimensions—qualitative, quantitative, hedonic, temporal, and spatial—each traceable to a specific feature of that modulation.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 13, 2020
H. Cassol, E. Bonin, C. Bastin et al.
9 citations
Memories of near-death experiences (NDEs) are recalled with more detail and a stronger sense of reality than memories of other real or imagined events. In a study of 25 people who had lived through an NDE, verbal recollections of the NDE contained more internal/episodic details than flashbulb memories or other autobiographical memories. NDE memories were also the most central to a person's identity, followed by other autobiographical memories, then flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories were associated with lower intensity of feelings during recall, lower personal importance, less reactivation, and a less frequent first-person perspective compared to NDE and control memories. The findings indicate that NDE memories are unique and highly impactful.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 25, 2025
Antonio Metastasio, Elisabeth Prevete, Sofia Venturini et al.
8 citations
People who took psilocybin without other substances reported lasting increases in emotional sensitivity, empathy, and connection to others, along with deeper insights into their lives and values. The experience also led to profound shifts in behavior, attitudes, and interests, suggesting psilocybin can catalyze personal growth. This qualitative study used phenomenological methods to systematically describe the subjective psychedelic experience, aiming to inform its integration into psychotherapy.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 16, 2023
Gina Ratkovic, Mike Sosteric, Tristan Sosteric
8 citations
An Indigenous therapist/psychonaut evaluated the Copenhagen Music Program for Psilocybin during a 3.5 gram psilocybin journey and found that its musical selections evoke colonial and religious contexts and are psychologically and emotionally coercive, designed to steer the experience along a predetermined path. The program is deemed unsuitable for Indigenous travelers. The authors suggest curating a broader range of playlists and incorporating music aligned with traditional shamanic practices as a more appropriate approach to psychedelic therapy.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 10, 2022
L. Lundh
8 citations
Contemplative practices, such as mindfulness and gratitude, are engaged in for the experiences they afford, yet the field of Contemplation Studies lacks agreed definitions. This paper proposes that experimental phenomenology—the investigation of how intentional variations in attention and attitude shape experience—can advance the field. Contemplative practices are a subcategory of phenomenological practices. Two varieties of experimental phenomenology are described: an informal kind that historically generated diverse contemplative traditions and can inform personalized health interventions, and a rigorous scientific kind that systematically tests experiential effects. The latter may uncover general principles and help develop new contemplative practices.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 2, 2021
Rami Gabriel
8 citations
Spiritual emotions generated through imaginative culture—myth, ritual, and art—help fix metaphysical beliefs by making certain information feel salient and true. Evolved affective systems are domesticated through social practices, adapting people to cooperative group life. Conditioning, symbols, and language bond groups via shared imaginative formats. Art, as a form of self-knowledge, provides motivated understanding of oneself in the world. In sacred states produced by arts and religious acts, affect infuses experience with a noetically distinct sense of meaning, making humans attentive to subtle signs and broad truths. This salience, saturated with emotion and alterity, becomes the basis for belief fixation. The theory draws on mimetic arts and arts of immanence to explain how sensible affective knowledge is mediated through affective systems, direct perception, and imagination.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 6, 2025
William Roseby, Hannes Kettner, Leor Roseman et al.
6 citations
Psychedelics like psilocybin strongly increase the sense that life has meaning, based on three different studies: a clinical trial for depression, a healthy volunteer study, and naturalistic retreats. The 'presence of meaning' rose substantially after a psychedelic experience, while the 'search for meaning' dropped only slightly. These meaning enhancements were moderately linked to improvements in mental health, such as greater wellbeing and reduced depression. Mystical, ego dissolution, and emotional breakthrough experiences were associated with increased meaning, though the strength varied by context. The evidence converges to show a robust, lasting positive effect of psychedelics on meaning in life, with context influencing outcomes.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 10, 2024
Olivier Sandilands, Daniel M. Ingram
6 citations
Meditation, psychedelics, and similar practices that alter conscious experience are increasingly used in clinical and non-clinical settings, yet the full range of associated phenomena remains poorly described and understood. There is an ethical mandate to research this domain more extensively, starting with comprehensive documentation. A review of 50 recent clinical or scientific publications, synthesizing reports from over 30,000 individual subjects, produced a large inventory of experiences, effects, after-effects, and impacts across a broad variety of psychoactive compounds, meditative practices, and other modalities. The authors critically discuss existing terminology and argue that specialized vocabularies are needed to ground this nascent research field, proposing the notion of 'emergence' and 'emergent phenomenology' as foundational concepts.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2023
Katherine Cheung, David B. Yaden
6 citations
A general commentary on a previously published article, offering critical perspective or additional context on the topic of consciousness research. The commentary engages with the original work's arguments, highlighting areas of agreement or disagreement and suggesting refinements or future directions for the field.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 15, 2025
Jake F Hooper, Emily L Gyongyosi, Kent E Hutchison et al.
