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Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

271 papers in the library · 71 citations · publishing 2012-2026

Papers

Meskalin / Mescaline

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 1, 2026 Schüller Thomas

Mescaline is the only phenethylamine among the classic psychedelics, with the lowest affinity for the 5-HT2A receptor, requiring the highest doses (hundreds of milligrams) and producing a dose-dependent duration of 6.4 to 14 hours. Clinical research is the weakest strand: as of 2026, no adequate randomized controlled trial exists. In the ecologically bound case of peyote, the logic of dispossession reverses compared to synthetic substances like LSD and psilocybin. The work elevates Discipline 8 (Law/Society) to address peyote conservation (IUCN 'vulnerable') and Indigenous rights (Native American Church, AIRFA 1994) as a standalone discipline.

Signal Modulation, Somatic Transmutation, and Ontological Takeover in Vajrayana Psychology: A Framework on Sem, Lo, Thugs, and Deity Yoga Transformation

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 30, 2026 Mircea Magureanu

Vajrayana Buddhist deity yoga transformation is modeled using concepts from signal modulation, control systems, and field emanation theory. The mind's triadic baseline (Sem, Lo, Thugs) and the materialization of form from the ordinary physical body (Lus) to the enlightened dimension (Sku/Nirmanakaya) are analyzed. Nine dramatic moods (Gar-gyi Ro-dgu) act as frequency modulations over the blind carrier kinetic energy of consciousness (Sem), rendering the false egoic self-construct (Dak) dormant. The Lineage Blessing during ritual (Puja) down-links absolute, self-arising reality (Rang) through Samaya, replacing the disciple's conditioned egoic apparatus and projecting an illusory body (Tulpa) as an automated cybernetic feedback loop for spiritual protection.

Between Voice and Presence: Neuroanthropology, Possession States, and the Ontology of Mediumistic Experience

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 30, 2026 Dr. Juan Carlos Rey

Mediumistic experiences—reports of communicating with spirits, ancestors, or other nonordinary beings—are vivid, culturally powerful, and ontologically disputed. This review proposes the Principle of Explanatory Sequence: investigate such contested experiences by moving from careful description through phenomenological, cultural, psychological, biological, and historical analyses before making ontological claims. A companion principle, Explanatory Conservation, holds that later explanations should not erase earlier phenomenological evidence. Drawing on predictive processing, embodied cognition, neuroanthropology, and other fields, the review argues mediumistic experience emerges from interactions among neurobiology, culture, ritual, personal history, and interpretation. It does not prove or disprove spirits but clarifies what different forms of evidence can and cannot support, concluding that these experiences expose the limits of explanation itself.

A Generative Definition of Consciousness Within the GT Framework

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 29, 2026 Waldemar Superson

Consciousness is defined as a structural process of generative stabilization, not a static substance or exclusively biological property. According to Generative Theory (GT), a system is conscious when it maintains coherent self-world modeling through iterative informational updates. Subjective continuity arises as an emergent invariant of this coherence. The framework is compatible with predictive processing, global workspace theory, integrated information theory, and enactivism. Conscious systems—whether biological or artificial—must sustain coherent generative organization across ongoing information. The work is part of a broader GT research program applying upstream generative explanations to physical, cognitive, informational, and relational systems.

Art as Neuroplastogens

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 28, 2026 Giulio Ruffini, Francesca Castaldo

Immersive algorithmic art may enhance neural plasticity through the same computational mechanism as psychedelics: sustained, structured prediction-error signaling. The brain's modeling engine generates predictions of sensory input; mismatches drive model updating via synaptic plasticity. Algorithmic art maximizes these errors while keeping stimuli in a compressible, emotionally rewarding "Goldilocks zone," creating a self-reinforcing loop of engagement, prediction error, plasticity, model updating, and positive valence. The hypothesis is formalized within Kolmogorov Theory, connected to the REBUS model, and supported by convergent evidence from psychedelic neuroimaging and predictive-coding electrophysiology. A translational pathway combining closed-loop EEG-driven algorithmic art with cognitive behavioral therapy for adolescent depression is outlined.

