Neurosci Conscious
October 18, 2025
Hugh McGovern, Marco Aqil, Selen Atasoy et al.
4 citations
This article presents a neuroscientific interpretation of Carl Jung's theory of archetypes and their experience in altered states of consciousness. We begin by rehearsing the Free Energy Principle and Predictive Processing as foundational frameworks that subserve and inform the thesis that follows. The following sections examine three aspects of archetypes: the affective core rooted in...
Neuropsychopharmacology
September 12, 2025
Jakub Vohryzek, Andrea I. Luppi, Selen Atasoy et al.
2 citations
Exploring the intricate relationship between brain's structure and function, and how this affects subjective experience is a fundamental pursuit in neuroscience. Psychedelic substances offer a unique insight into the influences of specific neurotransmitter systems on perception, cognition and consciousness. Specifically, their impact on brain function propagates across the structural connectome...
British Journal of Anaesthesia
April 1, 2025
Milan Van Maldegem, Jakub Vohryzek, Selen Atasoy et al.
3 citations
Ketamine, in doses suitable to induce anaesthesia in humans, gives rise to a unique state of unresponsiveness accompanied by vivid experiences and sensations, making it possible to disentangle the correlated but distinct concepts of conscious awareness and behavioural responsiveness. This distinction is often overlooked in the study of consciousness. The mathematical framework of connectome...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
February 5, 2025
Ruby M. Potash, Winson F.z. Yang, Brian Winston et al.
11 citations
Advanced meditation has been associated with long- and short-term psychological changes such as bliss, profound insight, and transformation of well-being. However, most advanced meditation neuroimaging analyses have implemented primarily spatially-localized approaches, focusing on discrete regional changes in activity rather than distributed dynamics. The present study uses a geometric...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 25, 2024
Milan Van Maldegem, Jakub Vohryzek, Selen Atasoy et al.
2 citations
preprint
Abstract Ketamine is classified as a dissociative anaesthetic that, in sub-anaesthetic doses, can produce an altered state of consciousness characterised by dissociative symptoms, visual and auditory hallucinations, and perceptual distortions. Given the anaesthetic-like and psychedelic-like nature of this compound, it is expected to have different effects on brain dynamics in anaesthetic doses...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
May 31, 2024
Jakub Vohryzek, Selen Atasoy, Gustavo Deco et al.
8 citations
preprint
Exploring the intricate relationship between brain's structure and function, and how this affects subjective experience is a fundamental pursuit in neuroscience. Psychedelic substances offer a unique insight into the influences of specific neurotransmitter systems on perception, cognition and consciousness. Specifically, their impact on brain function propagates across the structural...
National Science Review
May 1, 2024
Jakub Vohryzek, Joana Cabral, Christopher Timmermann et al.
13 citations
The human brain is a complex system, whose activity exhibits flexible and continuous reorganization across space and time. The decomposition of whole-brain recordings into harmonic modes has revealed a repertoire of gradient-like activity patterns associated with distinct brain functions. However, the way these activity patterns are expressed over time with their changes in various brain states...
bioRxiv
August 21, 2023
Jakub Vohryzek, Joana Cabral, Christopher Timmermann et al.
7 citations
preprint
Abstract The human brain is a complex system, whose activity exhibits flexible and continuous reorganisation across space and time. The decomposition of whole-brain recordings into harmonic modes has revealed a repertoire of gradient-like activity patterns associated with distinct brain functions. However, the way these activity patterns are expressed over time with their changes in various...
Communications Biology
January 28, 2023
Andrea I. Luppi, Jakub Vohryzek, Morten L. Kringelbach et al.
98 citations
A central question in neuroscience is how consciousness arises from the dynamic interplay of brain structure and function. Here we decompose functional MRI signals from pathological and pharmacologically-induced perturbations of consciousness into distributed patterns of structure-function dependence across scales: the harmonic modes of the human structural connectome. We show that...
Neuroimage
January 29, 2021
Beatrice M. Jobst, Selen Atasoy, Adrián Ponce-Alvarez et al.
37 citations
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a potent psychedelic drug, which has seen a revival in clinical and pharmacological research within recent years. Human neuroimaging studies have shown fundamental changes in brain-wide functional connectivity and an expansion of dynamical brain states, thus raising the question about a mechanistic explanation of the dynamics underlying these alterations....
Neuroimage
May 25, 2019
Louis-David Lord, Paul Expert, Selen Atasoy et al.
249 citations
Growing evidence from the dynamical analysis of functional neuroimaging data suggests that brain function can be understood as the exploration of a repertoire of metastable connectivity patterns ('functional brain networks'), which potentially underlie different mental processes. The present study characterizes how the brain's dynamical exploration of resting-state networks is rapidly modulated...
Prog Brain Res
October 25, 2018
Selen Atasoy, Jakub Vohryzek, Gustavo Deco et al.
67 citations
Common neural signatures of psychedelics: Frequency-specific energy changes and repertoire expansion revealed using connectome-harmonic decomposition.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 25, 2018
Louis-David Lord, Paul Expert, Selen Atasoy et al.
10 citations
preprint
Abstract Brain activity can be understood as the exploration of a dynamical landscape of activity configurations over both space and time. This dynamical landscape may be defined in terms of spontaneous transitions within a repertoire of discrete metastable states of functional connectivity (FC), which underlie different mental processes. However, it remains unclear how the brain’s dynamical...
Sci Rep
December 15, 2017
Selen Atasoy, Leor Roseman, Mendel Kaelen et al.
225 citations
Recent studies have started to elucidate the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on the human brain but the underlying dynamics are not yet fully understood. Here we used 'connectome-harmonic decomposition', a novel method to investigate the dynamical changes in brain states. We found that LSD alters the energy and the power of individual harmonic brain states in a frequency-selective...
The Neuroscientist
September 1, 2017
Selen Atasoy, Gustavo Deco, Morten L. Kringelbach et al.
131 citations
A fundamental characteristic of spontaneous brain activity is coherent oscillations covering a wide range of frequencies. Interestingly, these temporal oscillations are highly correlated among spatially distributed cortical areas forming structured correlation patterns known as the resting state networks, although the brain is never truly at "rest." Here, we introduce the concept of harmonic...
Nature Communications
January 21, 2016
Selen Atasoy, I. Donnelly, Joel Pearson
A key characteristic of human brain activity is coherent, spatially distributed oscillations forming behaviour-dependent brain networks. However, a fundamental principle underlying these networks remains unknown. Here we report that functional networks of the human brain are predicted by harmonic patterns, ubiquitous throughout nature, steered by the anatomy of the human cerebral cortex, the...
Anira Escrichs, Ana Sanjuán, Selen Atasoy et al.
preprint
Abstract Over the past 2,500 years, contemplative traditions have explored the nature of the mind using meditation. More recently, neuroimaging research on meditation has revealed differences in brain function and structure in meditators. Nevertheless, the underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. In order to understand how meditation shapes global activity through the brain, we...