Cell Reports
August 1, 2026
Rui Dai, Hyunwoo Jang, A. Hudetz et al.
Understanding the relationship of conscious states to large-scale brain dynamics remains a central challenge in neuroscience. Here, diverse pharmacological and physiological perturbations-including psychedelics, sleep, and propofol sedation-are used to examine integration-segregation organization of brain networks across altered states of consciousness in humans using functional MRI. Across...
Cell Reports
April 7, 2026
Nicolas Decat, Arthur Le Coz, Jade Sénéchal et al.
A popular view holds that mental experiences uniquely differ between wakefulness and sleep, yet recent work suggests continuity across these stages. Here, we address this question by examining the wake-sleep transition, a window marked by rapid shifts in wake/sleep stages and mental experiences. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) activity in 92 participants during two daytime resting...
Cell Reports
July 22, 2025
George Blackburne, Rosalind McAlpine, Marco S. Fabus et al.
10 citations
5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) is a psychedelic drug known for its uniquely profound effects on consciousness; however, it remains unknown how it affects the brain. We collected electroencephalography (EEG) data of 29 healthy individuals before and after inhaling a high dose (12-mg) of vaporized synthetic 5-MeO-DMT. We replicate results from rodents showing amplified low-frequency...
Cell Reports
July 22, 2025
Christof Koch
1 citation
Blackburne et al. track the electroencephalogram activity of volunteers inhaling a high dose of the powerful psychedelic 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, revealing profoundly slowed-down brain activity but no significant reduction of alpha band power that is typical of other psychedelics.1.
Cell Reports
May 27, 2025
Alexandra G Bardon, Jesus J Ballesteros, Scott L Brincat et al.
8 citations
Many anesthetics cause loss of consciousness despite having diverse underlying molecular and circuit actions. To explore the convergent effects of these drugs, we examine how anesthetic doses of ketamine and dexmedetomidine affect bilateral oscillations in the prefrontal cortex of nonhuman primates. Both anesthetics increase phase locking in the ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,...
Cell Reports
May 21, 2025
Lace M Riggs, Sage Aronson, Ta-Chung M Mou et al.
2 citations
An acute increase in excitatory synaptic transmission contributes to the rapid antidepressant actions of neuroplastogens, including ketamine and its bioactive metabolite, (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine (HNK). It is hypothesized that drug-induced metaplastic changes in synaptic strength account for therapeutically relevant behavioral adaptations in vivo. Using the plasticity-deficient Wistar Kyoto...
Cell Reports
March 25, 2025
Ulysse Klatzmann, Sean Froudist-Walsh, Daniel P Bliss et al.
14 citations
Conscious access is suggested to involve "ignition," an all-or-none activation across cortical areas. To elucidate this phenomenon, we carry out computer simulations of a detection task using a mesoscale connectome-based model for the multiregional macaque cortex. The model uncovers a dynamic bifurcation mechanism that gives rise to ignition in a network of associative regions. A hierarchical...
Cell Reports
January 28, 2025
Yue Hu, Yifan Feng, Huoqing Luo et al.
6 citations
Dissociation, characterized by altered consciousness and perception, underlies multiple mental disorders, but the specific neuronal subtypes involved remain elusive. In mice, we find that dissociation-inducing doses of ketamine significantly inhibit retrosplenial cortex (RSC) parvalbumin interneurons (PV-INs), enhancing delta oscillations (1-3 Hz) and delta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling (δ-γ...
Cell Reports
December 24, 2024
Lim-Anna Sieu, Shobhit Singla, Jiayang Liu et al.
8 citations
Patients with focal temporal lobe seizures often experience loss of consciousness associated with cortical slow waves, like those in deep sleep. Previous work in rat models suggests that decreased subcortical arousal causes depressed cortical function during focal seizures. However, these studies were performed under light anesthesia, making it impossible to correlate conscious behavior with...
Cell Reports
July 23, 2024
Kexin Jiang, You Zheng, Liting Zeng et al.
12 citations
Increasing global concerns about psychoactive substance addiction and psychotic disorders highlight the need for comprehensive research into the structure-function relationship governing ligand recognition between these substances and their receptors in the brain. Recent studies indicate the significant involvement of trace amine-associated receptor 1 (TAAR1) in the signaling regulation of the...
Cell Reports
April 23, 2024
Adeeti Aggarwal, Jennifer Luo, Helen Chung et al.
