Frontiers in Psychology
June 29, 2026
Bruno Forti
Conscious vision, according to Extended Information Theory, lets us know how objects extend into space, compensating for limitations of neuro-computational systems that handle point-like information. This paper explores links between spatial extension and two other properties of phenomenal experience: subjectivity and qualitative aspect. The author identifies thingness—the materialization of something extending into space—as an underlying property from which subjectivity and quality derive. Subjectivity involves a structure where a third-person world forms within a first-person world, creating egocentric knowledge. Quality conveys how something materializes based on its degree of differentiation from other qualities, transforming unconscious into conscious knowledge. A hypothesis is proposed for how qualities may originate from physical brain processes.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 22, 2026
Thurston Lacalli
Conscious vision presents a challenge for theories of consciousness because it involves a 2-dimensional perceptual display. A modular/constitutive model requires that awareness of visual stimuli has position-dependence, meaning the physical location of each module contributing to visual experience has perceptual consequences. Conscious gaze control registers salient visual features in a way that has no preconscious counterpart and helps visual experience acquire meaning. The analysis justifies Merker's ideas on vision and gaze control as core functions of consciousness, where postnatal refinement of visual skills equates to learning agency. It provides a framework for the hard problem and suggests conscious experience for non-visual species may incorporate position-dependent components based on something other than light perception. The adaptive advantage of consciousness depends on both position-dependent contents and valence to assign meaning to experience.
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.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 10, 2026
Guy W. Fincham, Edward Caddye, Amy A. Kartar et al.
A single session of high ventilation breathwork produced larger altered states of consciousness—including mystical experience, emotional breakthrough, and feelings of oneness—than body scan meditation in 24 healthy adults. One week later, breathwork was associated with greater psychological insight and self-reported behavioral change. Both groups showed improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being over time. These preliminary findings suggest breathwork can induce psychedelic-like effects and support further confirmatory research.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 4, 2026
David O. Avruch
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is increasingly used in mainstream mental healthcare, but its application in couple therapy is underexplored. Interviews with nine psychotherapists from four couple therapy modalities revealed diverse strategies for using ketamine to facilitate attachment processes. Respondents reported that ketamine helps couples reduce fearfulness, deepen emotional expression, communicate frankly, enhance trust, gain perspective on relational dysfunction, and address trauma. Different therapeutic modalities conceptualize ketamine's role uniquely. The study, limited by its small sample, contributes to the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted couple therapy.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 28, 2026
Lidia Venero-Hidalgo, Francisca Carvajal, Fernando Rodrı́guez de Fonseca et al.
Cannabis use during adolescence and young adulthood is linked to memory problems, especially in episodic and working memory, but effects on executive functions are less consistent and depend on age, how much cannabis is used, and the type of cognitive test. Studies from the Americas, many of which followed participants over time, more often found negative associations between cannabis use and cognitive performance. European studies showed mixed results, possibly due to differences in cannabis products, patterns of co-use, and measurement methods. Evidence from Asia was limited. Overall, cognitive differences are more reliably seen in adolescents than in young adults, shaped by developmental, methodological, and contextual factors.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 20, 2026
Keisuke Suzuki
Altered states of consciousness—such as hallucinations, psychedelic experiences, and ego dissolution—differ qualitatively, but no unified computational framework describes what varies and along which dimensions. This paper proposes the C × G × D framework, drawing on three functional roles in deep neural networks: a Classifier (C) that extracts features from sensory input, a Generator (G) that synthesises internal representations, and a Discriminator (D) that judges whether a representation originates externally or internally. Phenomenological differences across altered states are redescribed as variations in objective functions, constraints, and thresholds of these components.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 19, 2026
Cora Zeng
A formless, persistent inner dialogue partner called Dialogical Inner Voice Personification (DIVP) emerges spontaneously in childhood, operates through linguistic turn-taking, and is experienced as part of the self. Drawing on eight autoethnographic interview sessions with an AI research assistant and parental accounts, the author—a 14-year-old gifted bilingual student—traces DIVP's phenomenology and development from early childhood to adolescence. Five literatures (inner speech, imaginary companions, Dialogical Self Theory, giftedness and overexcitability, and non-pathological voice-hearing) each explain a component, but none captures the full configuration. A dual-overexcitability mechanism (intellectual × imaginational) is proposed as a candidate explanation, and the clinical risk of misdiagnosis in gifted children reporting such experiences is examined.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 15, 2026
Hiroko Tanabe, Minami Nakajima, Mai Shiratori et al.
