arXiv Preprint Archive
February 11, 2026
Arthur Juliani
This paper formalizes religious epistemology through the mathematics of Variational Autoencoders. We model religious traditions as distinct generative mappings from a shared, low-dimensional latent space to the high-dimensional space of observable cultural forms, and define three competing generative configurations corresponding to exclusivism, universalism, and perennialism, alongside...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Adam Safron, Arthur Juliani, Nicco Reggente et al.
44 citations
How is it that psychedelics so profoundly impact brain and mind? According to the model of "Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics" (REBUS), 5-HT2a agonism is thought to help relax prior expectations, thus making room for new perspectives and patterns. Here, we introduce an alternative (but largely compatible) perspective, proposing that REBUS effects may primarily correspond to a particular (but...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
April 15, 2024
Arthur Juliani, Veronica Chelu, Laura Graesser et al.
4 citations
preprint
Abstract Serotonergic psychedelics have been identified as promising next-generation therapeutic agents in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. While their efficacy has been increasingly validated, the mechanism by which they exert a therapeutic effect is still debated. A popular theoretical account is that excessive 5-HT2a agonism disrupts cortical dynamics, relaxing the precision of...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2024
Arthur Juliani, Adam Safron, Ryota Kanai
9 citations
Abstract Psychedelic therapy has seen a resurgence of interest in the last decade, with promising clinical outcomes for the treatment of a variety of psychopathologies. In response to this success, several theoretical models have been proposed to account for the positive therapeutic effects of psychedelics. One of the more prominent models is “RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics,” which proposes...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2024
Rousslan Fernand Julien Dossa, Kai Arulkumaran, Arthur Juliani et al.
As the apparent intelligence of artificial neural networks (ANNs) advances, they are increasingly likened to the functional networks and information processing capabilities of the human brain. Such comparisons have typically focused on particular modalities, such as vision or language. The next frontier is to use the latest advances in ANNs to design and investigate scalable models of...
arXiv Preprint Archive
March 24, 2022
Arthur Juliani, Kai Arulkumaran, Shuntaro Sasai et al.
In popular media, there is often a connection drawn between the advent of awareness in artificial agents and those same agents simultaneously achieving human or superhuman level intelligence. In this work, we explore the validity and potential application of this seemingly intuitive link between consciousness and intelligence. We do so by examining the cognitive abilities associated with three...