17 citations
The relationship between sensory stimuli and perceptions is brain-state dependent: in wakefulness, suprathreshold stimuli evoke perceptions; under anesthesia, perceptions are abolished; and during dreaming and in dissociated states, percepts are internally generated. Here, we exploit this state dependence to identify brain activity associated with internally generated or stimulus-evoked...
Cell Reports
August 29, 2023
Eli J Müller, Brandon R Munn, Michelle J. Redinbaugh et al.
The neurobiological mechanisms of arousal and anesthesia remain poorly understood. Recent evidence highlights the key role of interactions between the cerebral cortex and the diffusely projecting matrix thalamic nuclei. Here, we interrogate these processes in a whole-brain corticothalamic neural mass model endowed with targeted and diffusely projecting thalamocortical nuclei inferred from...
Cell Reports
July 25, 2023
Gal Vishne, Edden M Gerber, Robert T. Knight et al.
Instances of sustained stationary sensory input are ubiquitous. However, previous work focused almost exclusively on transient onset responses. This presents a critical challenge for neural theories of consciousness, which should account for the full temporal extent of experience. To address this question, we use intracranial recordings from ten human patients with epilepsy to view diverse...
Cell Reports
March 28, 2023
Vern Lewis, Emma M. Bonniwell, Janelle K. Lanham et al.
129 citations
Hallucinations limit widespread therapeutic use of psychedelics as rapidly acting antidepressants. Here we profiled the non-hallucinogenic lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) analog 2-bromo-LSD (2-Br-LSD) at more than 33 aminergic G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). 2-Br-LSD shows partial agonism at several aminergic GPCRs, including 5-HT2A, and does not induce the head-twitch response (HTR) in...
Cell Reports
August 1, 2022
Ryan H. Gumpper, Jonathan F. Fay, Bryan L. Roth
49 citations
-transducer-coupled structures of three representative isoforms (INI, VGV, and VSV) with the selective drug lorcaserin (Belviq) and the classic psychedelic psilocin. We also provide a comprehensive analysis of agonist activation and constitutive activity across all 24 protein isoforms. Collectively, these findings reveal a unique hydrogen-bonding network located on intracellular loop 2 that is...
Cell Reports
September 17, 2021
Carli Domenico, Daniel Haggerty, Xiang Mou et al.
16 citations
Summary: Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) produces hallucinations, which are perceptions uncoupled from the external environment. How LSD alters neuronal activities in vivo that underlie abnormal perceptions is unknown. Here, we show that when rats run along a familiar track, hippocampal place cells under LSD reduce their firing rates, their directionality, and their interaction with visual...
Cell Reports
August 1, 2021
Pei-Yi Lin, Z. Z. Ma, Melissa Mahgoub et al.
97 citations
SUMMARY Ketamine produces rapid antidepressant action in patients with major depression or treatment-resistant depression. Studies have identified brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its receptor, tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB), as necessary for the antidepressant effects and underlying ketamine-induced synaptic potentiation in the hippocampus. Here, we delete BDNF or TrkB in...
Cell Reports
May 1, 2021
Zirui Huang, Vijay Tarnal, Phillip E. Vlisides et al.
119 citations
Conscious access to sensory information is likely gated at an intermediate site between primary sensory and transmodal association cortices, but the structure responsible remains unknown. We perform functional neuroimaging to determine the neural correlates of conscious access using a volitional mental imagery task, a report paradigm not confounded by motor behavior. Titrating propofol to loss...
Cell Reports
March 16, 2021
Clément M. Garin, Yuki Hori, Stefan Everling et al.
SUMMARY The human default mode network (DMN) is engaged at rest and in cognitive states such as self-directed thoughts. Interconnected homologous cortical areas in primates constitute a network considered as the equivalent. Here, based on a cross-species comparison of the DMN between humans and non-hominoid primates (macaques, marmosets, and mouse lemurs), we report major dissimilarities in...
Cell Reports
June 1, 2018
Calvin Ly, Alexandra C. Greb, Lindsay P. Cameron et al.
1,158 citations
Atrophy of neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a key role in the pathophysiology of depression and related disorders. The ability to promote both structural and functional plasticity in the PFC has been hypothesized to underlie the fast-acting antidepressant properties of the dissociative anesthetic ketamine. Here, we report that, like ketamine, serotonergic psychedelics are capable of...