The pleasurable urge to move to music, known as groove, is not simply enhanced by stronger synchronization between body movement and musical rhythm. In a study where participants listened to rhythms with varying syncopation under free, static, or dynamic movement conditions, the urge to move increased synchronization at a beat-level frequency (2 Hz) even when movement was restricted. However, stronger synchronization did not uniformly boost groove; in free and dynamic conditions, overly rigid temporal alignment reduced ratings of urge-to-move and pleasure. The functional role of synchronization depended on movement context: slower metrical synchronization (1 Hz) was key in the free condition, while beat-level synchronization (2 Hz) dominated in the dynamic condition. Groove emerges from a context-dependent balance between entrained bodily engagement and the degree of temporal stabilization.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 25, 2026
Amira Arora
correction
Consciousness is not a byproduct of brain activity but is ontologically fundamental, with the brain acting as a filter or receiver for a more pervasive, nonlocal consciousness. This view, supported by transpersonal psychology, contemplative traditions, and empirical findings such as near-death experiences and psychedelic studies where reduced brain activity corresponds to heightened subjective richness, challenges materialist assumptions. The paper argues for integrating first-person methodologies and cross-cultural wisdom into scientific inquiry, proposing that consciousness is a participatory field central to reality, with implications for psychology, spirituality, and a more holistic science.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 17, 2026
Ingeborg van den Bold, Sanneke de Haan, Jenny Slatman
Verbalizing body awareness during Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training is difficult; participants often talked about emotions or made rational judgments instead of expressing bodily sensations. Analyzing a full MBSR course transcript with interpretative phenomenological analysis and applying Wittgenstein's concept of language-games and Austin's speech acts, the authors suggest that learning to verbalize body awareness involves learning a language-game of 'reporting sense perceptions.' The findings align with emotion regulation therapy, where the first step is feeling bodily sensations rather than making rational judgments. The authors hypothesize that mindfulness apps and recorded body scans, lacking live trainer-participant dialogue, may hinder this learning process.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 6, 2026
Neil Dagnall, Andrew Denovan, Claire Murphy-Morgan et al.
People who hold strong scientific beliefs tend to rely on analytical-rational thinking, while those who hold paranormal beliefs tend to rely on intuitive-experiential thinking. In a sample of 300 adults, traditional and New Age paranormal beliefs correlated positively with intuitive processing and negatively with analytical processing; belief in science showed the opposite pattern. Two subgroups emerged: Higher Evidence-based Thinking (55% of participants) with high scientific and low paranormal belief, and Lower Evidence-based Thinking (45%) with low scientific and high paranormal belief. Cognitive rigidity (dogmatism and need for closure) did not differ between groups, suggesting these traits are belief-neutral characteristics of strongly held convictions rather than specific to scientific or paranormal worldviews.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 25, 2026
Natalie L. Dyer, Meredith Sprengel, Ivo V. Stuldreher et al.