5 citations
Aesthetic qualities of psychedelic experiences are linked to better psychological outcomes, including greater emotional breakthroughs, psychological insight, behavioral change, and mystical experiences, while also being associated with less fear and paranoia. In a survey of 96 people who used classic psychedelics in the past year, aesthetic experience predicted improvements in depression, anxiety, and quality of life independently of age, gender, or mystical experience. The findings suggest that the aesthetic environment in psychedelic-assisted therapy may actively contribute to therapeutic benefits rather than being merely perceptual enhancements.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 6, 2024
Sean Noah, Earth Erowid, Fire Erowid et al.
5 citations
Psychedelic compounds like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT can dramatically alter visual perception, but whether these visual effects consistently differ between substances is unclear. Using the large Erowid experience report dataset, researchers analyzed narrative self-reports for 103 psychoactive substances, including 30 psychedelics and 73 comparison substances. They used an AI embedding model to classify sentences describing visual effects. The proportion of visual-effect sentences varied significantly and consistently across substances, even among psychedelics. Further analysis of visual effect categories—such as movement, color, and pattern—also showed reliable variation. The findings indicate that different psychedelic substances have distinct propensities to affect vision and produce qualitatively different visual experiences.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 9, 2024
Hang Sun, Eunyoung Kim
5 citations
Archetype symbols in shamanic rituals significantly influence participants' conscious state, leading to a conscious dissolution of the self. A survey of 75 participants found that these symbols have different effects across stages of consciousness change, with the strongest impact during the "Visionary Restructuralization" stage. Patterns, masks, totems, and music brought consciousness to a peak and caused significant changes. The metaphoric function of archetype symbols connects individuals to the collective unconscious through visual and symbolic imagery, prompting emotional resonances that transcend personal experience and alter consciousness.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 16, 2023
Oliver Davis
4 citations
The French poet, writer, and artist Henri Michaux produced an extensive body of work—five books, dozens of drawings, and a film—documenting his experiences with mescaline, psilocybin, LSD, and cannabis over roughly a decade from the mid-1950s. His aesthetic reconstruction of psychedelics' effects on his creative brain can be read as a program for the emerging field of psychedelic humanities. Michaux's work addresses three core concerns: psychedelics' role in enhancing creativity, the politics of psychedelics, and the meaning of psychedelic mysticism. Though less known than Huxley's writings, Michaux's exploration is more extensive, complex, and demanding, and deserves wider recognition.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 10, 2019
Marek Havlík, Eva Kozáková, Jiřı́ Horáček
4 citations
Intrinsic conscious experiences—thoughts, daydreams, and mind-wandering—make up as much as half of conscious life but are largely ignored in consciousness research because they are methodologically difficult and lack dedicated experimental paradigms. This hypothesis and theory article proposes a new paradigm for studying intrinsic consciousness, modeled on methods used for perceptual consciousness. The authors present exploratory proof-of-concept data, discuss how the paradigm could be used, and address its limitations and possible solutions. They argue that intrinsic consciousness will soon become a standard topic in consciousness studies once suitable experimental tools are developed.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 16, 2025
Bruce Greyson, Jeffrey D. Long, Janice Miner Holden et al.
