bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 4, 2026
Teresa Campillo-Ferrer, Tomas Berjaga-Buisan, Antonella Iadarola et al.
preprint
Abstract Experiences in which the sense of the body becomes distorted offer a unique window into how the brain constructs the bodily self. Despite their clinical relevance in conditions such as depersonalization and body-image disorders, large-scale brain dynamics underlying unusual bodily experiences (UBEs) remain poorly understood, and no prior study has examined them systematically across...
medRxiv
July 8, 2026
Paulina Clara Dagnino, Anne Maj van der Velden, Yonatan Sanz Perl et al.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous mental disorder characterised by rumination. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an evidence-based treatment developed to target rumination and recurrence risk. Ongoing studies have begun to identify neural changes associated with treatment effects. However, the low-dimensional organisation underlying whole-brain dynamics remains...
Hum Brain Mapp
July 1, 2026
Lorenzo Pasquini, Jakub Vohryzek, Anira Escrichs et al.
Modeled Long-Term Effects of Psilocybin on Dynamic Activity and Effective Connectivity of Fronto-Striatal-Thalamic Circuits.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 30, 2026
Mihir Nath, Nicco Reggente, Neil W. Bailey et al.
preprint
Across contemplative traditions, depper states of meditation are described as states of heightened clarity, vividness, and stillness of mind, yet what this clarity corresponds to in the brain has remained difficult to specify. The functional signal-to-noise ratio (f-SNR) framework frames mental clarity as a measurable property of neural signals: the degree to which brain activity tracks the...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 26, 2026
Paulina Clara Dagnino, Irene Acero-Pousa, Robin Carhart-Harris et al.
Abstract A central challenge in neuroscience is understanding how the human brain is organised to support optimal functioning and adaptability. One approach to characterise complex brain dynamics is by artificially perturbing whole-brain models. Here, we asked whether whole-brain organisation under perturbation in major depressive disorder (MDD) changes after intervention with psilocybin and...
medRxiv
June 23, 2026
Paulina Clara Dagnino, Anne Maj van der Velden, Henricus G. Ruhé et al.
Abstract Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide with risk of onset and recurrence linked to depressive ruminative thought patterns. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an evidence-based treatment for depression that targets the ability to recognise, decenter, and disengage from ruminative thought patterns. Elucidating how MBCT impacts hierarchical...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 16, 2026
Paulina Clara Dagnino, Irene Acero-Pousa, Gorka Zamora-López et al.
1 citation
Abstract In recent decades, the psychedelic psilocybin has been studied as a potential treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD), offering an alternative to traditional antidepressants. However, the brain changes underlying the clinical effects of different interventions remain unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of psilocybin and a conventional antidepressant, escitalopram, from the...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 9, 2026
Morten L. Kringelbach, Gustavo Deco
Abstract Brain dynamics can be described in three different convenient mathematical languages, namely connectome harmonics, turbulence and complex harmonics (CHARM). Here we demonstrate that these theoretical frameworks can be rigorously unified, under the functional calculus, as one self-adjoint operator and its single spectral measure. The connectome Laplacian carries that measure; the...
Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science
May 14, 2026
Anne Maj van der Velden, Jakub Vohryzek, Paulina Clara Dagnino et al.
BACKGROUND Depression is a prevalent and debilitating affective disorder characterised by the dominance and persistence of depressive rumination. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an effective treatment for recurrent depression developed specifically to target rumination and recurrence risk by training metacognitive awareness and adaptive attention, emotion and self-regulation...
SSRN Electronic Journal
2026
Jakub Vohryzek, Elvira Garcia Guzman, Morten L. Kringelbach et al.
1 citation
Despite divergent behavioral and phenomenological profiles, both psychedelic states and reduced states of consciousness have been associated with a flattening of the brain's functional hierarchy. To address this apparent paradox, we developed a more specific definition of hierarchy based on the proximity of the brain to thermodynamic equilibrium and then applied it to investigate the changes to...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
December 9, 2025
Tomas Berjaga-Buisan, Juan Manuel Monti, Martina Cortada et al.
preprint
The quest for reliable and objective measures of consciousness is critical in basic and clinical neuroscience. Across species, the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI) has emerged as a robust empirical marker by directly perturbing the brain, yet its underlying principles of physics are not fully understood. Here, we bridge this gap by introducing a non-invasive framework based on generative...
Transl Psychiatry
November 13, 2025
Kenneth Shinozuka, Katarina Jerotic, Pedro A. M. Mediano et al.
correction
Correction: Synergistic, multi-level understanding of psychedelics: three systematic reviews and meta-analyses of their pharmacology, neuroimaging and phenomenology.
