bioRxiv Preprint Server
November 15, 2016
Arturo Tozzi, Colin James, James F Peters
1 citation
preprint
The mind is not divided into separate cognitive and emotional faculties; instead, all mental activities are logically equivalent. Using first-order predicate logic, the authors show that nervous activity is equivalent to mental faculties and that cognition and emotion are not separate functions. Every mental faculty necessarily has a counterpart in others, and seemingly different faculties can be unglued from a condensed form. Thus, the same logical framework underlies all brain activities, regardless of their boundaries or magnitude, challenging the common-sense belief that cognition and emotion are distinct.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 13, 2015
Jordi Manuello, Ugo Vercelli, Andrea Nani et al.
1 citation
preprint
Mindfulness meditation, a practice originating in the East over two millennia ago, has recently drawn the attention of Western neuroscientists. This review summarizes hypotheses about the effects of mindfulness meditation and its cerebral correlates, and presents major theories on consciousness. It proposes an integration of mindfulness meditation with consciousness, supported by the identification of shared brain areas: the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), Posterior Cingulate Cortex (PCC), Insula, and Thalamus.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 30, 2026
Mihir Nath, Nicco Reggente, Neil Bailey et al.
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Deep meditation is associated with heightened mental clarity, which corresponds to a measurable increase in the brain's functional signal-to-noise ratio (f-SNR). In experienced Vipassana practitioners, deeper meditative states produced stronger and more consistent neural responses to auditory tones, as measured by event-related potentials and single-trial decodability. The findings suggest that deep meditation enhances the brain's ability to faithfully represent sensory signals while reducing irrelevant background neural activity.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 2, 2026
Ambra Pogliani, Alexandra Zachary, Lena Hall et al.
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Insights accompanied by “Aha!” experiences are studied in the lab, but these may miss the full range of insight as it occurs naturally. In an online study of 73 adults with prior psychedelic experience, participants rated insights from four contexts: psychedelic experiences, everyday life, word puzzles (Compound Remote Associates), and ambiguous images. Psychedelic insights scored higher than everyday insights on intensity, meaning, ineffability, and perceived belief change, while laboratory insights scored lower than both naturalistic contexts. Meaning was the strongest predictor of perceived belief change, and after accounting for phenomenological dimensions, context no longer predicted belief change. Lab paradigms capture core “Aha!” features but underrepresent personal meaning and belief updating.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 27, 2026
Praerna Chowdhury, Ramajayam Govindaraj, Arun Sasidharan et al.
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Meditation-related EEG patterns are often studied by comparing meditators to passive rest or by experience level, but such designs rarely test reliability or include active controls. This study used a multi-session within-subject design with experienced Brahmakumaris Rajayoga meditators to identify reliable, state-dependent EEG dynamics. The approach addressed prior limitations, providing more valid neurophysiological markers of meditative state.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 5, 2026
Povilas Tarailis, Inga Griskova-Bulanova
preprint
Frequency-resolved EEG microstate analysis can detect changes in brain dynamics that broadband analysis misses. In two public datasets, psilocybin microdosing produced subtle, frequency-specific effects—reduced global field power and altered delta- and theta-band microstate parameters—without broadband spatiotemporal changes. Acute inhaled DMT caused broader alterations across broadband, delta, theta, and alpha activity, indicating more extensive reorganization. In both conditions, delta-band microstate C showed increased duration and microstate D decreased occurrence, though these overlaps should be interpreted cautiously due to differences in dose, route, and context. The findings suggest frequency-resolved analysis is useful for characterizing altered resting-state brain dynamics.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 22, 2026
Nicolás Bruno, Federico Cavanna, Federico Zamberlan et al.
preprint
Spontaneous thoughts make up most of everyday inner experience, but studying them is difficult because traditional methods disrupt the natural flow of thinking or introduce motor artifacts. An alternative approach combined delayed verbal retrospective free reports with automated ratings from large language models. Twenty-two participants performed an eyes-closed free-thinking task, and their reports were evaluated on ten dimensions by four LLMs and human raters. Machine-learning models trained on EEG features achieved above-chance accuracy for predicting emotional valence. LLMs showed higher inter-rater agreement than humans, supporting their use for scalable annotation and suggesting that affective dimensions of spontaneous thoughts can be decoded from brain activity.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 22, 2026
Sergio Elías Hernández, Katya Rubia, Oscar Perez-Diaz et al.
