Brain Communications
June 22, 2021
C. Peinkhofer, C. Martial, H. Cassol et al.
49 citations
Near-death experiences occur across cultures, suggesting a biological basis. This work tests the hypothesis that thanatosis, or death-feigning—a last-resort defense seen in animals from insects to humans—is the evolutionary origin of near-death experiences. Thanatosis is a highly preserved survival strategy. Humans attacked by animal, human, or modern predators can exhibit both thanatosis and near-death experiences, and their phenomenology and effects overlap. The evidence indicates thanatosis is the evolutionary foundation of near-death experiences, with the shared biological purpose of survival. Language may have transformed these stereotyped death-feigning events into the rich perceptions of near-death experiences, extending them to non-predatory situations.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2024
Jakub Vohryzek, Joana Cabral, Louis-David Lord et al.
33 citations
Psilocybin therapy for depression shows promise, but its causal mechanisms are unknown. By comparing brain dynamics in treatment responders (those with >50% symptom reduction) and non-responders before treatment, researchers used large-scale brain modeling to identify brain regions whose perturbation could shift a depressive brain state to a healthy one. The identified regions correlated with density maps of serotonin receptors 5-HT2a and 5-HT1a, where psilocin (psilocybin's active metabolite) acts as an agonist. These findings provide causal mechanistic evidence linking specific brain regions and serotonergic transmission to recovery from depression via psilocybin.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2024
Ashley Ghaw, Alisha Chunduri, Arnold Chang et al.
13 citations
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) produced a dose-dependent increase in negative blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal, indicating decreased brain activity, in awake rats. The most affected regions were the primary olfactory system, prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and hippocampus. Contrary to the hypothesis that LSD would increase activity in the prefrontal cortex and thalamus while decreasing hippocampal activity, the results showed an acute decrease in activity across these areas. However, functional connectivity increased between the thalamus and somatosensory cortex, and between the cerebellar nuclei and surrounding brainstem areas. The enhanced thalamus-sensorimotor connectivity aligns with human studies, while the unexpected increase in cerebellar nuclei connectivity raises questions about its role in hallucinogenic effects.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2025
Eugénie Cataldo, Eda Tipura, Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua et al.
4 citations
About 30% of stroke patients show a subtle form of body part disownership—a feeling that a hand, arm, leg, or part of the face does not belong to them—that standard verbal interviews miss. Using brain lesion analyses and network-based modeling in 105 hospitalized stroke patients and 55 healthy controls, the study found that this covert disownership involves widespread disconnections between temporo-occipital and parietal networks, as well as fronto-basal and occipital pathways, rather than damage to a single brain region. Key structures implicated include the right insula and basal ganglia for upper limb ownership, and the left superior longitudinal fasciculus for right hand disownership. The findings suggest that sensitive, non-verbal assessments are needed to detect this disorder early after stroke, and that understanding brain damage as network disruption can improve rehabilitation.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2024
Yasir Çatal, Georg Northoff
3 citations
A commentary on a study about brain dynamics that predict response to psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. The original study by Vohryzek and colleagues investigated how brain activity patterns before and during psilocybin treatment might identify which patients with treatment-resistant depression are likely to benefit. The commentary discusses the implications of these findings for understanding how psychedelics work in the brain and for developing personalized treatment approaches.
Brain Communications
January 4, 2022
Daniel Kondziella, Charlotte Martial
1 citation
This peer-reviewed work explores the intersections of subjectivity, transparency, ontology, epistemology, philosophy, political science, law, paranormal experiences and beliefs, Jungian analytical psychology, and religious studies and spiritual practices. It examines how these diverse fields inform understandings of human experience and belief systems, arguing for a nuanced approach to studying phenomena that challenge conventional empirical frameworks. The text discusses theoretical and philosophical perspectives, integrating insights from multiple disciplines to address questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and spiritual or paranormal claims. It suggests that interdisciplinary dialogue enriches scholarly inquiry into these complex topics.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2026
Raina Vin, Jordan Galbraith, Rashina Seabury et al.
Hallucinations may arise from an over-reliance on prior knowledge during perception, potentially as a compensatory response to degraded sensory information. This perspective unifies visual hallucinations across Charles Bonnet syndrome, dementia with Lewy bodies, and psychosis within a Bayesian computational framework. In each disorder, sensory signal disruptions at different levels of the visual processing hierarchy produce hallucinations with distinct characteristics, reflecting the localization and overtness of the disruption. Discrete sensory disruptions in Charles Bonnet syndrome translate to hallucinations via known circuits, while different disruptions in dementia with Lewy bodies and schizophrenia lead to distinct phenomenology, comorbidities, and circuit involvement. This framework may help identify pathophysiologically distinct patient subgroups and guide new interventions.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2025
Christos Ganos, Michael A Ferguson, Kurt Gray et al.