3 citations
A new scale, the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), was developed to assess how strong the evidence is for perceptions reported during near-death experiences. Thirteen experts used a Delphi method to agree on eight criteria, including timing of investigation, medical conditions, third-party verification, and the number and quality of perceptions, scored on a four-level Likert scale. The scale was then tested on 17 cases of potentially veridical NDEs by 11 human raters and three artificial raters using large language models. In 14 of the 17 cases (82.3%), human and artificial raters agreed at over 75% when considering two adjacent evidence levels, such as moderate plus strong or low plus very low. The scale offers a practical way to evaluate the evidential strength of reported NDE perceptions.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 1, 2023
Zoë Dubus, Elise Grandgeorge, Vincent Verroust
3 citations
From the 1920s to the 1960s, French physicians administered mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin in highly controlled, anxious sessions often described by patients as torture, with only rare cases of recovery. The Sainte-Anne school dominated this research, framing hallucinogens as psychodysleptics (mind disruptors) rather than psychedelics, and using them as diagnostic tools within a biological, shock-oriented conception of therapy. Because researchers rarely determined optimal doses or attended to the administration context and patient relationship, clear therapeutic benefits were not demonstrated. These early negative representations continue to influence French health professionals' reluctance toward the current psychedelic renaissance.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 12, 2022
Celia Ceballos-Munuera, Cristina Senín‐calderón, Sandra Fernández-león et al.
3 citations
Ideas of reference (IR) are common in psychotic disorders, and their frequency and associated preoccupation relate to the psychotic dimension. Aberrant salience (AS) is considered an early indicator of psychosis. This study tested whether AS and disorganized symptoms mediate the link between IR and the psychotic dimension. In 330 participants (116 university students, 214 patients; 62.4% women, ages 18–79), a partial mediation model showed that AS and the disorganized dimension jointly mediated the relationship between IR and the psychotic dimension, while preoccupation about IR no longer played a role. Age significantly influenced this relationship. The model explained 54.16% of the variance in the psychotic dimension. Findings suggest that unusual thought content may predict proneness to psychosis, with implications for early detection and prevention.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 11, 2022
Karleth Costa Spindola-Rodrigues, Renandro de Carvalho Reis, Caio Macedo de Carvalho et al.
3 citations
Mediums who practice trance mediumship in Brazil show generally healthy cognitive function. In a sample of 19 mediums split into a more experienced group (11 subjects, over 10 years of practice) and a less experienced group (8 subjects, 1–5 years), most scored at or above the median on tests of memory, attention, and executive function compared to Brazilian norms. On the five-digit test, those who first recognized trance before age 21 performed better on the choice stage. No participant met criteria for major depression, but 21% reported common mental disorders, more prevalent in the less experienced group. Executive dysfunction may be a tendency in less experienced mediums.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 20, 2018
Marek Havlík, Karolína Mladá, Iveta Fajnerová et al.
3 citations
Personality traits, particularly the dimension of self-transcendence measured by Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory, correlate with people's intuitive inclinations toward either dualism or reductive materialism regarding the mind-body problem. In a pilot study using a newly developed questionnaire based on analytic philosophy of the mind, participants categorized as dualists showed significant differences in self-transcendence scores compared to those categorized as reductive materialists. The findings suggest that philosophical positions on the mind-body problem, and possibly responses to thought experiments in philosophy of mind, may be influenced by underlying personality features, a factor that should be considered in future philosophical and empirical research.
Frontiers in Psychology
September 15, 2025
Judith Hooper, Jarrod M. Ellingson, Kent E. Hutchison
2 citations
Aesthetic experiences under psychedelics are vivid and meaningful but poorly measured. A new questionnaire, the Psychedelic Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (PAEQ), was refined and validated in 365 past-year psilocybin users who completed an online survey. Factor analysis revealed four dimensions: sensory, affective, semantic, and flow. The scale showed high internal consistency (α = 0.90) and strong correlations with existing measures of mystical experience, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight. PAEQ scores modestly predicted improvements in sleep, pain, substance use, anxiety, depression, and quality of life after psychedelic use. The PAEQ offers a psychometrically sound tool for capturing aesthetic engagement during psychedelic experiences.