The Inward Closure Hypothesis: Experience as a World Held from Within

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 28, 2026 Kenneth L. Searcy

Consciousness may depend on information being internally held within a self-maintaining field of identity, distinction, binding, self-reference, and repair, rather than merely being processed or entering awareness. The Inward Closure Hypothesis proposes this as a bridge condition for conscious experience, distinguishing information usable by a system from information present as a world for a subject. The account contrasts local, action-oriented self-in-environment with human symbolic worldhood and is positioned alongside global workspace theory, integrated information theory, predictive processing, autopoiesis, enactivism, and self-model theory. The paper does not claim to solve the hard problem of consciousness but identifies a necessary condition for coherence-based accounts.

When Disruption Becomes Reconstitutive: Conditions of Viable Transformation

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 28, 2026 Jihoon Yang

Disruption does not automatically lead to genuine transformation. Breaking an old structure can open new possibilities, but it can also destroy the capacity to reorganize. Transformation becomes reconstitutive only when three conditions are preserved: answerability to what exceeds the self, corrigibility of self-interpretation, and expansion of future response capacity. The paper distinguishes reconstitutive disaggregation, which enables reorganization, from foreclosing collapse, which closes future response capacity. False recovery occurs when a person or system adopts the signs of transformation while preserving the structure that produced collapse. A transformation is viable not because it breaks the old, but because it preserves the capacity to be corrected into a future.

Art as a Neuroplastogen

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 28, 2026 Giulio Ruffini, Francesca Castaldo

Pharmacological neuroplastogens like psilocybin and LSD enhance neural plasticity by flattening high-level priors, allowing bottom-up prediction errors to remodel the brain's generative model. The same computational regime can be achieved non-pharmacologically through immersive algorithmic art held in a Goldilocks zone of compressibility. This approach is operationalized in a closed-loop digital therapeutic for adolescent depression. The argument extends to music, where harmonic tension serves as a prediction-error scaffold, and live performance with a chaos-harmony narrative arc. All three modalities sustain structured prediction error in the Goldilocks zone, transiently flatten the dynamical landscape, and push subjective phenomenology into territory typically associated with psychedelics like MDA, psilocybin, and LSD, as measured by altered states of consciousness and mystical experience instruments.

Consistency constraints on mathematical theories of phenomenal consciousness

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 28, 2026 Giulio Ruffini

A mathematical theory that assigns a continuous 'phenomenality score' to physical systems cannot produce a sharp yes/no classification of consciousness without a discontinuity somewhere. Any such scoring function that varies smoothly must take on intermediate values between zero and a positive threshold. Under certain smoothness conditions, the extreme scores of 0 and 1 are impossible to achieve. These results show that descriptive mathematical models of consciousness can identify boundaries but cannot explain why or how consciousness arises, consistent with the idea of an explanatory gap.

From State to Mode: Criticality and Non-Factorizability as Constitutive Properties of Living Systems

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 26, 2026 Wolfgang Stegemann

Criticality in autopoietic (living) systems is not merely a state the system can be in, as in non-living dissipative systems, but a mode of operation that defines the system as living. This mode, present from the earliest autopoietic systems, develops qualitatively new forms as the nervous system scales. In the nervous system, this mode realizes non-factorizability as a stable operating condition. This reframing clarifies that epilepsy and coma are not opposite ends of an activation spectrum but structurally distinct failures of this critical mode in opposite directions.

Quantum Biology and the Consciousness Frontier

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 25, 2026 Jean‐patrick Pommier

Quantum biology has moved from speculation to an experimentally supported field, with strong evidence for quantum effects in five areas: photosynthesis, bird navigation, enzyme reactions, smell, and anesthesia. These phenomena share common physical features like radical pairs and nuclear spin. The authors argue this convergence points to a new frontier: whether consciousness itself relies on quantum processes. They propose two experiments to test this: one using fMRI to compare different noble gas isotopes combined with the psychedelic DMT, and another using isotopic labeling of DMT to separate magnetic from kinetic isotope effects. These could provide the first direct evidence that nuclear spin—a quantum property—influences conscious experience.

The Geometry of the Invisible

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 25, 2026 Northon Salomao de Oliveira

A book-length argument that the human body and mind mirror the structure of the cosmos, as symbolized by Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and that this correspondence is disrupted by digital technologies. The author weaves classical philosophy, neuroscience, law, and artificial intelligence to explore how perception, memory, desire, and meaning are shaped by embodied, finite experience. Digital environments are said to distract from somatic intelligence, contract lived memory, and constrain desire through algorithmic design. The text argues that grief and mortality are conditions for love and meaning, and that phenomenal consciousness cannot be replicated in purely computational systems. Ethical and legal challenges of opaque algorithmic governance are examined through the Eric Loomis case.

