medRxiv Preprint Server
May 31, 2026
Madeline V. Stein, Matt Butler, Sarah Chapman et al.
preprint
Psychedelic drugs are emerging as potentially efficacious tools for treating psychiatric conditions and probing the neural basis of consciousness. Although drug administration context is widely believed to shape psychedelic effects, it remains unclear whether it can independently generate placebo and nocebo effects resembling psychedelic experiences and side effects. In a pre-registered...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
February 1, 2023
Tanya M Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Ann Chen et al.
AbstractThere are communities in which hearing voices frequently is common and expected, and in which participants are not expected to have a need for care. This paper compares the ideas and practices of these communities. We observe that these communities utilize cultural models to identify and to explain voice-like events—and that there are some common features to these models across...
Drug Science, Policy and Law
2023
WaiFung Tsang, Simon Ruffell, Nigel Netzband et al.
Background The potential benefits of ayahuasca on mental health conditions are well documented. This pilot study is the first to explore whether there is an association with ayahuasca use and reductions in inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, the core features of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Methods In this exploratory, observational pilot study, the Adult...
Consciousness and Cognition
February 5, 2021
David A Oakley, E. Walsh, Mitul A. Mehta et al.
Hypnotic suggestibility is part of the wider psychological trait of direct verbal suggestibility (DVS). Historically, DVS in hypnosis has informed theories of consciousness and of conversion disorder. More recently it has served as a research tool in cognitive science and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. Here we consider DVS as a general trait, its relation to other psychological...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
December 19, 2019
J.M. Barnby, Vaughan Bell, Quinton Deeley et al.
4 citations
preprint
Abstract Altered dopamine transmission is thought to influence the formation of persecutory delusions. However, despite extensive evidence from clinical studies there is little experimental evidence on how modulating the dopamine system changes social attributions related to paranoia, and the salience of beliefs more generally. 27 healthy male participants received 150mg L-DOPA, 3mg...
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
May 1, 2017
Eamonn Walsh, David A Oakley, Peter W Halligan et al.
Loss or reduction of awareness is common in neuropsychiatric disorders and culturally influenced dissociative phenomena but the underlying brain mechanisms are poorly understood. fMRI was combined with suggestions for automatic writing in 18 healthy highly hypnotically suggestible individuals in a within-subjects design to determine whether clinical alterations in awareness of thought and...
Cortex
April 1, 2014
Quinton Deeley, David A Oakley, Eamonn Walsh et al.
75 citations
Involuntary movements occur in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders and culturally influenced dissociative states (e.g., delusions of alien control and attributions of spirit possession). However, the underlying brain processes are poorly understood. We combined suggestion and fMRI in 15 highly hypnotically susceptible volunteers to investigate changes in brain activity accompanying...
PLoS One
2013
Quinton Deeley, Eamonn Walsh, David A Oakley et al.
48 citations
The feeling of voluntary control and awareness of movement is fundamental to our notions of selfhood and responsibility for actions, yet can be lost in neuropsychiatric syndromes (e.g. delusions of control, non-epileptic seizures) and culturally influenced dissociative states (e.g. attributions of spirit possession). The brain processes involved remain poorly understood. We used suggestion and...
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
March 24, 2012
Quinton Deeley, David A Oakley, Brian Toone et al.
149 citations
Debate regarding the neural basis of the hypnotic state continues, but a recent hypothesis suggests that it may produce alterations in the default mode network (DMN). DMN describes a network of brain regions more active during low-demand compared to high-demand task conditions and has been linked to processes such as task-independent thinking, episodic memory, semantic processing, and...