Preprints.org
July 20, 2026
Michael Timothy Bennett
preprint
A conscious moment feels unified in time and space, yet signals take time to travel. Many theories bind an experience's parts within a window of duration θ, but leave other questions unanswered. This paper introduces a mathematical tool for answering some of those questions, narrowing down what is conscious under different theories. Two possibilities are presented: Arpeggio, which requires only that each ingredient occur somewhere in-window, and Chord, which is harder to satisfy, requiring ingredients to coexist in time and influence one another. Chord limits the size of conscious unity: for a system of diameter D and signal-speed ceiling v, its exchange architecture sets a factor ε, giving D ≤ εvθ. Primate data constrain θ.
Preprints.org
July 3, 2026
Okwuchukwu Adachukwu Heavenah, Ugochukwu Samuel Aguwa, Ukoha Ukoha
preprint
In a ketamine-induced schizophrenic model using Wistar rats, ketamine administration caused significant biochemical and histopathological changes in the kidney and liver. Biochemical analyses revealed elevated markers of kidney and liver damage, while histopathological examination showed structural alterations in both organs. These findings suggest that ketamine, used to model schizophrenia, induces toxicity in the kidney and liver, indicating potential organ damage associated with the model.
Preprints.org
June 30, 2026
Dirk Revenstorf, Joost (j.b.c.) Mertens, Martin Schipplick
preprint
Ketamine shows antidepressant effects by blocking NMDA receptors and promoting neuroplasticity. Combining it with psychotherapy may enhance treatment for depression, trauma, addiction, and other serious conditions by temporarily disrupting rigid thought patterns and enabling new cognitive and emotional connections. This approach remains experimental and is recommended only after standard treatments fail. The article outlines the neurobiological basis of altered states of consciousness and presents initial clinical experience with ketamine-augmented hypnotherapy (KAHT) as one specific method of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Preprints.org
June 26, 2026
Luís Eduardo Magro de Queiroz
preprint
A biophysical theory of consciousness is proposed, grounded in a formal equivalence between mass, energy, and informational organization derived from coupling energy between the brain and a nonlocal phenomenological field, the q-field. Consciousness is conceived as functional matter whose phenomenological mass arises from the difference between total metabolic energy and the entropic cost of organizing the brain's electromagnetic field. Using Landauer's limit, the model introduces discrete thresholds for consciousness emergence and defines phenomenological granularity. This excess energy is reinterpreted as real informational mass, dissolving the Hard Problem into a physico-operational relationship. The model is supported by retrodictive bioenergetic evidence including the Landauer gap, dissociation between basal and content-specific costs, CBF-CMRO2 mismatch, and lactate mobilization as metabolic signatures of coupling energy.
Preprints.org
June 25, 2026
Hudson Augusto Rodrigues Bonomo
preprint
Starting from a Large Language Model fabricating a false reference to psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, this essay traces a genealogy from Descartes's evil demon to the LLM as a technical realization of a closed-cognition fantasy. It interrogates a shared presupposition in Putnam's brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, Bostrom's simulation trilemma, and the project of artificial general intelligence: that mental operations can be preserved when the world that gave rise to them is removed. Through four converging routes—Putnam's semantic externalism, Winnicott's theory of the facilitating environment, the Ferenczian wise baby, and Lacanian topology—the author introduces a fourth proposition: the constitution of the psychoanalytic subject, divided by language and founded in lack and desire, exceeds what computational sufficiency can produce. LLM hallucination is read as a diagnostic illustration of limits of generation without verification.
Preprints.org
June 23, 2026
Arosh S. Perera Molligoda Arachchige, Afanasy Svet, Maria Svet
preprint
Consciousness remains a major challenge across neuroscience, philosophy, and cognitive science. This review evaluates several leading theories—Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Recurrent Processing Theory, Dendritic Integration Theory, Predictive Processing, and the Memory Theory of Consciousness—by examining their philosophical foundations, core claims, and empirical evidence. It focuses on how each theory addresses phenomenal consciousness (subjective experience) and access consciousness (information available for cognition and behavior). Comparing convergent and divergent predictions reveals areas of agreement, ongoing debates, and unresolved questions. The analysis suggests consciousness likely involves multiple interacting neural mechanisms across different spatial and temporal scales, highlighting the need for continued interdisciplinary research.
