Research published in PNAS Nexus - The Consciousness Library

Correction to: Principal bundle geometry of qualia: Understanding the quality of consciousness from symmetry.

PNAS Nexus September 2026 correction

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag261.].

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag313 Full text

Neural mechanisms of awareness of action.

PNAS Nexus July 1, 2026 David S Jin, Oumayma Agdali, Taruna Yadav et al.

Awareness of action (AoA), or conscious awareness of an action just performed, is an important part of daily experience with major practical and ethical relevance, yet the neural mechanisms of AoA remain largely unknown. The main barrier to studying AoA is a lack of experimental paradigms to directly compare neural activity in aware versus unaware actions. Borrowing from the field of perceptual...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag220 Full text Attention Consciousness Event-related potentials Perception +1

Atlas of intracranial electroencephalography complexity across cortical regions and global states of consciousness in the human brain.

PNAS Nexus March 1, 2026 Lina Jeantin, Pierre Bourdillon, Marc Guenot et al.

Electroencephalography (EEG) signal complexity reflects the richness of brain activity and is considered a marker of consciousness. However, its normative values across physiological conscious states using intracranial EEG (iEEG) across cortical areas remain poorly defined. We aimed at referencing iEEG complexity in the human brain and its links with global states of consciousness. We analyzed...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag048 Full text Consciousness Drug-resistant epilepsy Entropy Intracranial electroencephalography +1

Mindfulness meditation reduces symptoms and modulates neural circuitry in comorbid internet gaming disorder and depression.

PNAS Nexus September 1, 2025 Xin Luo, Huabin Wang, Xuefeng Xu et al.

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) frequently co-occurs with depression. IGD and depression have overlapping and distinct biological and psychological substrates. Mindfulness meditation (MM) has demonstrated efficacy in treating IGD and depression separately. However, its efficacy in treating concurrent IGD and depression and the possible brain mechanisms remain largely unknown. Seventy individuals...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf277 Full text Depression Craving Internet gaming disorder Mindfulness meditation +1

Prediction of hallucinogen persisting perception disorder and thought disturbance symptoms following psychedelic use.

PNAS Nexus April 1, 2025 Katie Zhou, David de Wied, Robin Carhart-Harris et al. 9 citations

Interest in using psychedelic drugs to treat psychiatric disorders is growing rapidly. While modern controlled clinical trials show a favorable safety and efficacy profile, it remains unclear if the risk of side effects would increase with broader use in more heterogeneous populations. To address this, we investigated the frequency and baseline predictors of delusional ideation, magical...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae560 Full text Hppd Adverse effects Delusional ideation Magical thinking +3

Predicting attentional focus: Heartbeat-evoked responses and brain dynamics during interoceptive and exteroceptive processing.

PNAS Nexus December 1, 2024 Emilia Fló, Laouen Belloli, Álvaro Cabana et al. 10 citations

Attention shapes our consciousness content and perception by increasing the probability of becoming aware and/or better encoding a selection of the incoming inner or outer sensory world. Engaging interoceptive and exteroceptive attention should elicit distinctive neural responses to visceral and external stimuli and could be useful in detecting covert command-following in unresponsive patients....

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae531 Full text Hep Attention Disorders of consciousness Exteroception +1

Predicting individual differences in peak emotional response

PNAS Nexus February 29, 2024 Félix Schoeller, Leonardo Christov-Moore, Caitlin Lynch et al.

Abstract Why does the same experience elicit strong emotional responses in some individuals while leaving others largely indifferent? Is the variance influenced by who people are (personality traits), how they feel (emotional state), where they come from (demographics), or a unique combination of these? In this 2,900+ participants study, we disentangle the factors that underlie individual...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae066 Full text

Identifying content-invariant neural signatures of perceptual vividness.

PNAS Nexus February 1, 2024 Benjy Barnett, Lau M Andersen, Stephen M Fleming et al. 7 citations

Some conscious experiences are more vivid than others. Although perceptual vividness is a key component of human consciousness, how variation in this magnitude property is registered by the human brain is unknown. A striking feature of neural codes for magnitude in other psychological domains, such as number or reward, is that the magnitude property is represented independently of its sensory...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae061 Full text Meg Awareness FMRI Perception

To be or not to be hallucinating: Implications of hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences and lucid dreaming for brain disorders.

PNAS Nexus December 19, 2023 Guglielmo Foffani 17 citations

The boundaries between waking and sleeping-when falling asleep (hypnagogic) or waking up (hypnopompic)-can be challenging for our ability to monitor and interpret reality. Without proper understanding, bizarre but relatively normal hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences can be misinterpreted as psychotic hallucinations (occurring, by definition, in the fully awake state), potentially leading to...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad442 Full text Lucid dreaming Vivid perceptions Dream-like perceptions Common "hallucinations" +15

Neural responses underlying extraordinary altruists’ generosity for socially distant others

PNAS Nexus June 13, 2023 Shawn A Rhoads, Katherine O’Connell, Kathryn Berluti et al. 25 citations

Abstract Most people are much less generous toward strangers than close others, a bias termed social discounting. But people who engage in extraordinary real-world altruism, like altruistic kidney donors, show dramatically reduced social discounting. Why they do so is unclear. Some prior research suggests reduced social discounting requires effortfully overcoming selfishness via recruitment of...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad199 Full text

A generative adversarial model of intrusive imagery in the human brain.

PNAS Nexus January 23, 2023 Cody A Cushing, Alexei J Dawes, Stefan G Hofmann et al.

The mechanisms underlying the subjective experiences of mental disorders remain poorly understood. This is partly due to long-standing over-emphasis on behavioral and physiological symptoms and a de-emphasis of the patient's subjective experiences when searching for treatments. Here, we provide a new perspective on the subjective experience of mental disorders based on findings in neuroscience...

DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac265 Full text

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