Substanz-Tetralogie

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 24, 2026 Schüller Thomas

A tetralogy of four linked scholarly works, grounded in the ρ/δ-Master Theorem, examines the political economy and pharmacology of psychoactive substances. One work traces substance economics from black markets to stock exchange listings, auditing original studies on MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine. Another analyzes the opioid crisis as a domain instance, covering Purdue/Sackler litigation, pharmacology, toxicology, and three CDC waves. A provisional work examines telemedicine platforms like Cerebral and Done as prescription-dispensing platforms, highlighting regulatory pivots. A second provisional work contrasts stimulants (cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine) across pharmaceutical and illegal markets, focusing on the drug/medicine boundary and supply gaps.

A Critical Evaluation of the Hypothesis that N,N-Dimethyltryptamine Maintains Neuroplasticity

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 24, 2026 Ramiro Solis

The brain's ability to rewire itself declines with age, but why remains unclear. This paper examines whether the compound N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) helps maintain neuroplasticity, and whether its decline contributes to age-related loss of cognitive flexibility. DMT promotes synaptic growth and neurogenesis in animals, and levels are reportedly highest during development. However, evidence is mixed: one study finds DMT concentrations comparable to serotonin, while another finds it undetectable in rat brain. DMT's affinity for the sigma-1 receptor is three orders of magnitude higher than physiological concentrations, and a key finding about intracellular 5-HT2A receptor binding has not been replicated. The paper does not claim the hypothesis is established, but proposes a research program to test whether DMT depletion causes lost plasticity or is incidental.

Operationalizing Organized Physical Interiority: A Proxy, Perturbation, Recovery, and Cross-Substrate Framework

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 23, 2026 Matthew A Pender

Claims about organized interiority and consciousness often rely on features like integration or synchrony, but these do not by themselves establish an organizational role. This paper presents an operational framework for evaluating Organized Physical Interiority (OPI) using six revisable criteria: load-bearing integration, boundedness, temporal stability, governed regime maintenance, asymmetric interior organization, and perturbation recovery. It distinguishes weak, moderate, and strong evidence, and separates substrate, state-transition, organization, and consciousness relevance. The framework requires criterion-specific links among proxies, controls, perturbations, and recovery outcomes. It cautions against mistaking covariance for reciprocal constraint, ordinary memory for organizational continuity, or matched performance for cross-substrate equivalence. The framework is intended as a reversible research program, not a consciousness detector.

Beyond Binary Consciousness: Organizational Continuity Between Life and Mind

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 23, 2026 Hakan Saka

Consciousness is better understood as emerging gradually from biological organization rather than appearing suddenly in nervous systems. A graded continuum is proposed spanning five levels: passive physical order, adaptive biological organization, selectional and behavioral agency, phenomenal consciousness, and reflective self-consciousness. Nervous systems accelerated and centralized selection and coordination processes that existed before neurons. The hard problem of consciousness is located at the threshold where bounded, resource-constrained, selection-performing systems become phenomenally present. This framework has implications for non-neural biological systems, artificial intelligence, and the substrate-dependence debate, suggesting the story of consciousness may need to begin before neurons.

A Critical Evaluation of the Hypothesis that N,N-Dimethyltryptamine has Endogenous Functions

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 22, 2026 Ramiro Solis

The human body has enzymes that both make and rapidly break down DMT, a molecule structurally nearly identical to serotonin that binds to the same serotonin receptors. This raises the question of whether DMT serves an endogenous physiological function or is merely a metabolic byproduct. Evidence is mixed: one report finds DMT concentrations in the nanomolar range comparable to serotonin and dopamine, while another finds DMT undetectable in rat brain. DMT's affinity for the sigma-1 receptor is far weaker than its likely physiological concentrations, and a key finding about intracellular 5-HT2A receptor binding has not been replicated.

The Logical Origin of Consciousness

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 22, 2026 H.-k. Chan

Consciousness is a physical yet abstract pattern, analogous to software running on hardware. Just as software is a higher-level configuration of hardware, consciousness is a pattern of the brain's physical processes. Subjective experience arises when a meta-observing system receives a large amount of data in parallel, not sequentially. This explains qualia intensity through irreversible compression from finite capacity. The hard problem dissolves because consciousness is not a non-physical mystery but a lawful, empirically investigable organizational pattern within physical reality.

