Understanding how different states of consciousness arise from brain activity remains a central challenge in consciousness science. Theoretical and empirical work has increasingly linked conscious states to the large-scale organization and dynamical complexity of brain activity, using measures ranging from network integration and graph-theoretical properties to signal diversity, perturbational...
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...
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...