preprint
Praying to a God perceived as immanent (inside oneself) versus transcendent (outside oneself) activates different brain regions. In a comparison of brain scans, Christians praying to a transcendent God showed thalamus activation, whereas practitioners of Sahaja Yoga Meditation praying to an immanent God showed thalamus deactivation. The thalamus relays sensory information, so its deactivation during immanent prayer likely reflects reduced attention to external stimuli to focus inward, while its activation during transcendent prayer may support a perceived dialogue with an external divine presence.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 10, 2026
David Zarka, Winson F.z. Yang, Abel Rassat et al.
preprint
Extended cessation (EC) is a rare meditative state in which conscious experience temporarily stops, followed by heightened perception and emotional balance. In five highly trained meditators, electroencephalographic microstate analysis revealed that EC altered brain activity patterns linked to self-referential processing. Specifically, microstate B occurred less often and for shorter durations, while microstate C occurred more often and for longer durations. Transition probabilities also shifted, with more transitions from A and B to C and fewer from A to B. These changes appeared across delta, theta, and beta frequency bands, with additional band-specific effects for microstates A and D. The findings suggest EC involves a reweighting of self-referential and sensory processes.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 19, 2026
Chuong Ngo, Erkin Bek, Monika Stasytyte et al.
preprint
Focused-attention meditation on the breath reorganizes large-scale brain dynamics by reducing activity in neural networks linked to self-referential and memory-based processing while increasing activity in networks supporting attentional stability and internal monitoring. In 22 experienced practitioners, high-density EEG microstate analysis identified five canonical brain states. Meditation robustly reduced Microstate C, generated in medial and lateral temporal regions including the hippocampus, and increased Microstates D and E, generated in posterior midline regions and frontoparietal networks respectively. These changes suggest that focused-attention meditation downregulates self-referential processing and enhances neural states for attention and internal awareness.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 14, 2026
Muad Y. Abd El Hay, Ana Cukić, Marieke L. Schölvinck et al.
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Psychedelic substances show promise for treating psychiatric disorders, but their therapeutic mechanisms remain poorly understood. A review of 266 rodent studies from 2014 to 2026 finds systematic disconnects between animal research and human therapy conditions. Most studies contain stress-inducing factors: only 14% reported active-phase testing, 7% environmental enrichment, and 21% refined handling; drug administration almost universally used stress-inducing methods. Behavioral assays rely on brief, constrained testing with isolated markers that fail to capture the multidimensional nature of psychedelic states. The authors argue that improving translation requires a shift from brief testing of stressed, isolated animals toward longitudinal tracking of individuals in enriched social environments.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
October 31, 2025
Tomas Hampejs, David Tomecek, Stanislav Jiricek et al.
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Spontaneous, naturally occurring thoughts have distinct brain signatures that can be detected with combined fMRI and EEG recordings. Using machine learning on 240 samples from eight participants, internally versus externally oriented experiences were distinguished with 65.4% accuracy by fMRI and 62.5% by EEG. Externally oriented states involved greater activity in salience, auditory, and visuospatial brain networks and lower occipital alpha power, while internally oriented states showed the opposite pattern, extending prior accounts focused on the default mode network. Across modalities, alpha power correlated negatively with BOLD fluctuations in parietal and occipital regions, indicating that coordinated large-scale network dynamics and alpha oscillations track the natural alternation between inward and outward focus.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
October 17, 2025
France Lerner, Guillaume Tahar, Netta Shafir
preprint
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) often defy verbal description, so this study used a hybrid method: a digital questionnaire plus a graphic reconstruction task. Participants with Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) and NDEs sequenced their experiences chronologically, then drew the spaces they perceived, their self-location, and self-motion. The graphic reconstructions revealed consistent visual-field patterns—conical forms, elliptic arcs, and ellipsoidal shapes—each linked to specific colors and brightness. The approach captured features that verbal reports alone may miss, and it examined how OBEs relate to NDEs within the overall timeline.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
