Abstract Psychedelics profoundly alter conscious experience, yet how they reshape the relationship between brain anatomy and function remains unclear. In particular, it is unknown whether psychedelic states reflect a global disruption of structure–function organization or a frequency– and network-specific reconfiguration of neural dynamics relative to the structural connectome. Here we address...
Abstract Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) profoundly alters conscious experience, yet the electrophysiological mechanisms by which it reshapes neural dynamics remain incompletely understood. A hallmark of psychedelic states is widespread cortical desynchronization, typically inferred from reductions in spectral power, but whether such effects reflect genuine weakening of neural oscillations or...
Non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOC) provide an opportunity to experience highly intense, unique, and perceptually rich subjective states. The neural mechanisms supporting these experiences remain poorly understood. This study examined brain activity associated with a self-induced, substance-free NOC known as Auto-Induced Cognitive Trance (AICT). Twenty-seven trained participants...
ExpandedSeptember 3, 2025Antoine Bellemare‐Pepin, Philipp Thölke, Karim Jerbi et al.
Oneiris is an interactive, AI-augmented brain-computer interface installation that explores personal and collective dreamscapes through generative artificial intelligence, real-time electroencephalography (EEG) neurofeedback, and Indigenous symbolic systems. Participants wear a wireless EEG headset and contribute dream narratives and hand-drawn sketches on a digital tablet. These inputs are...
While the beneficial impacts of meditation are increasingly acknowledged, its underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. We examined the electrophysiological brain signals of expert Buddhist monks during two established meditation methods known as Samatha and Vipassana, which employ focused attention and open monitoring technique. By combining source-space magnetoencephalography...
Non-ordinary states of consciousness offer a unique opportunity to explore the interplay between phenomenological experiences and physiological processes. This study investigated individual differences in phenomenological and autonomic nervous system changes between a resting state condition and a non-ordinary state of consciousness (auto-induced cognitive trance, AICT). Specifically, it...
While the beneficial impacts of meditation are increasingly acknowledged, its underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. We examined the electrophysiological brain signals of expert Buddhist monks during two established meditation methods known as Samatha and Vipassana, which employ focused attention and open-monitoring technique. By combining source-space magnetoencephalography...
ABSTRACT Creativity is a cornerstone of human evolution and is typically defined as the multifaceted ability to produce novel and useful artifacts. Although much research has focused on divergent thinking, growing evidence underscores the importance of perceptual processing in fostering creativity, particularly through perceptual flexibility. The present work aims to offer a framework that...
Consciousness has been proposed to be supported by electrophysiological patterns poised at criticality, a dynamical regime which exhibits adaptive computational properties, maximally complex patterns and divergent sensitivity to perturbation. Here, we investigate dynamical properties of the resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) of healthy subjects undergoing general anesthesia with propofol,...
BackgroundThe investigation of mindfulness meditation practice, classically divided into focused attention meditation (FAM), and open monitoring meditation (OMM) styles, has seen a long tradition of theoretical, affective, neurophysiological and clinical studies. In particular, the high temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) or electroencephalography (EEG) has been exploited to...
Consciousness has been proposed to be supported by electrophysiological patterns poised at criticality, a dynamical regime which exhibits adaptive computational properties, maximally complex patterns and divergent sensitivity to perturbation. Here, we investigated dynamical properties of the resting-state electroencephalogram of healthy subjects undergoing general anesthesia with propofol,...
Self-induced cognitive trance (SICT) is a voluntary non-ordinary state of consciousness characterized by a lucid yet narrowed awareness of the external surroundings. It involves a hyper-focused immersive experience of flow, expanded inner imagery, modified somatosensory processing, and an altered perception of self and time. SICT is gaining attention due to its potential clinical applications....
Rhythmic neuronal synchronization across large-scale networks is thought to play a key role in the regulation of conscious states. Changes in neuronal oscillation amplitude across states of consciousness have been widely reported, but little is known about possible changes in the temporal dynamics of these oscillations. The temporal structure of brain oscillations may provide novel insights...
High dream recallers (HR) show a larger brain reactivity to auditory stimuli during wakefulness and sleep as compared to low dream recallers (LR) and also more intra-sleep wakefulness (ISW), but no other modification of the sleep macrostructure. To further understand the possible causal link between brain responses, ISW and dream recall, we investigated the sleep microstructure of HR and LR,...
Dreams and our ability to recall them are among the most puzzling questions in sleep research. Specifically, putative differences in brain network dynamics between individuals with high versus low dream recall rates, are still poorly understood. In this study, we addressed this question as a classification problem where we applied deep convolutional networks (CNN) to sleep EEG recordings to...