September 13, 2026
Qi Zhang
Subjectivity and awareness are widely regarded as core properties of consciousness, and explaining their nature remains a major challenge in consciousness research. While many existing theories provide predominantly qualitative accounts, the development of quantitative modeling may bridge the explanatory gap. This study expands the Twin Cognitive Cycle (TCC) model by focusing on quantifying the...
August 24, 2026
Qi Zhang
Subjectivity and awareness are widely regarded as core properties of consciousness, and explaining their nature remains a major challenge in consciousness research. While many existing theories provide predominantly qualitative accounts, the development of quantitative modeling may bridge the explanatory gap. This study expands the Twin Cognitive Cycle (TCC) model by focusing on quantifying the...
June 13, 2026
Qi Zhang
This study introduces a unified framework for addressing several open questions concerning consciousness, including subjectivity and awareness, the confounding findings of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) research, and the phenomenon of delayed consciousness observed in Libet’s free-will experiments. The framework, named the Twin Cognitive Cycle (TCC), is derived from an executable...
June 9, 2026
Qi Zhang
Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) studies have faced two kinds of confounding empirical findings: multiple peaks and excessive activations recorded by ERP in the temporal domain and by fMRI in the spatial domain, respectively. These confounds have led to the well-known proposals of multiple NCCs and no-report paradigms. However, ‘the exact neural underpinnings of conscious experience...
bioRxiv
June 3, 2026
Yanxia Liang, Lingjun Wang, Yajie Li et al.
preprint
Ketamine produces rapid antidepressant effects but is constrained by psychotomimetic properties and abuse potential. The ketamine metabolite (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine (HNK) shows antidepressant-like efficacy without N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) blockade, yet its upstream targets remain unclear. Here we show that HNK potentiates hippocampal excitatory transmission and reverses...
arXiv.org
February 20, 2026
Qi Zhang
preprint
Consciousness is the window of the brain and reflects many fundamental cognitive properties involving both computational and cognitive mechanisms. A collection of these properties was described as the"easy problems"by Chalmers, including the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to stimuli; information integration; reportability; information access; attention; deliberate control; and...
Neuroscience
March 5, 2025
Hanyu Liu, Siqi Yang, Qi Zhang et al.
Opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH) is a serious complication during the pain treatment. Ketamine has been commonly reported to treat OIH, but the mechanisms remain unclear. Gut microbiota is recently recognized as one of the important mechanisms underlying the occurrence and treatment of OIH. However, whether ketamine enantiomers could alleviate OIH through gut microbiota that still needs to be...
Heliyon
September 15, 2024
Hao Hua, Xinghuo Fu, Wenli Wang et al.
2 citations
Psychedelics, as a class of potent psychoactive substances, significantly alter sensory perception and mood, thereby profoundly impacting cognition. Increasing evidence indicates that psychedelics can facilitate individual social function and rapidly and sustainably improve symptoms of moderate and severe depression. The growing interest in psychedelics as potential treatments for depression...
Medicine
March 1, 2020
Yunhui Chen, Jiayuan Zhang, Tiane Zhang et al.
Background: Growing body of scientific researches in recent years have suggested the promising effect of meditation on improving cognitive impairment of Alzheimer disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This paper aims to provide a protocol for systematic review to evaluate the efficacy of meditation on cognition performance of patient with AD and MCI. Methods: The Cochrane Library,...
Qi Zhang
preprint
A number of studies have concluded that dreaming is mostly caused by randomly arriving internal signals because “dream contents are random impulses”, and argued that dream sleep is unlikely to play an important part in our intellectual capacity. On the contrary, numerous functional studies have revealed that dream sleep does play an important role in our learning and other intellectual...