bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 31, 2026
Xinlin Wang, Yannick Pomorin, Emma Peters et al.
preprint
Abstract During wakefulness, we are used to perceive the environment through our senses, act on it and take these inputs to update our experiences and build the perceptions. When the inputs are not longer accurate or structured, people would sometimes have hallucinatory experiences. Whether such experiences are associated with distinct patterns of thought, and how they relate to large-scale...
Consciousness and Cognition
April 13, 2026
Xinlin Wang, Emma Peters, Johannes Strelen et al.
Abstract During lucid dreaming, the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. In past years, numerous studies have explored the characteristics of lucid dreams, which link lucid dreams to vivid visual perception, positive emotions, and wake-like metacognition and executive functions. To determine brain network activity associated with the conscious experience during lucid dreaming, we analyzed...
Schizophrenia Research
June 2, 2025
Maria Chiara Piani, Martin Jandl, Thomas Koenig et al.
3 citations
Self-disorders (SDs), central features of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, primarily affect the pre-reflective sense of self, the fundamental experience of existing as a conscious subject. This disruption also impacts reflective self-consciousness. This study aims to further explore the neural correlates of self-disorders in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders by using a...
European Journal of Neuroscience
September 11, 2024
Simone Denzer, Sarah Diezig, Peter Achermann et al.
6 citations
Monitoring the reality status of conscious experience is essential for a human being to interact successfully with the external world. Despite its importance for everyday functioning, reality monitoring can systematically become erroneous, for example, while dreaming or during hallucinatory experiences. To investigate brain processes associated with reality monitoring occurring online during an...
Brain Topography
March 1, 2024
Sarah Diezig, Simone Denzer, Peter Achermann et al.
19 citations
Consciousness always requires some representational content; that is, one can only be conscious about something. However, the presence of conscious experience (awareness) alone does not determine whether its content is in line with the external and physical world. Dreams, apart from certain forms of hallucinations, typically consist of non-veridical percepts, which are not recognized as false,...
International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology
June 1, 2023
Sarah Diezig, Melissa Spaar, Simone Denzer et al.
The ability to organize self-generated thought into coherent, meaningful semantic representations is a central aspect of human cognition and undergoes regular alterations throughout the day. To investigate whether changes in semantic processing might explain the loss of coherence, logic, and voluntary control over thinking typically accompanying the transition to sleep, we recorded N400 evoked...
Social Neuroscience
June 1, 2022
Yoshija Walter, Thomas Koenig
Not much is known about large-scale brain activation patterns in religious states of mind and previous studies have not set an emphasis on experience. The present study investigated the phenomenon of religious experiences through microstate analysis, and it was the first neurocognitive research to tackle the dimension of experience directly. Hence, a total of 60 evangelical Christians...
Human Brain Mapping
August 21, 2020
Lukasz Smigielski, Michael Kometer, Milan Scheidegger et al.
42 citations
Abstract The concept of self and self‐referential processing has a growing explanatory value in psychiatry and neuroscience, referring to the cognitive organization and perceptual differentiation of self‐stimuli in health and disease. Conditions in which selfhood loses its natural coherence offer a unique opportunity for elucidating the mechanisms underlying self‐disturbances. We assessed the...