Insight, also referred to as the “Aha!” moment, is a distinctive cognitive phenomenon in which an idea or solution to a problem suddenly emerges into consciousness. Although extensively described in the literature, the nature of its distinctive cognitive and affective mechanisms is still poorly understood. In this paper, we formalize a computational approach to insight grounded in the active...
Despite the widespread application of general anesthesia since the 19th century, a fundamental understanding of its operating principle and a reliable metric of consciousness remains elusive. We here analyze Loss of Responsiveness (LoR) induced by propofol anesthesia in humans and macaque monkeys. Through application of “highly comparable time series analysis” (hctsa) over 7000 features, we aim...
This paper proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting immersive neurogastronomic experiences as a form of ambient cognitive modulation. The framework originates in the direct, informal observation of approximately 6,000 guests conducted by the first author over more than six years of operation at Sensorium — an eleven-seat neurogastronomic restaurant with a controlled multisensory...
Background: University students globally face an escalating mental health crisis (Paiva et al., 2025), yet interventions often overlook the active cultivation of complete well-being (flourishing). Objective: This randomized, waitlist-controlled study evaluated the impact of a 14-week Yoga Nidra Practice (YNP) module on mental distress and complete well-being at a premier technical institute in...
The extent to which visual working memory (VWM) operates on unconscious input remains a matter of debate, with no definitive evidence confirming or refuting its existence. A central challenge in this inquiry lies in methodological constraints, particularly criterion biases in measuring conscious awareness. To overcome these limitations, we conducted two experiments that combined a bias-free...
Visual imagery, the ability to experience the visual features of absent items in our mind’s eye, exists on a continuum ranging from extremely vivid (hyperphantasia) to weak/absent imagery (aphantasia). Existing evidence suggests that these extreme groups are heterogeneous. After re-examining and largely replicating previously reported differences between people with aphantasia and...
Dreaming is a universal phenomenon, yet the ability to recall dream content varies among individuals and most dreams are forgotten quickly after waking up. Such dream amnesia seems paradoxical given the proposed adaptive functions of dreaming. It has been theorized that dream amnesia might serve an evolutionary adaptive function, protecting against cognitive disruptions such as dream-reality...
As psychedelic use rises globally, a growing subset of individuals experience extended post-psychedelic difficulties (EPPD): persistent adverse reactions including severe anxiety, depersonalization/derealization, persistent insomnia, HPPD, and PTSD-like features. Although a number of non-profit organizations have developed vital support networks, infrastructure remains fragmented, with peer...
Abstract Objectives School-based mindfulness programs (SBMPs) are increasingly implemented to support adolescent mental health, yet evidence for their effectiveness remains mixed. Recent research suggests that average effects may obscure meaningful variability in outcomes across individuals. The present study aimed to examine both the overall effectiveness of a 6-week SBMP and the role of...
Despite the rapid global implementation of school-based mindfulness trainings (SBMTs), empirical findings regarding their effectiveness in children and adolescents remain inconsistent. Large-scale trials and recent meta-analyses have challenged early optimism, raising critical questions about for whom, under what conditions, and through which mechanisms SBMTs may be beneficial. This paper...
Cognition and consciousness may arise from bidirectional interactions between neuronal spiking and rhythmic electric field activity (brain waves). Goal-directed behavior relies on top-down control to coordinate large neural populations into low-dimensional, task-oriented dynamics. Brain waves are well suited for this role, exerting mesoscale influence over neural excitability. They can also...
Objective: To investigate meditation-related psychological adverse effects, challenging, unpleasant, and negative experiences (MRPAEs) across meditative development and specifically advanced meditation, an emerging domain in contemplative science that remains understudied despite its potential for radically positively transforming, and in some cases destabilizing, mental health. Design: A...
The Svayoga approach is predominantly rooted in core yogic texts; the Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali Yogasutra and Yoga Vasistha, and its thematic analysis, which had resulted in a model with seven interlinked themes (Agrawal, 2022). The theme of ‘Yogic perspective’ emphasizes the role of Consciousness, play of triguna, meaning of suffering and cultivation of inner freedom; theme of ‘Self’...
Developing interventions to change health behaviors—especially those targeting cross-cutting health risk factors like alcohol use—is a public health priority. In this study, we used a translational neuroscience approach to evaluate the underlying mechanisms and individual differences in a mindful distancing intervention designed to reduce alcohol consumption among college students. We combined...
Most research on meditation and mental health has focused on short-term interventions in novice populations, leaving the cumulative effects of long-term and advanced practice underexplored. Advanced meditation is defined as states, stages, and endpoints that arise with the maturation and mastery of mental-activity skills. This systematic review synthesizes evidence from 52 studies across four...
People routinely feel creative ownership over mental processes that are demonstrably shaped by forces outside themselves. We introduce creative agency—the sense of authorship and free will one experiences during creative cognition—as an undertheorized metacognitive feeling and develop a measure of it in the domain of music-evoked imagination. In an initial study (N = 247) and pre-registered...
Recent years have seen a decisive turn in neuroscience toward embodiment, shifting focus from a brain-bound view of the mind to a more holistic one where the body is treated as constitutive of self and consciousness. While this turn has yielded valuable insights through studies on interoception, multisensory integration and bodily ownership, it also carries significant theoretical and ethical...
This article reports two new experiments designed to test the Consciousness Causes Collapse (CCC) interpretation of quantum mechanics via a subliminal priming paradigm. A radioactive source was used to determine stimulus primes. Reaction times were compared across two conditions: one in which primes were previously observed by a conscious agent and another in which they remained shielded from...
Prior theories of thought reform, coercive persuasion, bounded choice, coercive control, and undue influence have made enduring contributions by identifying tactics, environments, interpersonal patterns, and ideological conditions through which people may be controlled. Their principal strength is descriptive: they name the architecture of control. This article addresses a different theoretical...
Inner-speech research documents striking individual diversity through descriptive phenomenology, self-report questionnaires, and extreme phenotypes, yet prior studies typically sample a few hundred respondents, and no design has mapped how the major modes co-occur or trade off at population scale. We addressed this gap with a video-based online survey (clean N = 5,289): respondents rated seven...
Importance: Cannabis use (CU) in adolescence is linked to increased risk of developing psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) that can lead to lifelong impairment. A candidate mechanism may be disruptions in reward processing supported by dopamine but this association has not yet been tested in adolescents with CU and PLEs. The objective of the study was to assess the interrelation between CU, PLEs,...
Sleep-related out-of-body experiences (OBEs) occupy an ambiguous position between sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming. OBEs are often considered part of the vestibular-motor component of sleep paralysis, but they also share features with lucid dreaming, including vivid internally generated experience, heightened awareness, and perceived agency. Here, we examined whether the emotional composition...
How do individuals remain themselves while continuously changing? Contemporary psychological theories have primarily addressed this question through the concept of self-regulation, emphasizing the processes through which organisms adapt to internal and environmental demands. However, adaptation alone does not explain how individuals maintain a coherent sense of self across bodily, relational,...
This chapter proposes that self-transcendent experiences can be usefully understood through the distinction between the reflective and experiential self, originally articulated by William James and developed in contemporary philosophy and neuroscience. The reflective self involves conscious, narrative self-referential processing, while the experiential self refers to affective processing and...
A long-standing assumption in cognitive neuroscience is that visual mental imagery (VMI) is “visual perception in reverse” and, as such, requires reactivation of the primary visual cortex (V1). On this view, total destruction of V1 should abolish VMI and provoke neurological aphantasia. We tested this prediction by reviewing 55 published cases of cortical blindness (CB) in which VMI abilities...