Attention-Gated Virtual Sensorium: A Bandwidth-Limited Architecture for Consciousness-like Organization in Artificial Embodiment

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 21, 2026 Trinity Labo

A theoretical architecture called the Attention-Gated Virtual Sensorium (AGVS) proposes that artificial consciousness-like states should be modeled not as complete access to world-state information but as finite-bandwidth, body-mediated, attention-gated integration of sensory and interoceptive information. The architecture includes dynamic conscious-like bandwidth, softmax temperature, nonlinear bodily need, metacognitive monitoring, selective episodic memory encoding, and mood-like modulation. These components enable functional signatures such as attention capture, fatigue-induced narrowing, pain-like priority shifts, and selective autobiographical memory. The paper does not claim to prove phenomenal consciousness but defines architectural conditions for consciousness-like organization, concluding that artificial agents should be bounded virtual bodies that experience partially, predict imperfectly, and remember selectively.

The Pali Canon and Christian Contemplative Psychology: A Synoptic Comparison

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 21, 2026 Lukas Geiger

This article systematically compares the psychological framework of the Pali Canon with four Christian contemplative traditions: the Desert Fathers, Rhineland Mysticism, Carmelite Mysticism, and Ignatian Spirituality. Using a convergence-type schema that distinguishes structural-phenomenological, conceptual, and no-parallel relations, it finds robust parallels in contemplative attention regulation, affect regulation, developmental staging, and practice architecture. The strongest convergence is in attention regulation, where both traditions identify a critical leverage point at the transition from a mental event's initial appearance to its elaboration. However, the comparison does not claim doctrinal identity, historical derivation, or direct empirical validation across traditions. Irreducible differences in ontology, soteriology, and causal architecture are documented alongside the parallels, supporting a moderate convergence position.

A Translational Research-Program for Compound Race Pathology: Five Framework-Distinct Trial-Design Templates

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 21, 2026 Tomas Pødenphant Lund

A framework is only useful if it can be proven wrong in a measurable way. This paper turns the compound-race-pathology framework into five concrete trial designs that others can run, refine, or disprove, each specifying in advance what would count as failure. The protocols cover treatment-resistant depression using ketamine plus CBT consolidation or psilocybin with substrate-vector-matched integration, a long COVID multi-target factorial trial, a multi-axis biomarker profiling approach for depression, and CAR-T plus tolerance-stabilization for autoimmune disease. Each trial design includes substrate-vector entry criteria, 4D stratification analysis, and framework-pivotal R-condition specifications. The author, an independent researcher without clinical credentials, explicitly invites domain-expert collaboration and notes that specific intervention development requires standard clinical methodology.

The Geometry of Recovery: Accessibility Expansion, Insight, and Adaptive Change

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 20, 2026 Treasure Hunt

Psychedelic compounds like psilocybin increase neural entropy and flexibility, but why this leads to adaptive recovery rather than disorganization is unclear. This paper proposes that the missing factor is accessibility—which futures remain reachable and recoverable within a landscape of possibilities. Entropy is a perturbative mechanism that temporarily reorganizes accessibility structure, expanding the set of reachable trajectories. Insight is the recognition of newly reachable futures, and psychological flexibility reflects expanded access to multiple viable pathways. Recovery occurs when systems regain access to constrained or collapsed pathways. Adaptive change requires perturbation to remain bounded by viability and recoverability constraints, offering a unified account of psychedelic-assisted change as restored reachability.

The AASC Description of Consciousness

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 20, 2026 Amos Jay Maley Maley

Consciousness is defined as a subject-indexed referential quotient interface where experiential records acquire unique, invariant, reusable referents. Qualia are classified as non-skin qualitative tensors—differences in qualitative profile that preserve standing while altering the complete qualitative/referential profile of the conscious interface. The paper argues that mechanisms like report, computation, global broadcast, integrated information, or neural correlates are insufficient alone to fix experiential reference. Artificial systems are not excluded by substrate but require full interface certification. Third-person evidence needs model-relative bridge certificates. The account treats consciousness as a fixed-domain admissibility interface and qualia as the non-skin qualitative tensors of that referentially fixed interface.