PsyArXiv
March 25, 2026
Sam Malins, Cosmin Manolescu, Tim Sweeney et al.
preprint
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is a group psychological therapy that prevents relapse amongst people with recurrent depression. However, many people who attend MBCT do not fully benefit. This study assessed the feasibility, acceptability and initial clinical utility of personalised smart-messaging as an adjunct to remote Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (rMBCT) for recurrent depression...
PsyArXiv
March 19, 2026
Matan Mazor, Arianna Risoli, Anna Eberhardt et al.
preprint
Whether an individual is conscious or not has important ethical and legal implications. For example, animal welfare regulations seek to minimize suffering in conscious animals, and AI ethics discussions focus on the possibility of artificial consciousness as a key concern. Critically, consciousness cannot be directly perceived, but must be inferred from external cues such as behaviour and...
PsyArXiv
March 18, 2026
Clifford Conway
preprint
The physical substrate of consciousness remains theoretically underdetermined. Two empirically tractable accounts occupy the field: the Organisational Substrate Hypothesis (OSH), which holds that the pattern of neural closure is itself sufficient for consciousness regardless of implementation, and the Intrinsic Causal Power Hypothesis (ICPH), which holds that the specific causal identity of...
PsyArXiv
March 18, 2026
Tom Froese, Christian Tewes
preprint
It is the aim of this chapter to introduce and delineate a research framework for exploring free will with first-person research methods and insights from the recently developed irruption theory, specifically as applied to the causal efficacy of intentional agency. We assume in this contribution that the explication of libertarian intuitions, such as the principle of alternative possibilities...
PsyArXiv
March 17, 2026
Lana Porter, Valerie Bonnelle, Marieke Schölvinck et al.
preprint
Non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs), whether entered via psychedelics, breathwork, hypnosis or other means, show striking therapeutic promise by improving well-being and reducing psychopathology across diverse conditions. While the neuronal dynamics underpinning such therapeutic shifts in consciousness have to some extent been mapped, research has mainly focused on the central nervous...
PsyArXiv
March 15, 2026
Clarita Bonamino, Clara Hausen, Matthew D. Sacchet
preprint
Consciousness can persist, transform, and dissolve across wakefulness, sleep, and advanced meditation. Despite empirical and theoretical advances within each domain, these states are rarely examined within an integrated scientific framework. An interdisciplinary perspective reveals converging phenomena that challenge binary accounts of consciousness and highlight its graded, dynamic, and...
PsyArXiv
March 11, 2026
Ciara Nealon, Brian Patrick Keane, Donagh Seaver O'Leary et al.
preprint
AbstractBackground and Hypothesis: Embodiment refers to the integration of sensory, motor, and cognitive processes that underpin self-experience, agency, and bodily awareness. Psychosis studies have demonstrated disruptions in embodied processes through a diverse series of methodological approaches. The aim of this scoping review was to systematically review the range of methodological...
PsyArXiv
March 8, 2026
Oliver Andersson Hugemark, Vanessa Naughton, Karen Vasquez-Avila et al.
preprint
Meditation research is increasingly moving beyond the study of health-related benefits toward the investigation of non-ordinary states of consciousness and ways of being that may arise through advanced meditative practice. Alongside potential benefits, however, intensive or advanced meditation has been associated with a higher incidence of meditation-related psychological adverse effects,...
PsyArXiv
February 27, 2026
Veronika Chvostová, Johanna Prugger, Tim Hirschfeld et al.
preprint
The Open Data initiative Altered States Database (ASDB) collects psychometric questionnaire data on the subjective experiences of pharmacologically and non-pharmacologically induced altered states of consciousness. The ASDB is updated annually and can be utilized by both researchers and non-scientists to access information or conduct further analyses. The current update adds data published in...
PsyArXiv
February 27, 2026
Trevor Hewitt, Anil K. Seth, David J. Schwartzman
preprint
Hallucinations arise from disruptions in neural processes that construct perceptual experience from sensory input. Progress in consciousness science may therefore benefit from methods that precisely characterise their phenomenology. We introduce and validate the 6-Dimensional Visual Hallucination Questionnaire (6D-VHQ), a brief instrument designed to quantify visual hallucination content across...
PsyArXiv
February 18, 2026
Emma Černis, Milan Antonović, Katie Lofthouse et al.
preprint
ObjectiveResearch indicates higher prevalence of dissociative experiences in adolescents than in adults. However, the exact phenomenology and underlying mechanisms of dissociation in adolescence have yet to be clarified. The current study explores the presentation of, and possible psychological factors underlying, dissociation in this population.MethodTwo online self-report surveys captured...
PsyArXiv
February 8, 2026
Donna Thomas, Marc Wittmann
preprint
Recent research shows that young children frequently report non-ordinary experiences, including extra sensory perceptions, out-of-body experiences, and states of self-transcendence, reflecting relational, pre-linguistic, and weakly individualised forms of consciousness. This paper integrates qualitative studies of children’s experiences with contemporary altered states of consciousness (ASC)...