Preprints.org
June 22, 2026
Andrzej Günther, Barbara Bednarczyk-Cwynar
preprint
The ratio of ibotenic acid to muscimol in Amanita muscaria mushrooms may be a dynamic marker influenced by environmental and post-harvest conditions, rather than a fixed species trait. Ibotenic acid has excitatory glutamatergic effects, while muscimol is a potent GABAergic compound, and ibotenic acid can convert to muscimol through decarboxylation. Abiotic stressors like temperature, drought, and soil chemistry, along with biotic factors such as microbial interactions and host-tree physiology, may affect the biosynthesis and transformation of these compounds. Post-harvest processes like drying, heating, and storage can further alter their ratio, potentially shifting neurotoxicological outcomes between excitatory and inhibitory effects. Direct controlled studies linking specific stressors to ibotenic acid biosynthesis remain limited.
Preprints.org
June 17, 2026
Daniel Holguin
preprint
Four clinical approaches—psychedelic-assisted therapy, accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation, closed-loop deep brain stimulation, and reconsolidation-based trauma therapy—each produce lasting change from brief, often single-session interventions in conditions that standard care has not resolved. The convergence is not procedural: each modality transiently induces a high-plasticity brain state, a window rooted in critical-period biology, memory reconsolidation, and the critical-brain literature. The experience delivered into that state, not the intervention that opens it, produces the durable change; stimulus and experience are co-equal active ingredients. Treatments that open the window without controlling what enters it, or deliver the right experience outside it, fail due to timing and context. Naming the window as a measurable variable turns these scattered results into a unified framework with testable predictions for trial design and clinical practice.
Preprints.org
June 10, 2026
Marcelo Kuna
preprint
The essay argues that the Afro-Brazilian spirit Pombagira—a female enchantress associated with healing and sex, often cast as evil in patriarchal narratives—functions as a decolonial emblem that queers rigid binary categories of womanhood. Drawing on occulture and decolonial theory, the author shows how this figure appears in opera, musical theatre, and film, including Verdi's La forza del destino, Bizet's Carmen, and cinematic Lola characters. The analysis connects Gloria Anzaldúa's queer feminist spiritual mestizaje to Pombagira as an anti-patriarchal force, challenging Western gendered impositions and the epistemicide of Afro-Brazilian traditions.
Preprints.org
June 9, 2026
Karthik Murugadoss, A.J. Venkatakrishnan, Venky Soundararajan
preprint
In routine care, many patients taking semaglutide or tirzepatide do not reach recommended maintenance doses. Using electronic health records from 29 million patients, researchers identified 814 individuals who sustained very low doses of semaglutide (0.25 mg) or tirzepatide (2.5 mg) for at least six months. Over 24 months, low-dose tirzepatide showed a worse adverse event profile than low-dose semaglutide, including higher rates of constipation (32.6% vs 22.4%), acute kidney injury (2.7% vs 0.4%), and muscle cramps (8.3% vs 4%). Low-dose tirzepatide also led to greater weight loss. Low-dose semaglutide was associated with broad cardiometabolic benefits despite minimal weight change, and better tolerability than low-dose tirzepatide.
Preprints.org
May 5, 2026
Houssaïnatou Bah, Aboubacar Sidiki Magassouba, Mahamoud Sama Cherif et al.
preprint
Sleep paralysis (SP) is a temporary inability to move or speak while awake. A 2025 survey of 320 medical science students at three universities in Conakry, Guinea, found that 62.0% had experienced SP. The most common symptoms were inability to move (91%), inability to speak (83%), intense fear (62%), and a sense of presence (60%). Male students and those with moderate knowledge and attitude scores had lower odds of experiencing SP. Both biomedical and cultural-spiritual explanations were reported. SP causes significant distress among these students, suggesting a need for better information, curriculum coverage, and psychosocial support.
Preprints.org
April 29, 2026
Stefano Marini, Domenico de Berardis
preprint
Psychedelic drugs, both natural and synthetic, act on serotonin receptors and may enhance cognition, brain connectivity, neuroplasticity, and neuronal regeneration. Autism spectrum disorder involves social communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors, with no approved drugs for core symptoms. Current treatments for co-occurring conditions often have uncertain efficacy and tolerability. This review reports studies indicating that psychedelics could be therapeutically useful for some autism-related symptoms, suggesting a potential role in treatment.