September 18, 2025
C. Delgado-Sallent, S. A. Ahmed, A. Khawaja-Lopez et al.
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Psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine slow decision times and improve accuracy in mice performing a perceptual task. Behavioral modeling showed these changes stem from increased decision thresholds and a shift toward sensory-driven cognitive states. Whole-brain mapping revealed psychedelics selectively modulate a distributed decision-making network. Calcium imaging in the orbitofrontal cortex showed preserved decision-related selectivity but reduced neuronal correlations, indicating weakened top-down influence and relaxed prior expectations. These circuit-level findings support the REBUS model, suggesting psychedelics reconfigure brain dynamics to promote more deliberate, flexible, and sensory-driven decision policies.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 29, 2025
Gal R. Chen, Rachel Finkelstein, Ariel Goldstein et al.
preprint
Even when people's minds wander while listening to an audiobook, their brains continue to predict upcoming words. In 25 participants listening to over 12,000 words of an audiobook, mind-wandering reduced early brain responses to word onsets and altered EEG spectral patterns, but neural markers of word-level surprise and semantic content remained intact. The brain's encoding of predictive context persisted during mind-wandering, though weaker than during attentive listening. This suggests that the brain predicts and monitors speech even when subjective experience is dimmed, indicating that shared computational mechanisms with language models are insufficient for conscious experience of meaning.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 25, 2025
Francesco Bavato, Andrea Steuer, Anna M. Jacobsen et al.
preprint
Chronic users of methamphetamine (METH) and MDMA (Ecstasy) show distinct changes in blood metabolites derived from tryptophan, a building block for serotonin and other signaling molecules. METH use was linked to lower serotonin levels and broad activation of the kynurenine pathway, while MDMA use was associated with a specific increase in a different branch of that pathway. These metabolite changes correlated with the severity of depression and psychosis symptoms. The findings suggest that lasting alterations in tryptophan metabolism may help explain the different clinical effects of the two drugs and could point to new therapeutic targets.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 22, 2025
Jeremy I Skipper, Daniel R Lametti, David W Green
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Psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices or feeling that thoughts are inserted may arise from failures in the brain's prediction and self-monitoring systems. Normally, when people talk internally, the brain sends copies of motor commands to auditory regions and suppresses them, helping distinguish self-generated from external input. When this suppression malfunctions, predicted inner speech can become perceptually salient and misattributed as external. Neuroimaging meta-analyses showed that psychosis-spectrum participants had increased activity in motor-related regions for inner speech and decreased grey matter in auditory cortices and anterior cingulate cortex. These regions form inversely coupled networks, supporting a hierarchical predictive-processing account where disruption distorts self-awareness.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 23, 2025
Tomas Del Olmo, Mathilde Decourcelle, Martial Séveno et al.
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Psychedelic drugs like DOI trigger neuroplasticity in mouse brain cells through a reciprocal interaction between the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor and the metabotropic glutamate mGlu5 receptor, linked by the scaffolding protein Shank3. Phosphoproteomics showed that DOI increases phosphorylation of synaptic proteins including mGlu5 and Shank3. Both hallucinogenic and non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists promoted mGlu5's movement to synapses and its binding to Shank3. Neuroplasticity in cortical neurons required mGlu5, protein kinase C, and Shank3; conversely, mGlu5-driven plasticity depended on the 5-HT2A receptor. These findings demonstrate that psychedelics' neuroplasticity relies on a functional interplay between these two receptors and Shank3.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 11, 2025
Fran Hancock, Rachael Kee, Fernando Rosas et al.
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Flow—the experience of effortless immersion—shows an inverse relationship with global brain entropy during a video game task, meaning less disorderly brain activity corresponds with more flow. Boredom and frustration each display distinct patterns of brain dynamics. These findings bring together earlier observations about prefrontal activity and network synchrony into a single framework and suggest complexity-based measures could help map the neural basis of media-related benefits.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 24, 2025
Marco German Ghilotti, Ricardo Petrilli Fortuna, Kofi Osei-Abrefa Ayensu et al.