PsyArXiv
February 8, 2026
Mia Riedel, Rosalind McAlpine, Terje Sparby et al.
preprint
Background: Meditation has recently gained attention as a promising tool for enhancing psychedelic preparedness. This exploratory study builds on quantitative work by investigating how experienced meditators who use psychedelics understand meditation’s role in preparation and its influence on different aspects of the psychedelic experience. Methods: We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of...
PsyArXiv
January 24, 2026
Vikas O'Reilly-Shah
preprint
Consciousness science has generated diverse theoretical frameworks, each offering insights into different aspects of conscious experience. However, this diversity has created a fractured landscape: theories operate at different explanatory levels, and a principled account of how conscious phenomena arise from specific neural computations remains largely absent. This work argues that State Space...
PsyArXiv
January 19, 2026
preprint
This paper aims to develop a phenomenology of the experience of self and its transformation through the interrelated experiences of form, substance, and essence. The objectives are two fold: (1) to articulate a structural vocabulary for describing how selfhood is lived, fragmented, and transformed, and (2) to demonstrate how this framework might illuminate and facilitate the resolution of...
PsyArXiv
January 18, 2026
Jose Luis Perez Velazquez
preprint
The field of consciousness research has reached a somewhat contentious atmosphere. From “adversarial collaborations”, where consciousness theories compete, to open letters where researchers label some theories as pseudoscience, the subject is becoming harder to investigate and results difficult to interpret as there is still a significant aura of mysticism rooted in dualism and its modern...
PsyArXiv
January 10, 2026
Jason B. Luoma, Jenna Lejeune, Brian Pilecki et al.
preprint
The use of supportive touch in psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) and MDMA-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) presents unique ethical challenges and opportunities. While touch can be a valuable component of treatment, its implementation requires careful consideration due to the altered states of consciousness induced by psychedelics and the potential for boundary violations. This paper addresses a...
PsyArXiv
December 31, 2025
Sebastian Ehmann, Nikoloz Mosahvili, Angela White et al.
preprint
Psychedelic substances reliably occasion transient self-transcendent states, including mystical-type experiences, which are theorized to support salutogenic psychological change and long-term well-being. Despite growing interest in these phenomena, little is known about how acute self-transcendent states translate into enduring trait-level changes, or whether individual differences such as...
PsyArXiv
December 29, 2025
Patrizio Tressoldi, Bruno Abbondanza, Graham Nicholls et al.
preprint
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), defined as the subjective sensation of having a personal identity separate from one's physical body, have captivated humanity across cultures and throughout history. While artificial induction techniques have provided valuable insights into the neural correlates of bodily self-consciousness, these artificially generated experiences often lack the perceptual and...
PsyArXiv
December 16, 2025
Tim Neville Palmer, Clémence Alméras, Joshua Marquez et al.
preprint
Meditation techniques have been identified as relating differently to mental health outcomes, challenging experiences (e.g. anxiety, somatic effects, and psychotic-like experiences) and cognitive and emotional processes. Our aim was to better understand the differential relationship between ‘low body focused’ and ‘high body focused’ meditation techniques with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs),...
PsyArXiv
December 12, 2025
Sepehrdad Rahimian
preprint
Despite notable empirical advances, the science of consciousness lacks firm conceptual footing. Competing theories not only disagree on mechanisms but also define consciousness in mutually incompatible ways, and criteria for evaluating theoretical success remain vague. I argue that this situation arises from a lack of pragmatic pressure within the field. Theories are rewarded for offering ever...
PsyArXiv
December 9, 2025
Rose Seneviratne, Matt Garner, Emma Claire Palmer-Cooper
preprint
Objectives: To examine how mindfulness, metacognition, resilience, and creativity influence psychological distress in young adults and test two alternative pathway models. Methods: Cross-sectional structural equation modelling (SEM) tested two models in N = 841 non-clinical young adults aged 18 to 30. Psychological distress was operationalised as a latent factor using anxiety (GAD-7),...
PsyArXiv
December 5, 2025
David Reichert, Rif Saurous
preprint
Integrated Information Theory (IIT; Albantakis et al., 2023) is a well-known theory of consciousness. In recent years, it has drawn vocal criticism (e.g., IIT-Concerned et al., 2023, 2025). Much of that criticism has focused on a subset of IIT’s predictions possibly being counterintuitive, untestable, or both: for example, IIT predicts that simple circuits of logic gates are conscious. At the...
PsyArXiv
December 1, 2025
Sudhakar Mishra, Robin Nusslock, Narayanan Srinivasan et al.
preprint
In this study, we set out to examine whether monastic debate practice can help with emotion regulation and reduce the experience of negative affect. Research on traditional contemplative practices—including mindfulness, loving-kindness meditation, and yoga—shows that they influence emotion regulation and emotional experience. However, systematic reasoning, appraisal, and emotion regulation in a...
PsyArXiv
November 28, 2025
Rafael Reis
preprint
The debate over free will has traditionally been framed as a choice between libertarian indeterminism and hard determinism, with compatibilism attempting to reconcile freedom with deterministic causation. However, this framing overlooks a crucial insight from computational theory: that determinism does not entail predictability. We propose that the phenomenological experience of free will — the...