bioRxiv
June 3, 2026
Yanxia Liang, Lingjun Wang, Yajie Li et al.
preprint
Ketamine produces rapid antidepressant effects but is constrained by psychotomimetic properties and abuse potential. The ketamine metabolite (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine (HNK) shows antidepressant-like efficacy without N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) blockade, yet its upstream targets remain unclear. Here we show that HNK potentiates hippocampal excitatory transmission and reverses...
bioRxiv
May 29, 2026
Aurora Savino, Carla Liaci, Ilaria Bertani et al.
preprint
Summary Psychedelic compounds such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) are increasingly studied for their neuroplastic effects and potential relevance to brain aging and neurodegeneration. However, the molecular mechanisms linking psychedelic-induced plasticity to age-associated cognitive decline remain unclear. Brain aging and dementia are characterized by coordinated transcriptional programs...
bioRxiv
May 18, 2026
Kyna Conn, Ngok Wong, Serenay Sunnetci et al.
preprint
Abstract Psilocybin has emerged as a promising therapeutic agent for psychiatric disorders characterised by cognitive rigidity and disrupted reward processing, including anorexia nervosa. While its pro-cognitive effects have been mechanistically probed almost exclusively through serotonin receptor subtype antagonism, the downstream contributions of dopaminergic systems to these outcomes remain...
bioRxiv
May 6, 2026
Nina Curko, Rosalie Samide, Valentina Krenz et al.
preprint
Episodic memory involves reconstruction of past events through integration of multiple types of information, including perceptual details, narrative content, and emotional tone. The default mode network (DMN) is a set of regions thought to support episodic retrieval, yet it remains unclear how distinct subnetworks contribute to recall of these different memory features. Here, we examined how...
bioRxiv
May 5, 2026
Aleksandra Lipińska, Kinga Ciupińska, Renate Rutiku
preprint
Visual working memory (vWM) is often linked to conscious experience and visual imagery, but it is typically described as a system that stores separate, independent items. These assumptions are difficult to reconcile, given the unified nature of conscious experience. Here, we test the hypothesis that vWM relies on at least two distinct representations: an underlying, unconscious memory trace and...
bioRxiv
May 4, 2026
Tomás Ariel D’amelio, Tomás Gil Garbagnoli, Jerónimo Rodríguez Cuello et al.
preprint
ABSTRACT Serotonergic psychedelics induce altered states of consciousness characterised by profound changes in emotional experience. Although psychedelics modulate autonomic arousal, sympathetic engagement during their affective effects remains poorly characterised. We recorded cardiac, electrodermal, and respiratory activity in 19 participants following inhalation of 20 or 40 mg of freebase...
bioRxiv
April 27, 2026
Siyi Chen, Hermann J Müller, Zhuanghua Shi
preprint
Learned spatial regularities can reduce attentional capture by salient distractors, but observers vary in how strongly such regularities shape distractor interference. We asked whether this variability is associated with default mode network (DMN) functional connectivity, a network measure linked to individual differences in attention, internally guided cognition, and contextual memory. Using...
bioRxiv
April 23, 2026
Shogo Kajimura, K. Okano, Senkei Ueno et al.
preprint
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) remains debated because identity-state phenomena are privately experienced and may be attributed to suggestion, simulation or role enactment. Most neuroimaging studies rely on symptom provocation or traumatic recall, which complicates interpretation and is poorly suited to co-conscious presentations where simultaneous awareness should make state differences...
bioRxiv
April 22, 2026
Thyagarajan Shivashanmugam, Anish Mehta
preprint
Abstract Conscious experience is associated with both sufficient cerebral metabolic support and preserved large-scale neural integration, yet these two constraints have largely been studied in isolation. Whether consciousness requires their joint satisfaction — and whether either alone is sufficient — remains an open question. Here, we test the prediction that conscious states occupy a joint...
bioRxiv
April 21, 2026
Alberto Liardi, Daniel Bor, Fernando E. Rosas et al.
preprint
Recent advances have shown that the complexity of neural signals tracks global states of consciousness, such as wakefulness versus sleep. However, it is still unclear to what extent neural complexity reflects fine-grained changes in conscious content within the same global state. Here, we investigate how the complexity of brain signals is affected by increased perceptual clarity of a stimulus....
bioRxiv
April 13, 2026
Anders S. Olsen, Kristian Larsen, Drummond E. Mcculloch et al.
preprint
Abstract Psilocybin and other serotonergic drugs acutely alter human brain function and large-scale connectivity as measured with BOLD fMRI, but whether these effects are frequency-specific remains unknown. We applied multitaper spectral and cross-spectral analyses to resting-state fMRI data from 28 healthy volunteers scanned multiple times acutely following oral psilocybin administration (0.2...
bioRxiv
March 27, 2026
Cécile Gal, Dimitrios Askitis, Katarina Begus
preprint
Self-reflection is central to human cognition and is arguably a defining feature of human consciousness. Yet, the mechanisms enabling our mind to reflect upon itself and to construct a conceptual sense of self remain poorly understood. This study brings empirical traction to the puzzle of self-reflection by studying human infants, across the period when a conceptual self is believed to emerge,...