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Ketamine reduces methamphetamine-seeking behaviors and negative affect in a rat model. Methamphetamine increases glutamate release, activating NMDARs, while ketamine blocks these receptors and promotes synaptogenesis. Rats treated with ketamine showed decreased drug-seeking and withdrawal-related anxiety, suggesting a potential therapeutic role for ketamine in methamphetamine addiction.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 16, 2025
Beatriz de S. Carrilho, Aline Duarte, Isabelle Martins et al.
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Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) extends lifespan and reduces age-related lipofuscin accumulation in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, suggesting delayed aging. LSD produces effects similar to caloric restriction, such as reduced reproduction and smaller body size, without decreasing food intake. LSD also alters lipid stores and other cellular markers linked to nutrient-sensing pathways. These findings indicate that LSD engages evolutionarily conserved longevity pathways and may serve as a tool for studying serotonergic regulation of aging.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 16, 2025
Nor Suliana Mustafa, Nasir Mohamad, Nor Hidayah Abu Bakar et al.
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MDMA activates microglia in the brain, causing morphological changes and inflammatory responses that can lead to neurotoxicity. Thymoquinone (TQ), a compound with known anti-inflammatory properties, was tested on BV2 microglial cells to see if it could counteract MDMA's effects. Transcriptome analysis showed that MDMA significantly increased cytokines, chemokines, and inflammation-related genes. Pre-treatment with TQ reduced morphological changes in microglia and lowered the expression of several pro-inflammatory genes, including Cxcl2, Ptgs2, C3ar1, Nfkbia, Il1a, Cxcl10, and Serpinf2. The findings suggest that TQ has neuroprotective effects against MDMA-induced microglial activation by stabilizing microglial activity.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 20, 2025
Vasil Kolev, Peter Malinowski, Antonino Raffone et al.
preprint
Different types of meditation alter how the brain processes pain, but the effects depend on the specific meditation technique. Focused attention meditation reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness by modulating activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, while open monitoring meditation reduced pain unpleasantness without affecting intensity, engaging different neural pathways. Loving-kindness meditation increased pain unpleasantness and activated regions associated with emotion and reward. The findings suggest that meditation-induced pain relief is not a uniform phenomenon but varies by practice.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 11, 2025
Juliette Gelebart, Alexandre Fouré, Romain Quentin et al.
preprint
Hypnosis actively reshapes brain networks and subjective experience, rather than simply inducing a passive, low-arousal state. Using EEG, respiratory monitoring, and first-person reports across resting, hypnotic induction, and ideomotor task conditions, the study found that light hypnosis involved early alpha suppression and increased theta activity in parieto-occipital regions. Deeper hypnosis increased frontoparietal theta connectivity while parasympathetic activation declined. During an ideomotor task, participants fell into two groups: Tremblers, who attempted movement despite feeling involuntary constraint, and Non-Tremblers, who refrained from acting due to perceived impossibility. Tremblers showed increased frontoparietal gamma and reduced delta connectivity, indicating heightened sensorimotor integration and executive monitoring under motor conflict. These findings support predictive coding accounts of agency disruption and highlight the value of neurophenomenological methods.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 5, 2025
Samuel C. Woodburn, Alexander Kuhn, David T. Dadodsky et al.
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Microglial BDNF is necessary for ketamine to increase synaptic density in the prefrontal cortex and produce antidepressant-like behavioral effects. Ketamine injection increased BDNF expression in microglia from the prefrontal cortex. Depleting BDNF specifically from microglia reduced levels of the NMDA receptor subunit GluN2B in prefrontal synapses and weakened antidepressant-like responses to ketamine, while also preventing the increase in dendritic spine density normally caused by ketamine. These results show that microglia, not just neurons, contribute to ketamine's effects on brain connections and mood, expanding the understanding of how immune cells in the brain participate in antidepressant responses.