bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 12, 2026
Dante Sebastián Galván Rial, Gabriel A. Della Bella, Lorina Naci et al.
preprint
A general account of how diverse states of consciousness arise from brain activity requires a quantitative framework that generalises across them. The Entropic Brain Theory proposes that states of consciousness can be ordered along a single dimension defined by the entropy of spontaneous neural activity, but this prediction has not been tested across pharmacological and clinical perturbations...
Neuroimage
February 4, 2026
Gabriel A. Della Bella, Agustina Velez Picatto, Dante Sebastián Galván Rial et al.
Non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOC) offer a way to examine how large-scale brain dynamics reorganize as experience changes. We studied a participant able to reliably enter a self-induced NOC state characterized by vivid imagery, altered bodily perception, and a sense of unity. Across 20 fMRI sessions, we measured functional connectivity in four conditions (Baseline, Transition, NOC, and...
Royal Society open science
November 1, 2025
Nicolás Alejandro Comay, Guillermo Solovey, Pablo Barttfeld
The high capacity of human iconic memory (IM) has been taken as evidence that visual experience is rich and detailed, as introspection suggests. Opponents to this view argue instead that this impression is illusory, with conscious access being mostly limited to what we can attend to. To provide evidence of either view, in this registered report we compared metacognitive sensitivity levels...
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
June 12, 2025
Etzel Cardeña, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Katja Valli et al.
11 citations
This article presents a taxonomy of altered states of consciousness, primarily based on their central phenomenological features. Following taxonomic principles and a modified Delphi methodology, a multidisciplinary, international group identified eight distinct phenomenological/behavioral states (some with subcategories): proto and transitional, delirium, minimal to no awareness, experiential...
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
September 1, 2021
Santiago Alcaide, Jacobo Sitt, Tomoyasu Horikawa et al.
13 citations
The brain mechanisms by which we transition from sleep to a conscious state remain largely unknown in humans, partly because of methodological challenges. Here we study a pre-existing dataset of waking up participants originally designed for a study of dreaming (Horikawa, Tamaki, Miyawaki, & Kamitani, 2013) and suggest that suddenly awakening from early sleep stages results from a two-stage...
Science Advances
February 1, 2019
Athena Demertzi, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Stanislas Dehaene et al.
545 citations
Adopting the framework of brain dynamics as a cornerstone of human consciousness, we determined whether dynamic signal coordination provides specific and generalizable patterns pertaining to conscious and unconscious states after brain damage. A dynamic pattern of coordinated and anticoordinated functional magnetic resonance imaging signals characterized healthy individuals and minimally...