Advanced Science
November 20, 2025
Paolo Cardone, Charlotte Martial, Yonatan Sanz Perl et al.
3 citations
Abstract Disorders of consciousness (DoC), including unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), have limited treatment options and are characterized by low complexity of brain activity. Recent research suggests that psychedelic drugs, which enhance the complexity of brain activity, could offer promising therapies. Here, individualized whole‐brain computational...
Brain and Behavior
October 1, 2025
Pauline Fritz, Anaïs Pichelin, Aurore Ancion et al.
2 citations
This case, set within its medical and pharmacological context, provides a unique opportunity to study NDEs and their precipitating context. The reported transformations underscore the importance of recognizing NDEs for their possible long-term effects on patients and relevance to medical practice.
arXiv (Cornell University)
September 23, 2025
Victor Oswald, Karim Jerbi, Corine Sombrun et al.
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...
Frontiers in Psychology
July 22, 2025
Pascal Michael, Pauline Fritz, Olivia Gosseries et al.
1 citation
Near-death experiences (NDEs), a syndrome of experiences with mystical-type content classically arising in the context of life-threatening situations, are under-researched in terms of their relevance for acute medical care. We here discuss several reasons to raise the importance of conducting more comprehensive NDE research in emergency and critical care contexts, including but not limited to...
Nature reviews. Neurology
June 1, 2025
Charlotte Martial, Pauline Fritz, Olivia Gosseries et al.
19 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are episodes of disconnected consciousness that typically occur in situations that involve an actual or potential physical threat or are perceived as such, and the experiences are characterized by a rich content with prototypical mystical features. Several explanatory theories for NDEs have been proposed, ranging from psychological or neurophysiological to...
Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
May 1, 2025
Paolo Cardone, Pablo Núñez, Naji Alnagger et al.
7 citations
With very few treatments available, post-comatose disorders of consciousness (DoC) pose one of the hardest challenges in modern neurology. Following promising clinical trial results in psychiatry, and a deepening understanding of their brain mechanisms, psychedelics have been suggested as a novel therapeutic drug for DoC patients, given that they increase the entropy or complexity of...
iScience
January 17, 2025
Paolo Cardone, Arthur Bonhomme, Vincent Bonhomme et al.
9 citations
Post-comatose disorders of consciousness (DoC) represent persistent neurological conditions with limited therapeutic options and a poor prognosis. Recent works advocate for exploring the effects of psychedelics to enhance brain complexity in DoC and ameliorate their consciousness. We investigated sub-anesthetic concentration of the atypical psychedelic ketamine for treating post-comatose...
Int J Clin Health Psychol
2025
Victor Oswald, Karim Jerbi, Corine Sombrun et al.
4 citations
Understanding individual differences in non-ordinary state of consciousness: Relationship between phenomenological experiences and autonomic nervous system.
The International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis
2025
Aminata Bicego, Naji Alnagger, Etzel Cardeña et al.
1 citation
Mystical-type experiences can be induced through techniques like hypnosis and meditation. These experiences are common in near-death experiences (NDEs) and have been linked to paranormal beliefs. This study explored auto-induced cognitive trance (AICT) as a method to induce mystical-type experiences and NDE outside of life threatening situations (NDE-like), as well as examining the influence of...
Neuromethods
2025
Naji Alnagger, Paolo Cardone, Javier Montupil et al.
AbstractKetamine is a versatile N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-antagonist used in various clinical settings. Ketamine dose-dependently induces psychoactive effects: at low, anti-hyperalgesic doses, these are minor or not detectable, but at subanesthetic doses, they may include dissociative, psychotomimetic, and psychedelic events. At an anesthetic dose, ketamine leads to a state of “(full)...
Neuroimage
September 1, 2024
Charlotte Martial, Andrea Piarulli, Olivia Gosseries et al.
10 citations
During fainting, disconnected consciousness may emerge in the form of dream-like experiences. Characterized by extra-ordinary and mystical features, these subjective experiences have been associated to near-death-like experiences (NDEs-like). We here aim to assess brain activity during syncope-induced disconnected consciousness by means of high-density EEG monitoring. Transient loss of...
Neurosci Conscious
June 15, 2024
Paolo Cardone, Naji Alnagger, Jitka Annen et al.
16 citations
Modern medicine has been shaken by the surge of psychedelic science that proposes a new approach to mitigate mental disorders, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinical trials to investigate whether psychedelic substances can treat psychiatric conditions are now underway, yet less discussion gravitates around their use in neurological disorders due to brain injury. One...
Neuroimage
June 1, 2024
Pradeep Kumar, Rajanikant Panda, Kanishka Sharma et al.
