Neuroscience of Consciousness
2026
James W. Sanders, Raphaël Millière, Ema Demšar et al.
Psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is renowned for inducing highly immersive experiences, often including encounters with seemingly sentient presences. While such phenomena are well documented, immersion under psychedelics remains conceptually underdefined and phenomenologically underexplored. Here we apply micro-phenomenology to characterize immersion under DMT as a structured...
PsyArXiv
September 30, 2025
Christopher Timmermann, Tommaso Barba, James W. Sanders et al.
preprint
Meditation and psychedelics have separately been studied as powerful tools for probing consciousness through their capacity to deconstruct the sense of self. Yet, direct empirical comparisons remain scarce, particularly in expert meditators. Here, we report for the first time a case study in which an advanced meditator and Lama from the Mahāmudrā meditation tradition engaged in a traditional...
Nature Medicine
June 3, 2025
Chloé Pronovost-Morgan, Kyle T. Greenway, Leor Roseman et al.
26 citations
Psychedelic substances exhibit complex interactions with the 'set and setting' of use, that is, the mental state of the user and the environment in which a psychedelic experience takes place. Despite these contextual variables' known importance, psychedelic research has lacked methodological rigor in reporting extra-pharmacological factors. This study aimed to generate consensus-based...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Christopher Timmermann, James W. Sanders, David Reydellet et al.
19 citations
5-MeO-DMT is a short-acting psychedelic that is anecdotally reported to induce a radical disruption of the self and a paradoxical quality of aroused, waking awareness that is nevertheless devoid of any specific perceptual contents. Here, we conducted an exploratory observational study of the phenomenological and neuronal effects of this compound. We collected micro-phenomenological interviews,...
PsyArXiv
December 29, 2024
James W. Sanders, Raphaël Millière, Zachary G. Daily et al.
4 citations
preprint
DMT reliably induces profound experiences of immersion in other worlds and encounters with seemingly autonomous presences, yet the lived qualities and unfolding of these experiences remain poorly understood. Using micro-phenomenological interviews with twenty-three healthy participants who received DMT during fMRI scanning, this study explores how these experiences arise and develop in...
ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science
May 4, 2021
James W. Sanders, Josjan Zijlmans
94 citations
The mysticism framework is used to describe psychedelic experiences and explain the effects of psychedelic therapies. We discuss risks and difficulties stemming from the scientific use of a framework associated with supernatural or nonempirical belief systems and encourage researchers to mitigate these risks with a demystified model of the psychedelic state.