Physics Reports
October 24, 2025
Ramón Nartallo-Kaluarachchi, Morten L. Kringelbach, Gustavo Deco et al.
11 citations
Information processing in the brain is coordinated by the dynamic activity of neurons and neural populations at a range of spatiotemporal scales. These dynamics, captured in the form of electrophysiological recordings and neuroimaging, show evidence of time-irreversibility and broken detailed balance suggesting that the brain operates in a nonequilibrium stationary state. Furthermore, the level...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 3, 2025
Marian Martínez-Marín, Jakub Vohryzek, Anira Escrichs et al.
1 citation
preprint
Abstract Evaluating consciousness levels after coma remains clinically challenging, and probing the brain’s functional hierarchy offers model-based biomarkers of brain states. We characterize the hierarchy loss in disorders of consciousness (DoC) via departures from non-equilibrium dynamics. Irreversible, directed interactions are indexed by deviation from the fluctuation– dissipation theorem...
bioRxiv
September 25, 2025
Jakub Vohryzek, Edmundo Lopez-Sola, Winson F.z. Yang et al.
preprint
Advanced meditation offers a powerful lens for investigating consciousness and for understanding how sustained training may contribute to human flourishing. In the spirit of neurophenomenology, we combine first-person reports with model-free empirical analyses and formal whole-brain modeling to investigate the mechanisms underlying advanced meditative states and minimal phenomenal experience...
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...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
July 21, 2025
Marcel Socoró-garrigosa, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Morten L. Kringelbach et al.
3 citations
Abstract Determining the scale of neural representations is a central challenge in neuroscience. While localized representations have traditionally dominated, evidence suggests information is also encoded in distributed, hierarchical networks. Recent research indicates that the hierarchy of causal influences shaping functional patterns serves as a signature of distinct brain states, with...
PLoS Computational Biology
June 6, 2025
Wiep Stikvoort, Eider Pérez-Ordoyo, Iván Mindlin et al.
3 citations
Assessing someone's level of consciousness is a complex matter, and attempts have been made to aid clinicians in these assessments through metrics based on neuroimaging data. Many studies have empirically investigated measures related to the complexity elicited after the brain is stimulated to quantify the level of consciousness across different states. Here we hypothesized that the level of...
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...
bioRxiv
March 24, 2025
Kenneth Shinozuka, Mattia Rosso, Clayton R. Coleman et al.
3 citations
preprint
Abstract Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and other psychedelic substances profoundly alter human consciousness. While several studies have demonstrated changes in brain function and connectivity associated with psychedelics, we still have a limited understanding of how LSD reshapes brain networks operating across different frequency bands. In this study, we applied the recently developed...
Communications Biology
March 11, 2025
Juan Ignacio Piccinini, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carla Pallavicini et al.
6 citations
The transition towards the brain state induced by psychedelic drugs is frequently neglected in favor of a static description of their acute effects. We use a time-dependent whole-brain model to reproduce large-scale brain dynamics measured with fMRI from 15 volunteers under 20 mg intravenous N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a short-acting psychedelic. To capture its transient effects, we...
medRxiv
February 7, 2025
Jakub Vohryzek, Anne Maj van der Velden, Willem Kuyken et al.
1 citation
preprint
BACKGROUND: Depression is a prevalent and debilitating affective disorder characterised by the dominance and persistence of depressive rumination. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an effective treatment for recurrent depression developed specifically to target rumination and recurrence risk by training metacognitive awareness and adaptive attention, emotion and self-regulation...
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...
Imaging Neurosci (Camb)
January 3, 2025
Kenneth Shinozuka, Prejaas K.b. Tewarie, Andrea I. Luppi et al.
9 citations
Psychedelics are serotonergic drugs that profoundly alter consciousness, yet their neural mechanisms are not fully understood. A popular theory, RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics (REBUS), posits that psychedelics flatten the hierarchy of information flow in the brain. Here, we investigate hierarchy based on the imbalance between sending and receiving brain signals, as determined by directed...
Translational Psychiatry
December 4, 2024
Kenneth Shinozuka, Katarina Jerotic, Pedro A. M. Mediano et al.
17 citations
Serotonergic psychedelics induce altered states of consciousness and have shown potential for treating a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and addiction. Yet their modes of action are not fully understood. Here, we provide a novel, synergistic understanding of psychedelics arising from systematic reviews and meta-analyses of three hierarchical levels of analysis: (1)...