Clinical trials suggest that a single dose of psilocybin may be an effective treatment for substance use disorders. Choice impulsivity is a value-based decision-making bias that predicts drug-intake escalation and is commonly associated with substance use disorders. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex regulates choice impulsivity and is enriched with 5-HT2A receptors that mediate effects of...
In the neocortex, neuronal processing of sensory events is significantly influenced by their predictability. A common example is the suppression of responses to repetitive stimuli in sensory cortices, a phenomenon known as habituation. Within a sensory information stream, whenever a novel stimulus deviates from expectations, enhanced brain responses are observed. Mismatch negativity (MMN), the...
Social withdrawal is a core negative symptom of schizophrenia and remains poorly understood at the molecular level. Dysregulation of the endocannabinoid system has been implicated in social behavior, yet its downstream signaling mechanisms are not fully characterized. In this context, this study examined the effects of the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibitor, URB597, on CREB expression...
Continuous interactions between respiration and cortical rhythms influence how individuals adaptively perceive their environment. However, the intricate relationship among respiration, cortical rhythms, and perceptual function remains elusive. Breathing is a flexible process that can be partially voluntarily controlled. This study leveraged this unique characteristic to probe how...
ABSTRACT The psychedelic psilocybin has gained popularity in recent years as a therapy for treatment‐resistant depression and has been reported to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. Psilocybin's active metabolite, psilocin, possesses a binding affinity for serotonin receptors as well as for the serotonin transporter (5‐HTT). We recently reported that in contrast to wild‐type mice,...
Despite a renewed scientific interest in lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), its local neural effects remain underexplored. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study explored and compared LSD-induced changes in local activity (amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations: ALFF) and local connectivity (regional homogeneity: ReHo), assessing their relationship to regional receptor density....
Several areas of cognitive neuroscience tackle traditional philosophical questions. Among the range of problems, two closely related issues will be addressed in more detail from both neurobiological and philosophical perspectives: the relationship between mind and matter and the nature of perception. Neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies are reviewed that examine the connection...
Resting‐state functional connectivity analyses have been used to examine synchrony in neural networks in substance use disorders (SUDs), with the default mode network (DMN) one of the most studied. Prior research has generally found less DMN synchrony during use and greater synchrony during cessation, although little research has utilized this method with opioid use. This study examined resting...
Understanding what makes us conscious is one of the major frontiers of science. There are two main approaches to the mystery of consciousness. The first regards conscious states (i.e., being conscious) and how certain global states (e.g., of arousal) can support the formation of any conscious experience. Insights into the neural processes underlying the capacity for consciousness stem from...
Abstract Psychedelic drugs have profound effects on perception, cognition and mood. How psychedelics affect neural signaling to produce these effects remains poorly understood. We investigated the effect of the classic psychedelic psilocybin on neural activity patterns and spatial encoding in the retrosplenial cortex of head‐fixed mice navigating on a treadmill. The place specificity of neurons...
Virtual reality (VR)-guided motor imagery (MI) is a widely used approach for motor rehabilitation, especially for patients with severe motor impairments. Most approaches provide visual guidance from the first-person perspective (1PP). MI training with visual guidance from the third-person perspective (3PP) remains largely unexplored. We argue that 3PP MI training has its own advantages and can...
Monitoring the reality status of conscious experience is essential for a human being to interact successfully with the external world. Despite its importance for everyday functioning, reality monitoring can systematically become erroneous, for example, while dreaming or during hallucinatory experiences. To investigate brain processes associated with reality monitoring occurring online during an...
In recent decades, the neuroscientific community has moved from describing the neural underpinnings of mental phenomena-as characterized by experimental psychology and philosophy of mind-to attempting to redefine those mental phenomena based on neural findings. Nowadays, many are intrigued by the idea that neuroscience might provide the "missing piece" that would allow philosophers (and, to an...
The conventional medical paradigm often focuses on deficits and impairments, failing to capture the rich tapestry of experiences and abilities inherent in neurodiversity conditions. In this article, we introduce the 3E-Cognition perspective, offering a paradigm shift by emphasizing the dynamic interplay between the brain, body, and environment in shaping cognitive processes. The perspective...
The 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) has long been used non-medically, and it is currently under investigation for its potential therapeutic benefits. Both uses may be related to its ability to enhance empathy, sociability, emotional processing and its anxiolytic effects. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these effects, and their specificity to MDMA compared to other stimulants,...
Abstract Psychoactive substances obtained from botanicals have been applied for a wide variety of purposes in the rituals of different cultures for thousands of years. Classical psychedelics from N,N′‐dimethyltryptamine, psilocybin, mescaline and various lysergamides cause specific alterations in perception, emotion and cognition by acting through serotonin 5‐HT 2A receptor activation. Lysergic...
The present study aimed to investigate the spontaneous dynamics of large-scale brain networks underlying mindfulness as a dispositional trait, through resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) microstates analysis. Eighteen participants had attended a standardized mindfulness-based stress reduction training (MBSR), and 18 matched waitlist individuals (CTRL) were recorded at rest while they...
Consciousness is one of final questions for humans to tackle in neuroscience. Due to a lack of understanding of basic brain networks and mechanisms of functions, our knowledge of consciousness mainly stays at a theoretical level. Recent studies using brain imaging in humans and modern neuroscience techniques in animal studies reveal the basic brain network for consciousness. The projection from...
Mind blanking is a mental state in which attention does not bring any perceptual input into conscious awareness. As this state is still largely unexplored, we suggest that a comprehensive understanding of mind blanking can be achieved through a multifaceted approach combining self-assessment methods, neuroimaging and neuromodulation. In this article, we explain how electroencephalography and...
The goal of this study was to investigate the neurophysiological correlates of visual awareness, with a specific focus on its event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) features. To this aim, we tried to disentangle the proper neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) from other prerequisite and post-perceptual processing. To do so, we administered an orientation discrimination task, inducing a...
Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) exhibit a constellation of sensory and perceptual impairments, including hyporeactivity to external input. However, individuals with SSD also report subjective experiences of sensory flooding, suggesting sensory hyperexcitability. To identify the extent to which behavioural indices of hyperexcitability are related to...
Ketamine acts primarily through non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonism but has myriad downstream effects. Previously best known as an anaesthetic, analgesic or substance of abuse, it is now part of psychiatry’s toolkit as an anti-depressant (Price et al., 2022). Ketamine is also useful as a model of psychosis, reproducing symptoms and allowing examination of corresponding brain states. It was...
In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it is often assumed that there is a stable set within the relevant sensory modality. Within the visual modality, the debate has centred upon whether frontal or occipital activations are the best predictors of perceptual awareness. Although not accepted by all as definitive evidence, no-report and decoding studies have indicated that...
Abstract There has been an increasing trend towards the use of complexity analysis in quantifying neural activity measured by electroencephalography (EEG) signals. On top of revealing complex neuronal processes of the brain that may not be possible with linear approaches, EEG complexity measures have also demonstrated their potential as biomarkers of psychopathology such as depression and...
Brain waves, determined by electrical and magnetic brain recordings (e.g., EEG and MEG), and fluctuating behavioral responses, determined by response time or accuracy measures, are frequently taken to support discrete perception. For example, it has been proposed that humans experience only one conscious percept per brain wave (e.g., during one alpha cycle). However, the proposed link between...