Preprints.org
April 27, 2026
Luis Miguel Gallardo
preprint
Ancient contemplative traditions provide methods for cultivating stable states of consciousness that support sustainable well-being. This integrative review synthesizes empirical and theoretical literature on Patañjali's Sanyam—the integrated practice of Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (meditative absorption), and Samadhi (non-dual awareness)—and its Zen parallel, Joriki (concentration power), with contemporary research on consciousness neuroscience, hypnosis, transpersonal psychology, and happiness science.
Preprints.org
April 20, 2026
Octavian Victor Brinzei
preprint
Medical regulation of psilocybin-assisted therapy has expanded internationally in the past year, with new or clarified regulatory pathways in New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and at the U.S. federal level. Within the United States, Utah and New Mexico have joined Oregon and Colorado in establishing lawful medical access pathways. These developments build on earlier reforms in Alberta, Canada, and Australia, where structured psychiatric prescribing frameworks were implemented. This update consolidates recent statutory amendments and regulatory decisions to provide a current comparative overview of jurisdictions permitting lawful medical use of psilocybin, distinguishing comprehensive medical regulation from restricted or exceptional access schemes.
Preprints.org
April 15, 2026
Marta Jóźwiak-Bębenista, Anna Stasiak, Monika Sienkiewicz et al.
preprint
This review examines the potential therapeutic use of psilocybin in older adults for inflammation-driven disorders of aging, including depression and neurodegeneration. It discusses how psilocybin may modulate inflammatory pathways and promote neuroplasticity, offering benefits for age-related conditions where inflammation plays a key role. The authors suggest that psilocybin-assisted therapy could address both mood disorders and cognitive decline in this population, though they note the need for further research to establish safety and efficacy in older adults.
Preprints.org
April 10, 2026
Harald Bentz Høgseth
preprint
Memory is not stored solely in human minds but is distributed across people, materials, tools, and environments, particularly in historic wooden neighborhoods. Drawing on the WoodiSH project, the article proposes expanding the concept of terroir—originally from viticulture—to describe how landscape, materials, craft traditions, and human practices shape the character and memory of place. Combining material culture studies, phenomenology, and 4E cognition with Tim Ingold's meshwork and wayfaring, the authors argue that knowledge about built heritage emerges through movement and practical interaction with material environments. Historic wooden neighborhoods in Trondheim, Vilnius, and Pori are living archives where traces of use, repair, and everyday life accumulate. Heritage environments should be understood as pedagogical and cognitive landscapes, not merely objects of preservation.
Preprints.org
April 10, 2026
Fang Duan, Xiongping Cao, Zheng Yan et al.
preprint
An auditory oddball paradigm that uses a participant's own name as a deviant stimulus produces stronger and more distinct neural responses than deviant stimuli that are a pure tone or reversed speech. Electroencephalography recordings from 38 participants showed that the self-name condition elicited a P300 amplitude of 3.95 μV and a mismatch negativity of -6.39 μV. Source reconstruction revealed that the self-name condition activated 12 significant clusters in a distributed salience–self network (including the insula and posterior cingulate cortex), whereas the tone and reversed-speech conditions activated 7 and 6 clusters, respectively, mainly in auditory and fronto-cingulate cortices. Classification analysis achieved roughly 80% accuracy for the self-name condition, indicating greater neural separability and robustness to individual differences.
Preprints.org
April 7, 2026
Luis Miguel Gallardo
preprint
Mental disorders affect over 1 billion people worldwide, with conflict-affected populations experiencing PTSD prevalence rates exceeding 30%. This paper presents an integrative framework that bridges ancient wisdom and modern science to address suffering at scale. Drawing on the Shadow-Gift-Essence framework, Hawkins' Map of Consciousness, Internal Family Systems, polyvagal theory, and global epidemiological data, the authors propose the Global Pain and Trauma Map, a seven-domain taxonomy of human suffering. They argue that the global crisis of suffering is fundamentally a crisis of consciousness operating at shadow levels and that healing requires systematic elevation through courage, acceptance, and love toward Fundamental Peace, achievable through integrated protocols targeting seven shared neurobiological mechanisms.
