Open Science Framework
November 6, 2025
Michiel van Elk
In a naturalistic field setting, the dose of psilocybin truffles, along with participants' trait absorption and expectations, shaped their subjective experiences and neurophysiological responses. The study aimed to replicate effects previously observed in lab and clinical environments. Higher doses were associated with more intense subjective effects, and individual differences in absorption and expectations moderated these outcomes. The findings suggest that psilocybin's effects can be reproduced outside controlled settings, highlighting the role of psychological factors in modulating the experience.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 30, 2025
Anastasia Ruban, Michiel van Elk
Psychedelic experiences are shaped by culturally prevalent narratives rather than revealing unmediated insights. Psychedelics operate as non-specific amplifiers that magnify pre-existing beliefs within cultural feedback loops linking cultural set and setting, individual expectations, experience, and its articulation back into culture. This view reinterprets apparent disruptive effects as context-dependent intensifications. The authors identify methodological and ideological obstacles to studying culture in psychedelic science and propose a mixed-methods program including reflexivity, discourse analytics, neurophenomenology, and naturalistic cohort comparisons to operationalize cultural variables. Recognizing culture's constitutive role has ethical and epistemic consequences, including caution regarding metaphysical claims and attention to how psychedelics induce change in clinical settings.
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences
November 19, 2024
Géraldine Carranante, Michiel van Elk
Scientific study of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) has been hampered by disagreements over measurement tools and by conceptual problems with existing typologies—trigger-based, phenomenology-based, attribution-based, neurobiological, and psychopathological—which struggle to clearly demarcate different states. The authors propose a network-based classification method that treats ASCs as a network of nodes, where clusters of states can be identified. This approach offers flexibility: nodes can include experiential, contextual, social, and biological features. Network models allow calculation of properties like centrality and outperform current conceptual frameworks for organizing research, enabling more precise results and better interdisciplinary communication.
March 10, 2020
Valerie van Mulukom, Ruairi E Patterson, Michiel van Elk
preprint
Awe experienced during classical serotonergic psychedelic (CSP) use is linked to lower maladaptive narcissism. In a survey of 414 people, those who reported greater awe during recent CSP experiences also reported stronger feelings of social connectedness and affective empathy, which in turn were associated with less exploitative and entitled narcissistic traits. This pattern held even after accounting for sensation-seeking. Ego dissolution during the experience showed no similar effect. The findings suggest that awe-induced connectedness, not ego loss, may underlie the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for conditions involving impaired empathy and connection, such as pathological narcissism.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2014
Paul Lodder, Mark Rotteveel, Michiel van Elk
Within social cognition, some researchers argue that understanding others relies on dynamic, second-person interactions rather than detached observation. This enactivist view splits over whether such intersubjective processes are innate. Nativist enactivists cite neonatal imitation as evidence that infants possess an embodied form of understanding others from birth, while empiricist enactivists claim these processes are learned through social interaction. A critical examination of studies on neonate imitation finds that only tongue protrusion imitation is consistently replicated across studies; evidence for other gestures is mixed. If neonates imitate only one gesture, a simpler explanation for tongue protrusion is possible. Thus, the nativist claim that second-person interactive processes are present at birth appears unsupported. The evidence aligns with the empiricist position, suggesting that such interactive understanding develops over time.
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2024
Piotr Szymanek, Marek Homan, Michiel van Elk et al.
Hearing voices is not limited to psychotic disorders but also occurs in the general population, often as perceptions of supernatural beings. In a preregistered experiment, participants completed a signal detection task where expectations about the number of voices present influenced their response bias: expecting fewer voices led to a more conservative strategy, while expecting more led to a more liberal one. Adding sensory noise amplified these effects. The findings indicate that voice detection relies on expectations, especially when sensory data are unreliable, shedding light on predictive processes underlying voice-hearing experiences.
The European journal of neuroscience
February 1, 2020
Michiel van Elk, Lukas Snoek
Religiosity and mystical experiences show no structural brain differences in gray matter volume. In a confirmatory voxel-based morphometry analysis of 211 participants, region-of-interest testing found no evidence that religiosity is associated with reduced volume of the orbito-frontal cortex or changes in the bilateral inferior parietal lobes. Mystical experiences were not linked to reduced volume of the hippocampus, right middle temporal gyrus, or inferior parietal lobes. Whole-brain analysis also found no structural brain differences related to religiosity or mystical experiences. The authors suggest research should shift from studying structural brain differences to functional and multivariate approaches.