20 citations
High-order interactions are required across brain regions to accomplish specific cognitive functions. These functional interdependencies are reflected by synergistic information that can be obtained by combining the information from all the sources considered and redundant information (i.e., common information provided by all the sources). However, electroencephalogram (EEG) functional...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2024
Charlotte Martial, Robin Carhart-Harris, Christopher Timmermann
9 citations
Abstract Mystical-like states of consciousness may arise through means such as psychedelic substances, but may also occur unexpectedly during near-death experiences (NDEs). So far, research studies comparing experiences induced by serotonergic psychedelics and NDEs, along with their enduring effects, have employed between-subject designs, limiting direct comparisons. We present results from an...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2024
Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Marie-Carmen Castillo, Charlotte Martial et al.
7 citations
Auto-induced cognitive trance (AICT) is a modified state of consciousness derived from shamanic tradition that can be practised by individuals after specific training. The aim of this work was to characterize the phenomenological experiences of AICT, using text mining analysis. Free recalls of subjective experiences were audio-recorded in 27 participants after five pseudo-randomized...
International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP
2024
Charlotte Martial, Pauline Fritz, Héléna Cassol et al.
3 citations
It is not rare that intensive care unit (ICU) patients report unusual subjective experiences, ranging from a feeling of harmony with the environment to complex phenomena such as near-death experience (NDE). This 1-year follow-up study investigates the characteristics and potential global impact of the NDE memories recalled by ICU survivors. We prospectively enrolled 126 adult survivors of a...
BJA Open
September 26, 2023
Javier Montupil, Paolo Cardone, Cécile Staquet et al.
32 citations
Neuroscientists agree on the value of locating the source of consciousness within the brain. Anaesthesiologists are no exception, and have their own operational definition of consciousness based on phenomenological observations during anaesthesia. The full functional correlates of consciousness are yet to be precisely identified, however rapidly evolving progress in this scientific domain has...
Scientific Reports
September 22, 2023
Victor Oswald, Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Jitka Annen et al.
24 citations
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....
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 1, 2023
Charlotte Martial, Héléna Cassol, Mel Slater et al.
13 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are subjective experiences of seeing one's own body and the environment from a location outside the physical body. They can arise spontaneously or in specific conditions, such as during the intake of dissociative drug. Given its unpredictable occurrence, one way to empirically study it is to induce subjective experiences resembling an OBE using technology such as...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
April 28, 2023
Aminata Bicego, Héléna Cassol, Jessica Simon et al.
13 citations
Introduction Little is known about the potential personality and psychological predictors of near-death experiences (NDEs), and fewer yet those of near-death-like experiences (NDEs-like; similar phenomenology reported after a non-life-threatening context). This study investigated whether personality traits (Openness, Extraversion, Pleasantness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism), dissociative...
Critical Care
February 27, 2023
A. Rousseau, Laurence Dams, Quentin Massart et al.
26 citations
Background So far, the few prospective studies on near-death experience (NDE) were carried out only in intensive care unit (ICU) patients with homogeneous aetiologies, such as cardiac arrest or trauma survivors. The aims of this 1-year prospective and monocentric study were to investigate the incidence of NDE in ICU survivors (all aetiologies) as well as factors that may affect its frequency,...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2023
Yan Li, Yan Chen, Charlotte Martial et al.
In recent years, a growing number of near-death experience (NDE) testimonies have been collected worldwide due to an increasing interest in research on this phenomenon. China has many patients who survive life-threatening situations, leaving over much data on NDEs to be collected for research. In the historical context of Eastern civilization, many mentally controlled practices in China can...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
2023
Charlotte Martial, Olivia Gosseries
A growing body of evidence from empirical research reveals that humans may be outwardly unresponsive but still experience episodes of disconnected consciousness (e.g., Martial, Cassol, Laureys, & Gosseries, 2020; Darracq et al., 2018; Sanders, Tononi, Laureys, & Sleigh, 2012). Disconnected consciousness refers to the mental experience of events, in the absence of concurrent awareness of the...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
September 28, 2022
Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carla Pallavicini, Juan Piccinini et al.
preprint
Brain states are frequently represented using a unidimensional scale measuring the richness of subjective experience (level of consciousness). This description assumes a mapping between the high-dimensional space of whole-brain configurations and the trajectories of brain states associated with changes in consciousness, yet this mapping and its properties remain unknown. We combined whole-brain...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
August 26, 2022
Charlotte Martial, Olivia Gosseries, Héléna Cassol et al.
17 citations
Parnia et al. recently published suggestions for the study of death and experiences recalled in a near‐death context. We have serious reservations about the authors’ statements. In this commentary, we discuss the omissions and knowledge gaps inherent to the authors’ paper, which among others include incorrect neurological claims about brain death and misunderstandings regarding the terminology...