Major depressive disorder (MDD) shows marked sex differences in prevalence, symptomatology, and treatment response. However, females remain underrepresented in many clinical trials, and sex-specific treatment outcomes are rarely examined. This study reanalyzed data from a randomized controlled trial comparing psilocybin and escitalopram for MDD to evaluate sex differences across multiple...
Psilocybin has been shown to induce fast and sustained symptoms improvements across various psychiatric conditions, yet its long-term mechanisms of action are not fully understood. Initial evidence suggests that longitudinal functional and structural brain changes implicate fronto-striatal-thalamic (FST) circuitry, a broad system involved in goal-directed behavior and motivational states. Here,...
Consciousness spans a range of phenomenological experiences, from effortless immersion to disengaged monotony, yet how such phenomenology emerges from brain activity is not well understood. Flow, a phenomenological experience frequently elicited by interactive media, has drawn attention for its links to performance and wellbeing, but existing neural accounts rely on single-region or...
Psychedelics have robust effects on acute brain function and long-term behavior but whether they also cause enduring functional and anatomical brain changes is largely unknown. In an exploratory, placebo-controlled, within-subjects, electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study in 28 healthy, entirely psychedelic-naive participants, anatomical and functional brain...
Philosophical PsychologyApril 10, 2026Eric Rundquist, Diego Nicolás Monasterio López, Juan Jonathan Oyarzo Alvarado et al.
This article presents the results of a Cognitive Linguistic analysis of metaphors used in a series of interviews by a single healthy volunteer following four moderate-to-high dosing sessions with psilocybin. The interviews were conducted by members of a human psychedelic research lab in a deep-sampling fMRI and EEG brain imaging study, allowing the participant to recount experiences under the...
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...
Abstract Psilocybin has been shown to induce fast and sustained improvements in mental well-being across various populations, yet its long-term mechanisms of action are not fully understood. Initial evidence suggests that longitudinal functional and structural brain changes implicate fronto-striatal-thalamic (FST) circuitry, a broad system involved in goal-directed behavior and motivational...
Functional seizures (FS), the most common subtype of functional neurological disorder (FND), cause serious neurological disability and significantly impact quality of life. Characterized by episodic disturbances of functioning that resemble epileptic seizures, FS coincide with multiple comorbidities and are treated poorly by existing approaches. Novel treatment approaches are sorely needed....
Integrating independent but converging lines of research on brain function and neurodevelopment across scales, this article proposes that serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) signalling is an evolutionary and developmental driver and potent modulator of the macroscale functional organization of the human cerebral cortex. A wealth of evidence indicates that the anatomical and functional organization...
Contemporary research on serotonergic psychedelic compounds has been rife with references to so-called ‘mystical’ subjective effects. Several psychometric assessments have been used to assess such effects, and clinical studies have found quantitative associations between ‘mystical experiences’ and positive mental health outcomes. The nascent study of psychedelic-induced mystical experiences,...
Psychedelics have attracted medical interest, but their effects on human brain function are incompletely understood. In a comprehensive, within-subjects, placebo-controlled design, we acquired multimodal neuroimaging [i.e., EEG-fMRI (electroencephalography-functional MRI)] data to assess the effects of intravenous (IV) N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) on brain function in 20 healthy volunteers....
Recent findings suggesting the potential transdiagnostic efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapy have fostered the need to deepen our understanding of psychedelic brain action. Functional neuroimaging investigations have found that psychedelics reduce the functional segregation of large-scale brain networks. However, beyond this general trend, findings have been largely inconsistent. We argue...
This theoretical article revives a classical bridging construct, canalization, to describe a new model of a general factor of psychopathology. To achieve this, we have distinguished between two types of plasticity, an early one that we call 'TEMP' for 'Temperature or Entropy Mediated Plasticity', and another, we call 'canalization', which is close to Hebbian plasticity. These two forms of...
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are serotonergic psychedelic compounds with potential in the treatment of mental health disorders. Past neuroimaging investigations have revealed that both compounds can elicit significant changes to whole-brain functional organization and dynamics. A recent proposal linked past findings into a unified model and hypothesized reduced whole-brain...
Abstract Individuals use various strategies to cope with challenging emotions such as anxiety. Mindful acceptance involves broadening attentional scope and fully experiencing present moment sensory feelings (whether pleasant or unpleasant) without judgment or elaboration. In contrast, narrative-evaluation involves focusing on a narrow band of sensory experience and generating an elaborate...
Contemporary investigations regard creativity as a dynamic form of cognition that involves movement between the dissociable stages of creative generation and creative evaluation. Our recently proposed Dynamic Framework of Thought (Christoff et al., 2016) offered a conceptualization of these stages in terms of an interplay between sources of constraint and variability on thought. This initial...
Humans have been aware for thousands of years that sleep comes in many forms, accompanied by different kinds of mental content. We review the first-person report literature on the frequency and type of content experienced in various stages of sleep, showing that different sleep stages are dissociable at the subjective level. We then relate these subjective differences to the growing literature...
Humans have employed an incredible variety of plant-derived substances over the millennia in order to alter consciousness and perception. Among the innumerable narcotics, analgesics, 'ordeal' drugs, and other psychoactive substances discovered and used in ritualistic contexts by cultures around the world, one class in particular stands out not only for its radical psychological effects, but...
Meditation is a family of mental practices that encompasses a wide array of\ntechniques employing distinctive mental strategies. We systematically reviewed\n78 functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) studies of meditation, and used\nactivation likelihood estimation to meta-analyze 257 peak foci from 31\nexperiments involving 527 participants. We found reliably dissociable patterns\nof brain...
Meditation is a family of mental practices that encompasses a wide array of techniques employing distinctive mental strategies. We systematically reviewed 78 functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) studies of meditation, and used activation likelihood estimation to meta-analyze 257 peak foci from 31 experiments involving 527 participants. We found reliably dissociable patterns of brain...
Meditation is a family of mental practices that encompasses a wide array of techniques employing distinctive mental strategies. We systematically reviewed 78 functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) studies of meditation, and used activation likelihood estimation to meta-analyze 257 peak foci from 31 experiments involving 527 participants. We found reliably dissociable patterns of brain...
Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) has demonstrated transdiagnostic efficacy across a range of psychiatric conditions and is increasingly conceptualized through third-wave cognitive–behavioral frameworks. These frameworks, including Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS) and the psychological flexibility model, emphasize processes such as cognitive insight, belief revision, and narrative...