Current biology : CB
April 12, 2021
Karen R Konkoly, Kristoffer Appel, Emma Chabani et al.
126 citations
People who are asleep and having a lucid dream—aware that they are dreaming—can perceive questions from an experimenter and answer them in real time using eye movements and facial muscle contractions. In a study of 36 individuals during REM sleep, including frequent lucid dreamers, a novice, and a patient with narcolepsy, participants performed perceptual analysis of new information, held information in working memory, computed simple answers, and gave volitional replies. Correct answers occurred on 29 occasions across 6 individuals, documented by four independent laboratories. This two-way communication channel allows real-time interrogation of dream cognition and characteristics.
Current biology : CB
June 22, 2020
Matthieu Koroma, Célia Lacaux, Thomas Andrillon et al.
34 citations
During REM sleep, the brain flexibly amplifies or suppresses external sounds depending on eye movements. Using EEG to reconstruct speech from brain responses in a multi-talker environment, meaningful speech was amplified over meaningless speech overall. However, at the precise moments of rapid eye movements, meaningful speech was selectively suppressed. This shows that eye movements during REM sleep act as a gate, selectively blocking informative external stimuli while allowing them at other times, resolving a long-standing debate about whether the sleeping brain processes or ignores the outside world.
Current biology : CB
June 9, 2025
Davide Albertini, Maria Del Vecchio, Ivana Sartori et al.
9 citations
Conscious perception of simple touch depends on sustained neural activity in higher-order somatosensory regions, specifically the posterior perisylvian areas. Using human intracortical recordings, tonic responses in these regions showed all-or-nothing patterns at the sensory threshold, remained unchanged whether or not participants reported the stimulus, and most clearly distinguished perceived from non-perceived stimuli. These dynamics may serve as an organizational principle of somatosensory awareness.
Current biology : CB
May 5, 2025
Pavlos I Topalidis, Gianpaolo Demarchi, Lisa Reisinger et al.
1 citation
During sleep, the brain retains the ability to preactivate representations of specific sound features, such as tone frequency, but loses the capacity to track higher-order statistical associations between sounds. Using EEG and MEG with multivariate pattern analysis, the study compared brain responses to predictable and random tone sequences during wakefulness and sleep. Feature-specific responses to subtle tone changes were present in N1 and N2 sleep, though weaker than when awake. The brain preactivated feature-specific representations during sleep, but tracking of statistical associations between tones occurred only during wakefulness. This suggests that while some automatic predictive processing of low-level features persists, higher-order anticipation of patterns is disrupted when consciousness fades.
Current biology : CB
August 19, 2024
Vincent Courdavault, Nicolas Papon
1 citation
The complete metabolic pathway for the biosynthesis of the psychedelic compound mescaline in the peyote cactus has been deciphered. This discovery suggests that biotechnological strategies could be developed to produce mescaline sustainably, addressing limitations in current knowledge of how medicinal compounds are made in plants.
Current biology : CB
January 5, 2026
Hakan Kucukdereli, Amelia M Douglass
The authors report a mechanism by which the psychedelic drug psilocybin causes acute release of stress hormones, even though it is known to have long-term anti-anxiety effects. This finding suggests that the immediate hormonal stress response may be distinct from the drug's eventual mood benefits.
Current biology : CB
April 21, 2025
Jovin R Jacobs, Adam D Douglass
A tendency to become passive when facing overwhelming challenges is a hallmark of depression. In a zebrafish model of this phenomenon, the antidepressant ketamine promotes long-term improvements in behavioral persistence through a newly discovered mechanism.
Current biology : CB
March 24, 2025
Christopher A Del Negro
Slowly paced breathing, central to practices like yoga and meditation, influences emotions such as anxiety. Neuroscience research in mice has identified a neural circuit connecting the neocortex to the brainstem that modulates breathing and affects anxiety levels.