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PsyArXiv

197 papers in the library · 33 citations · publishing 2019-2026

Papers

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Beyond correlations: causally linking neural circuits and consciousness in rodents

PsyArXiv November 14, 2025 preprint

Research into the neural mechanisms of consciousness has so far mainly progressed through human neuroscience. However, most of the available techniques for use in human subjects lack the ability to probe the underlying neuron- and circuit-level mechanisms. Animal experiments offer a promising solution to these limitations. In particular, experiments in rodents allow us to combine large-scale...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/2568s_v1 (opens in new tab)

Overcoming challenges in meditation assessment: Development and validation of the Meditation Pictographic Scale (MPS)

PsyArXiv November 11, 2025 preprint

Measuring subjective experience during meditation remains methodologically challenging due to reliance on verbal self-reports for embodied phenomena. To address this, we developed the Meditation Pictographic Scale (MPS) using a first-person phenomenological approach. We developed and validated the MPS across four phases: (1) qualitative interviews to refine pictographic items; (2)...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/4xez7_v1 (opens in new tab)

Schizophrenia, Psychedelics, and Sense of Self: Comparison of Phenomenology and Neural Correlates

PsyArXiv November 5, 2025 Arthur Hamilton preprint

The relationship between schizophrenia and psychedelic drug states has long attracted scholarly interest and psychedelics have sometimes been described as psychotomimetic. Sense of self can be understood as the feeling of “mineness” that normally characterizes all experiences. In both schizophrenia and psychedelic experiences, alterations to sense of self are present and correlate with clinical...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/ea8ur_v1 (opens in new tab)

Lifetime Psychedelic Use and Opioid Use Disorder Severity: Substance-Use Pattern Specific and Mental Health–Dependent Associations in a National Survey

PsyArXiv November 2, 2025 Sebastian Ehmann, Nathan M. Hager, Paul S. Regier et al. preprint

Lifetime Psychedelic Use and Opioid Use Disorder Severity: Substance-Use Pattern Specific and Mental Health–Dependent Associations in a National Survey

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/jd2rk_v1 (opens in new tab) Opioid use disorder Substance use disorder Psychedelics Psychedelic use +11

The GABAergic Gateway: A Chemist's Hypothesis for Psychedelic Mechanisms

PsyArXiv October 27, 2025 preprint

Background: Psychedelic-assisted therapies show promise for MDD, PTSD, and addiction, yet mechanisms are often framed as 5-HT2A-centric, despite evidence of GABAergic pathology in these conditions.Hypothesis (Author Perspective): As a chemist examining psychedelic pharmacology, I propose that inhibitory-circuit modulation acts as a necessary systems-level gate converting transient 5-HT2A...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/4evzx_v1 (opens in new tab)

The Stream of Computation: Temporal Continuity as a Missing Ingredient for Artificial Consciousness

PsyArXiv October 24, 2025 preprint

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have reignited questions about whether artificial systems possess consciousness. Yet, despite remarkable progress in reasoning and language understanding, current AI systems exist only within isolated episodes of computation. This paper argues that a missing ingredient in such systems is temporal continuity, i.e., the persistence of internal...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/c6jnd_v1 (opens in new tab)

Treatment Expectation is the Strongest Predictor of Willingness to Participate in Psychedelic Clinical Trials

PsyArXiv October 2, 2025 preprint

Background and Aims: Understanding the factors that lead to participation in psychedelic clinical trials is essential for assessing potential biases in enrollment and ensuring the generalizability of findings. Psychedelic treatment is thought to impact personality traits, psychological flexibility, and expectations, however these non-pharmacological variables may also influence the initial...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/7wrk3_v1 (opens in new tab)

Qualia from quantum magic: A quantum resource approach to phenomenal consciousness

PsyArXiv September 30, 2025 Gandhimohan M. Viswanathan preprint

Qualia—the first-person qualities of subjective experiences that constitute the “what it is like”of phenomenal consciousness—have thus far resisted physical explanation. Here we hypothesizethat qualia are generated in the brain during the quantum computational resolution of difficultinverse problems when non-Clifford magic states are consumed above a threshold rate. Magicstates are a well-known...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/2tbp7_v1 (opens in new tab)

Neural effects and phenomenology of nondual meditation and 5-MeO-DMT in an expert meditation practitioner

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...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/whqdp_v1 (opens in new tab) Contemplative practice Mindfulness Non-ordinary states Mystical experience +18

An holism solution to reconcile the hard problem of consciousness

PsyArXiv September 28, 2025 preprint

Natural science is founded on materialism. We treat the independent relationship between inner experience and outer physical entities as an axiom. This cognitive paradigm has successfully explained many natural phenomena; however, certain phenomena, such as those in quantum mechanics and psychological experiments, challenge this view, suggesting the inseparability of the inner and outer. Yet,...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/wcy3z_v1 (opens in new tab)

Emergent Predictive Experience Theory (EPET): A Constitutive, Emergentist-Predictive Account of Qualia

PsyArXiv August 23, 2025 preprint

This paper presents a constitutive, emergentist-predictive account of qualiadesigned to address the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness within a naturalistic,physicalist framework. It argues that by integrating two leading paradigmsfrom cognitive science—Predictive Processing (PP) and Global Workspace Theory(GWT)—and grounding this synthesis in a consistent non-reductive (weak)emergentism, we can...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/nfver_v1 (opens in new tab)