Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
July 6, 2009
R. Nathan Spreng, Cheryl L. Grady
1,023 citations
A core brain network called the default mode network (DMN) supports three distinct self-referential processes: remembering the past, imagining the future, and understanding others' minds. Functional MRI scans revealed a common pattern of neural activation across all three processes within the DMN. Autobiographical remembering and prospection more strongly engaged midline DMN structures, while theory-of-mind reasoning more strongly engaged lateral DMN areas. Activity in a key DMN node, the medial prefrontal cortex, correlated with activity in other DMN regions during all three tasks. The findings suggest the DMN provides a shared neural foundation for simulating internal experiences.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
June 1, 2010
Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Athena Demertzi, Manuel Schabus et al.
460 citations
Resting brain activity reveals two anticorrelated cortical systems linked to conscious awareness: an extrinsic system (lateral fronto-parietal areas) associated with external awareness and an intrinsic system (medial brain areas) associated with internal awareness. In 31 healthy volunteers, external and internal awareness were significantly anticorrelated, with a mean switching frequency of 0.05 Hz, similar to BOLD fMRI slow oscillations. In 22 volunteers, fMRI showed that precuneus/posterior cingulate, anterior cingulate/mesiofrontal cortices, and parahippocampal areas (intrinsic system) correlated with internal awareness, while lateral fronto-parietal cortices (extrinsic system) correlated with external awareness.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
October 1, 2005
Olivia Carter, David C. Burr, John D. Pettigrew et al.
236 citations
A hallucinogenic drug that activates serotonin receptors, psilocybin, impaired healthy volunteers' ability to track moving objects but did not affect their spatial working memory. Blocking the 5-HT2A receptor with ketanserin before psilocybin did not prevent this attentional deficit, pointing to the 5-HT1A receptor as the likely cause. The authors suggest the impairment may stem from a reduced ability to filter out distractions rather than a loss of attentional capacity. Eight participants completed both tasks under placebo, psilocybin, ketanserin, and the combination.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
April 17, 2014
Benjamin Baird, Jonathan Smallwood, Antoine Lutz et al.
169 citations
When the mind wanders, the brain's response to sensory input becomes less consistent from one moment to the next, particularly in theta-band oscillations over parietal regions. Using an experience sampling method with continuous EEG, the authors found that task-unrelated thought reduced the P1 event-related potential, replicating prior work. Time-frequency analysis showed decreased theta-band phase-locking, indicating lower temporal fidelity in the brain's response to stimuli. Additionally, mind-wandering required more cortical processing to re-engage with a task. These results suggest that attentional states shape neural processing of sensory input by affecting the consistency of oscillatory responses.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 29, 2008
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
135 citations
The human mind has limited information processing capacity, as shown by the attentional blink—a failure to identify the second of two targets presented close together. This deficit is thought to arise from overinvesting limited resources in processing the first target. Previous research found that intensive meditation training aimed at reducing elaborate object processing decreased brain resource allocation to the first target and improved identification of the second.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
April 15, 2016
Maxine T. Sherman, Ryota Kanai, Anil K. Seth et al.
134 citations
Spontaneous alpha-band neural oscillations in the brain periodically transmit prior expectations to the visual cortex, biasing both objective decisions and subjective confidence before a stimulus appears. In a detection task with scalp EEG, prestimulus occipital alpha phase predicted the weighting of expectations on yes/no decisions and on confidence judgments, independent of attention. These findings suggest that alpha oscillations change the baseline from which evidence accumulation begins, shaping early visual processing and informing how expectations influence perception at the neural level.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
May 31, 2017
Lampros Perogamvros, Benjamin Baird, Mitja Seibold et al.
76 citations
Spontaneous thoughts occur during wakefulness, NREM sleep, and REM sleep, and all share activation in the midcingulate cortex. Waking thoughts additionally involve a medial prefrontal region linked to metacognition and have more metacognitive content than sleep thoughts. REM sleep thoughts are more social in content. The findings suggest a core neural substrate for thoughts across behavioral states, with medial prefrontal regions contributing to metacognitive qualities during wake.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Johannes G Ramaekers, Pablo Mallaroni, Lilian Kloft et al.
15 citations
In members of the Santo Daime church who regularly consume ayahuasca in a ritual setting, the brew's main psychoactive compound DMT drives feelings of oceanic boundlessness, visual restructuring, and ego dissolution, with these effects correlating with peak DMT concentration in the blood. However, measures of mental imagery—including visual perspective shifting, vividness of imagery, and associative thinking—did not noticeably differ between sober and ayahuasca conditions, though subjective cognitive flexibility was lower under ayahuasca. Two mental imagery measures (perspective shifts and cognitive flexibility) correlated with peak DMT levels. Long-term ayahuasca use may produce compensatory or neuroadaptive effects that dampen the acute impact on mental imagery.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Rajanikant Panda, Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Andrea Piarulli et al.
15 citations
During hypnosis, brain connectivity changes in ways that suggest more efficient cognitive processing and less mind-wandering. In nine healthy participants, hypnosis increased delta-wave connections between frontal brain regions and between frontal and parietal regions. It decreased alpha and beta-2 connections among frontal, parietal, and midline areas. Network analysis showed greater segregation of short-range connections in delta and alpha bands and greater integration of long-range connections in beta-2 bands. Frontal and right parietal electrodes became central hubs. These altered dynamics may reflect a modified balance between internal and external awareness networks.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Fabienne Picard
11 citations
Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy where seizures begin with ecstatic or mystical experiences, including feelings of enhanced self-awareness, mental clarity, unity with everything, bliss, and physical well-being. This perspective article describes the phenomenology and historical context of these seizures, identifying the anterior insula as the primary brain structure involved. The authors propose that temporary disruptions to anterior insula activity may interrupt interoceptive prediction errors, leading to an absence of uncertainty and a sense of bliss, as perfect prediction of the body's physiological state is mimicked. An alternative hypothesis suggests the anterior insula processes surprise, and epileptic discharge may interrupt unexpected events, producing a sense of complete control and oneness with the environment.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
December 30, 2025
Evan Lewis-Healey, Carla Pallavicini, Federico Cavanna et al.
4 citations
The psychedelic drug DMT rapidly reorganizes conscious experience and brain activity, but the link between brain dynamics and subjective effects remains unclear. In a blinded, dose-dependent study, 19 participants received 20 mg or 40 mg of DMT. The higher dose produced more intense visual hallucinations and emotional experiences. Electroencephalography data showed that alpha power and permutation entropy best tracked moment-to-moment changes in subjective experience, while Lempel-Ziv complexity—previously thought to be a strong correlate—showed the weakest association. The findings indicate that the relationship between neural complexity and psychedelic phenomenology is less straightforward than hypothesized.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Charlotte Martial, Olivia Gosseries
Episodes of disconnected consciousness—where a person is outwardly unresponsive but still has mental experiences without awareness of their surroundings—occur in sleep, anesthesia, meditation, hypnosis, trance, and life-threatening situations like coma. When such episodes follow a life-threatening event and include features like out-of-body experiences or bright lights, they are called near-death experiences. Research suggests that the brain's back regions may be necessary for conscious experience, but how external stimuli are blocked during these states remains unknown. This special focus presents studies on ecstatic epilepsy, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, and ayahuasca, examining their phenomenology and neural mechanisms to better understand consciousness and dissociation.