bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 7, 2026
Andrea I. Luppi, Dragana Manasova, Justine Y. Hansen et al.
preprint
Consciousness and cognition arise from the ongoing interactions between brain regions. Synchronous fluctuations of fMRI signals may indicate that two brain regions perform similar cognitive functions, but neural interactions are also constrained by anatomical connectivity and regions’ molecular, cytoarchitectonic, and metabolic profiles. Here we disentangle the respective contributions of...
Nature Medicine
April 1, 2026
Manesh Girn, Manoj K. Doss, Leor Roseman et al.
8 citations
Psychedelic drugs are re-emerging as promising scientific and clinical tools. However, despite a rapidly expanding literature on their therapeutic value, the neural mechanisms underlying psychedelic effects remain unclear. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of acute psychedelic effects, conducted independently by several research groups, have so far yielded fragmented...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
January 8, 2025
Delong Zhou, Heike Schuler, Vedrana Cvetkovska et al.
2 citations
preprint
Abstract Despite enormous interest in psychedelics for psychiatric interventions, potential underlying biological mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we confirm that a single dose of psilocybin increases synaptic transmission in mouse medial prefrontal cortex. Using scRNA-sequencing, we identify cell-type specific mechanisms of sustained neuroplastic effects. We show that, 24h post-psilocybin,...
Research Square
August 8, 2024
Danilo Bzdok, Robin Carhart-Harris, Chloe Savignac et al.
3 citations
Abstract Psychedelic experiences open a colorful view into drug-induced changes in conscious awareness. Small-sample studies on psychedelic drug action have gained traction in recent years. Yet, today’s means for measuring changes in subjective experience are mostly limited to legacy questionnaires of pre-assumed relevance, which could be complemented by bottom-up explorations of semantic...
Sci Adv
March 16, 2022
Galen Ballentine, Samuel Freesun Friedman, Danilo Bzdok
66 citations
Psychedelics probably alter states of consciousness by disrupting how the higher association cortex governs bottom-up sensory signals. Individual hallucinogenic drugs are usually studied in participants in controlled laboratory settings. Here, we have explored word usage in 6850 free-form testimonials about 27 drugs through the prism of 40 neurotransmitter receptor subtypes, which were then...
Nature reviews. Neuroscience
July 5, 2021
Jonathan Smallwood, Boris C. Bernhardt, Robert Leech et al.
970 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is a set of widely distributed brain regions in the parietal, temporal and frontal cortex. These regions often show reductions in activity during attention-demanding tasks but increase their activity across multiple forms of complex cognition, many of which are linked to memory or abstract thought. Within the cortex, the DMN has been shown to be located in regions...
iScience
February 2, 2021
Jonathan Smallwood, Adam Turnbull, Hao-ting Wang et al.
130 citations
A core goal in cognitive neuroscience is identifying the physical substrates of the patterns of thought that occupy our daily lives. Contemporary views suggest that the landscape of ongoing experience is heterogeneous and can be influenced by features of both the person and the context. This perspective piece considers recent work that explicitly accounts for both the heterogeneity of the...