bioRxiv
March 17, 2026
Victor Altmayer, Sarah Moreno-Rodriguez, Marcela Ovando-Tellez et al.
preprint
Creativity is a hallmark of human cognition, characterized by the ability to connect seemingly distant concepts or ideas. Existing theories suggest that remote thinking can be achieved either spontaneously (constrained by the structure of semantic memory) or in a goal-directed manner (constrained by a creative goal). The present study investigates the neural correlates of goal-directed remote...
bioRxiv
March 13, 2026
Brian Lord, Erica N. Lord, Jessica N. Schachtner et al.
preprint
Systematic focus training is increasingly recognized for its therapeutic benefits, with equanimity, the ability to maintain an open and accepting attitude towards all experience, identified as a critical mechanism for improving well-being. Physiologically, experienced meditators demonstrate reduced activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a hub of the default mode network (DMN), and...
bioRxiv
March 11, 2026
Abhishek Pillai, Oleksandr Bezrukavyi, Shaija Nalinakshan
preprint
Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) is a structured breathing-based meditation associated with improvements in stress regulation and mental health, yet its acute neurophysiological effects remain incompletely characterized using multivariate, subject-independent approaches. In this study, we investigated short-term pre–post neural modulation induced by a single long SKY session using...
bioRxiv
February 25, 2026
Jennifer Them, Lion Deger, Halgurd Taher et al.
preprint
Ketamine, an N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, is used clinically as an anesthetic and antidepressant, and is also known for its psychotomimetic effects. Its impact on brain dynamics and behavior varies significantly with dosage likely via a dose-dependent modulation of the NMDARergic transmission. Currently, it is unclear how molecular changes at the microscopic level of NMDAR...
bioRxiv
February 15, 2026
Yu Togashi, Yuko Yotsumoto, Chihiro Hiramatsu et al.
preprint
Whether qualitative aspects of consciousness, or qualia in short, are equivalent across individuals is a foundational scientific question. Testing this is challenging because one cannot assume a shared mapping between stimuli and private experience (my “red” may be your “green”) [1–3]. Previously, we proposed a structural characterization of qualia [4, 5] and the quantitative assessment of...
bioRxiv
January 24, 2026
Karen J. Tian, Brian Maniscalco, Michael L. Epstein et al.
preprint
Visual experience can sometimes depart from visual performance, providing a powerful lens into the mechanisms generating conscious perception. In one proposed dissociation—subjective inflation—unattended locations in the periphery appear stronger than attended ones despite equated performance. Subjective inflation has played a central role in motivating theories of consciousness that reject the...
bioRxiv
December 29, 2025
Aditi Joshi, Deep Patel, Vignesh Muralidharan et al.
preprint
Meditation practices are often used as non-pharmacological adjunct therapy for managing stress and well-being benefits. We propose that beneath their non-pharmacological facade, meditation practices might operate via drug target modulation having profound neurophysiological effects. Firstly, we leverage the Connectivity Map (CMap) to investigate (a) the overlap between meditation-induced...
bioRxiv
November 26, 2025
Rui Dai, Rodrigo Cofré, Christopher Timmermann et al.
preprint
The mechanism of psychedelic drug action is a dynamic area of neuroscience, with two major lines of investigation: (1) laboratory studies at the molecular and cellular level, and (2) human neuroimaging studies of functional brain networks. Despite considerable progress, there remains insufficient understanding of the link between molecular/cellular substrates of psychedelics and the whole-brain...
bioRxiv
November 24, 2025
preprint
Dynamic methylation changes in Alzheimer’s disease-related genes during mindfulness practice – a proof-of-concept study
bioRxiv
November 17, 2025
Lena Hehemann, Lisa Stetza, Christoph Kayser
preprint
Respiration is a unique physiological process that can operate automatically but can also be deliberately used to modulate the bodily state. Importantly, respiration is deeply intertwined with neural processes, influencing processes from arousal and attention to executive control. Although structured respiration (breathing practice) has been exploited for centuries, the immediate consequences...
bioRxiv
November 11, 2025
Emma Dobbin
preprint
Abstract Background Integrated Information Theory (IIT) predicts gradual consciousness changes, while Global Workspace Theory (GWT) emphasizes discrete threshold events. We tested whether sleep stage transitions exhibit these distinct patterns using quantitative EEG analysis. Methods We analyzed 622 sleep stage transitions from 12 healthy adults (Wake→N1, N1→N2, N2→N3, REM→Wake) using the...
bioRxiv
September 25, 2025
Jakub Vohryzek, Edmundo Lopez-Sola, Winson F.z. Yang et al.
preprint
Advanced meditation offers a powerful lens for investigating consciousness and for understanding how sustained training may contribute to human flourishing. In the spirit of neurophenomenology, we combine first-person reports with model-free empirical analyses and formal whole-brain modeling to investigate the mechanisms underlying advanced meditative states and minimal phenomenal experience...
bioRxiv
September 19, 2025
Hengda He, B. G. Yazdi, Amir Sedaghat et al.
preprint
While the hemodynamic response function (HRF) of the positive blood oxygenated level dependent (BOLD) signal is well characterized in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) field, studies investigating the shape and properties of the negative BOLD HRF, often observed in the default mode network (DMN) regions, are rare. In this study, we first investigated the linearity of the...