A feasibility study monitored 23 adults with multiple sensors during guided loving kindness meditation and breathwork. Biofield measures changed as expected for some participants. After meditation, participants reported lower arousal and increased control, boundarylessness, and non-duality. After breathwork, participants reported increased arousal and decreased boundarylessness, connectedness, and non-duality. Strong correlations (r > 0.5) appeared between ultraweak photon emission from both hands, and moderate correlations (r > 0.4) between infrared nose temperature and left hand ultraweak photon emission. The authors conclude that simultaneous multi-sensor monitoring is feasible and that meditation and breathwork produce nearly opposite effects, but larger samples and control groups are needed.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 9, 2026
Akbota Tleuberdinova
A unified framework called Earth Universal BioConsciousness proposes that consciousness originates from pre-existing cell bioconsciousness, not spontaneously, and is a primary causal agent directing genetic adaptations. The framework integrates several theories: Cellular Basis of Consciousness, Cognition-Based Evolution, Universal Genome Evolution (where DNA is a structural correlate of universal bioconsciousness), and Ontogenetic Evolution of Universal Bioconsciousness (beginning at zygote formation). It reinterprets Descartes' 'Cogito ergo sum' by arguing verbal thought depends on bioconsciousness and serves communication, not independent thinking. Unicellular and multicellular bioconsciousness exist in positive and negative forms. Human-like artificial consciousness is deemed highly unlikely because bioconsciousness is tied to biological lineage.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 17, 2025
Natalija Šimunovič
The article uses the myth of Orpheus as an analogy to explore music performance anxiety (MPA), arguing that current approaches focus too narrowly on the performer's relationship with self and others while neglecting a transcendent dimension—connection to something beyond the individual, such as ritual, community, or higher meaning. The authors propose a triangular model of musical self-concept with vertices of I/self, Me/others, and the transcendent, suggesting that a stronger transcendent connection can protect against MPA. They review evidence that mindfulness and contemplative practices may shift performers from anxiety to optimal states, and call for extending MPA interventions to include spiritual and transcendent contexts in education and performance.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 25, 2025
Gheorghe Ilie, Adrian V. Jaeggi
Evolutionary psychology's modular view of the mind, which sees it as a collection of specialized information-processing modules shaped by natural selection, can be integrated with clinical psychiatry. The descriptive psychopathology of self-disorders offers evidence for this modular view, as a dysfunctional minimal self may reveal the mind's modular architecture to conscious awareness. The modular perspective also illuminates intrapsychic conflicts, and evidence from neuropsychiatric syndromes supports this view, providing a basis for classifying mental disorders.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 18, 2023
Michael Cordova
Silence is not merely the absence of sound but can be a rich, meaningful experience that shapes human consciousness and well-being. The article argues that silence has been undervalued in psychological research, yet it plays a crucial role in self-reflection, emotional regulation, and aesthetic appreciation. Drawing on humanistic and psychoanalytic perspectives, the author suggests that silence can facilitate deeper self-awareness and connection with others, challenging the modern tendency to fill every moment with noise. The piece calls for more empirical and theoretical attention to silence as a positive psychological phenomenon.
Frontiers in Psychology
August 9, 2023
Patric Plesa, Rotem Petranker
The resurgence of psychedelic research aims to treat mental health conditions through psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy, with current theories emphasizing mystical experiences as key drivers of symptom improvement. These experiences enhance feelings of salience, connectedness, and meaning. The authors argue that the excitement around psychedelics partly responds to a modern meaning and alienation crisis, which correlates with rising anxiety and depression. They frame this absence of meaning as neonihilism, a contemporary version of 19th-century nihilism shaped by neoliberal culture. Exploring whether psychedelics combined with group therapy can address modern meaninglessness, they propose concrete next steps for theory and practice, introducing neonihilistic psychedelic group psychotherapy.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 15, 2021
Ingmar Gorman, Ingmar Gorman, Ingmar Gorman et al.
Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration (PHRI) is a clinical approach for mental health providers working with patients who use or consider using psychedelics in any setting. It combines harm reduction psychotherapy and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, applicable in brief or ongoing therapy. PHRI shifts from focusing only on negative outcomes and abstinence-based addiction treatment toward compassionate, destigmatizing acceptance of patients' choices. The approach addresses assessment, preparation, and managing difficult experiences, responding to increased psychedelic research, media attention, and legal changes.