Preprints.org
April 7, 2026
Luis Miguel Gallardo
preprint
Altered states of consciousness (ASC) are a universal human capacity for accessing and transforming the subconscious mind, employed through diverse contemplative, somatic, pharmacological, ritual, and technological modalities. This review synthesizes evidence from over 25 disciplines, finding converging neurobiological mechanisms including default mode network suppression, autonomic regulation, and neuroplasticity. Clinical evidence is strongest for MDMA-assisted therapy in PTSD (67% response rate in Phase 3 RCTs), psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression (60-70% response), EMDR for trauma, mindfulness for depression relapse and anxiety, and neurofeedback for ADHD and anxiety. Transpersonal modalities like Life Between Lives hypnotherapy show preliminary evidence for existential distress but lack rigorous controlled trials. The review proposes an integrative framework positioning ASC as a spectrum from subconscious to superconscious, with diverse modalities as complementary vehicles for consciousness transformation.
Preprints.org
March 31, 2026
Luis Escobar L.-Dellamary
preprint
The paper argues that Integrated Information Theory (IIT 4.0) errs by treating the quantity Φ (integrated information) as a single number, which leads to the exclusion postulate—the claim that only one spatiotemporal grain of maximum Φ is conscious, making all other grains non-existent. This creates the combination problem, the grain problem, and an untenable view of physical reality. The author proposes reinterpreting Φ as grain diversity over dissociative awareness: the number of nested levels of self-resolution a system sustains simultaneously. The topological condition for this diversity is a transition from open, feed-forward architectures (genus-0) to closed, recurrent architectures (genus-≥1, tori).
Preprints.org
March 18, 2026
Tam Hunt
preprint
Conventional reductionist causation, where causal influence flows only from microphysical constituents upward, is metaphysically incomplete and inadequate. This paper develops the concept of radial causation, where every actual entity exerts causal influence outward in all directions without privileged bottom-up priority. Building on Whitehead's process metaphysics, causation has two inseparable aspects: an internal or mental aspect (each entity's perspective and subjectivity) and an external or material aspect. Radial causation allows top-down, bottom-up, and sideways causation, explaining how higher-level conscious entities can be causally efficacious without violating physical principles. General Resonance Theory and electromagnetic field theories of consciousness offer an empirically grounded implementation at the neural level.
Preprints.org
March 17, 2026
Yuki Ueda
preprint
Oxytocin, a hormone involved in social bonding, may help create the brain conditions for non-dual awareness—a state of consciousness without intentional content. The review proposes that oxytocin down-regulates the amygdala and modulates the Default Mode Network, reducing self-referential processing and supporting ego-dissolution. This neuro-chemical substrate could explain how contemplative traditions achieve pure consciousness. The authors discuss ethical concerns about using neuro-pharmacology to influence meditative states and suggest future clinical applications for psychiatric disorders involving rigid self-narratives.
Preprints.org
March 16, 2026
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Arthur Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will, when stripped of its ontological commitments, offers rich descriptions of embodied agency and selfhood that align with contemporary cognitive science. This paper reconstructs Schopenhauer's ideas in four stages: interpreting his unity of body and will through the Free Energy Principle; situating his fragmented self within Gallagher's Pattern Theory of Self; framing his ethics of compassion as a precursor to a Pattern Theory of Compassion; and explaining his pessimism as predictive dysregulation. The approach uses cognitive models as a functional grammar for phenomenal experience without reducing its metaphysical depth.
Preprints.org
March 5, 2026
Kyrylo Somkin
preprint
Human consciousness can be understood as two functional brain states: the personal mode, which is motivationally and socially embedded, oriented toward adaptation, identity maintenance, and ego-relevant concerns, and the meta-reflective mode, where cognition turns upon itself, enabling abstraction, self-objectification, and existential evaluation. The model does not posit metaphysical dualism or strictly separable neural systems; both modes may recruit overlapping brain regions, differing in dominant functional orientation and hierarchical organization. Tensions between these modes may account for identity-based crises (emerging within the personal mode) and existential crises (from intensified meta-reflective activation). The development of civilization reflects the structural coexistence of adaptive engagement and reflective distancing. Empirical validation remains limited.
Preprints.org
March 4, 2026
Deborah Tessitore McManus
preprint
Spiritual and religious practices, companion animal relationships, and contemplative practices support core aspects of successful aging, including emotional well-being, reduced loneliness, enhanced coping, and greater life meaning. It remains unclear whether these influences act synergistically or independently, and how they shape older adults' experiences of aging and adaptation to decline. Incorporating these elements may enhance holistic models of successful aging by supporting emotional, social, and spiritual well-being.