Religious traditions worldwide include specific actions, termed religious motor behaviours, that can be classified using concepts from movement neuroscience and neurology. These behaviours range from decreased motor output, such as ritualistic silence, to increased output like ritual dances. They also vary in the experience of volition: some involve a heightened sense of personal control, while others feel controlled by an external divine source. Examples include repetitive rituals, automatisms with altered volition, and possession-like states. The authors show parallels between these religious behaviours and motor phenomena in neurological disorders, particularly functional neurological symptoms, without pathologizing them. The work highlights how movement neuroscience and religious activity can inform each other.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2026
Sven Stuiver, Prejaas K.b. Tewarie, Julia C M Pottkämper et al.
After a generalized seizure induced by electroconvulsive therapy, recovery of self-orientation—the ability to report one's own identity—depends on restoration of effective communication between the cortex and thalamus. Analysis of 345 EEG recordings from 33 patients showed that immediately after seizure termination, the thalamus suppressed the cortex with minimal intrinsic activity. During recovery, cortical gain decreased while corticothalamic and intrathalamic gains increased, reflecting progressive restoration of thalamic excitatory drive. Self-orientation was regained when model parameters converged to a characteristic regime, with relatively small variability across patients, suggesting a critical threshold for re-emergence of reportable consciousness.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2026
Tobias Bauer, Charlotte Gauvry, Sebastian Markett et al.
Default-mode network activity persists in brain hemispheres surgically isolated from the rest of the nervous system by hemispherotomy for severe epilepsy, meeting a necessary condition for consciousness. In connected hemispheres, default-mode network patterns were preserved and similar to controls. Isolated hemispheres showed preserved positive default-mode network connectivity, but negative connectivity was significantly reduced. In two patients scanned before and after surgery, the default-mode network remained detectable but divided between isolated and connected hemispheres. These findings indicate that default-mode network activity alone does not confirm conscious awareness, encouraging further study of neural correlates of consciousness in isolated hemispheres.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2026
Aidan Hurst, Victoria M Bajo
N,N-Diisopropyltryptamine (DiPT) is a psychedelic drug that selectively distorts pitch perception, making sounds seem lower in pitch than they actually are. Hurst and Bajo propose specific neural mechanisms that could explain this frequency-selective effect. They suggest that this property might be harnessed as a potential therapeutic intervention for tinnitus, a condition characterized by phantom sounds or ringing in the ears. The paper outlines a theoretical framework linking the drug's auditory effects to possible clinical applications.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2026
Ying Wang, Chenglong Cao, Hao Chen et al.
Poor surgical outcomes after microvascular decompression for trigeminal neuralgia are linked to maladaptive central neural reorganization rather than ineffective surgery. Among 60 patients, those with poor outcomes showed enhanced functional connectivity between default mode, somatomotor, and control networks and subcortical limbic structures (amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus) compared to those with good outcomes. A classifier using these connections achieved 86% accuracy in distinguishing outcome groups. Longer disease duration correlated with decreased fractional anisotropy in sensorimotor white matter tracts. The findings suggest that pain becomes cognitively and affectively 'self-embedded', transitioning from a sensory event to a persistent self-referential narrative that sustains pain even after peripheral trigger removal, reframing some trigeminal neuralgia as a central network disorder.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2026
Dorottya Szocs, Dian Lyu, Andrea I. Luppi et al.
The pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus shows the strongest functional connectivity change with loss of consciousness under anesthesia in healthy volunteers, while the ventral-latero-ventral nucleus shows the strongest change in patients with disorders of consciousness. These nuclei exhibit distinct connectivity patterns with higher-order brain networks such as the default mode and executive control networks. In patients, the neural connectivity biomarker mirrored behavioral changes, suggesting potential clinical relevance for targeted deep brain stimulation therapy.
Brain Communications
January 1, 2025
Mikki Schantell, Mia C Lulli, Kellen M McDonald et al.
Cannabis use among people with HIV (PWH) is associated with stronger gamma oscillations during a somatosensory gating task, suggesting a potential protective effect on inhibitory neural processing. In a cross-sectional study of 108 participants (cannabis users and non-users with and without HIV), PWH who used cannabis showed elevated oscillatory gamma activity in the primary somatosensory cortex compared to PWH who did not use cannabis, who also exhibited elevated spontaneous gamma activity. Longer time since HIV diagnosis correlated with less efficient inhibitory processing only in PWH who did not use cannabis, indicating regular cannabis use may mitigate HIV-related neural deficits.