bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
November 4, 2026
Miruna Rascu, Jan Grohn, Sara Costi et al.
preprint
Understanding others' emotions requires continuously integrating noisy affective information as emotional states change over time. Research on emotion processing, however, has thus far focused on static environments or discrete events. Here, we developed a continuous emotional evidence integration task in which participants had to track the average emotional state in a rapidly changing sequence...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
November 4, 2026
Brody A. Deming, Jingliang Zhang, Josephine M. Brown-Leung et al.
preprint
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a prominent neurodevelopmental disorder affecting approximately 3.2% of children in the United States. Although ASD has traditionally been considered a polygenic disorder, advances in genetic testing have identified individual genes that can contribute to its development. Large-scale whole-exome sequencing has identified variants in SCN2A , which encodes the...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
November 3, 2026
Aurelija Ippolito, Anthony Galione, Gary Gilmour et al.
preprint
Currently there is major research interest in the therapeutic potential of serotonergic psychedelic drugs across a range of neuropsychiatric disorders 1-3 . Such drugs exert psychedelic and neuroplastic effects, both likely linked to therapeutic outcomes, via agonist action at the 5-HT 2A receptor 4-7 . This receptor is assumed to generate downstream intracellular signalling via an interaction...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
November 3, 2026
Ashley Michelle Campos, Gayathri Batchalli Maruthy, Genevieve Cumming et al.
preprint
Trait mindfulness is a dispositional ability characterized by awareness, non-judgment, and acceptance of internal and external experiences. Stress is associated with numerous psychological and physical health concerns including depression and anxiety. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have consistently been shown to reduce perceived stress and improve a variety of other health outcomes....
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 27, 2026
Fabiola Muro-Villanueva, Ye Won Ham, Justin Williams et al.
preprint
Plants from distantly related lineages can produce identical neuroactive molecules, many of which have been independently adopted across human societies for their medicinal and cognition-altering effects. This phenomenon is exemplified by the traditional use of Syrian rue (Peganum harmala) and the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) for medicine and ritual. Despite diverging over 100 million...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 22, 2026
Gianluca Gaglioti, Anna Cattani, Thierry Ralph Nieus et al.
preprint
Complexity, commonly defined as the coexistence of integration and differentiation, is a fundamental property of thalamocortical networks and is regarded as a prerequisite for adaptive brain function and consciousness. A variety of metrics have been developed to estimate neural complexity from recorded activity and are increasingly employed in both research and clinical settings. Yet, the...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 19, 2026
Nicolas Clairis, Luigi Francesco Saccaro, Sylvain Delplanque et al.
preprint
Mindfulness-based interventions are known to enhance emotion regulation and stress management, yet their neural mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Effective coping strategies for emotion regulation and stress management would be particularly beneficial for healthcare students, frequently exposed to highly stressful situations. Based on prior work implicating hippocampal-somatomotor...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 19, 2026
Jack R. Waters, Brian Madeira, Michael Neil Shadlen et al.
preprint
Time estimation is critical to many cognitive operations, including decision-making, working memory, and action planning. Neural correlates of interval timing have been described across multiple cortical and subcortical networks, both at a single-neuron level (as ramping activity) and population level (as dynamical motifs). Low-dose ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic and potent antidepressant,...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 16, 2026
Vitor Trinca, Francisco Prosdocimi, Pedro Côrtes et al.
preprint
Background: Banisteriopsis caapi is the Amazonian liana that provides the β-carboline-rich vine component of ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian psychoactive preparation used in Indigenous and ceremonial contexts. The species encompasses culturally recognized ethnovarieties, some differing in stem architecture. Despite its cultural, ecological, and pharmacological importance, B. caapi remains...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 16, 2026
Janis Karan Hesse, Frank F Lanfranchi, Conor McGrory et al.
preprint
Summary The neural correlates of consciousness remain elusive 1 . Previous studies found that high-level visual cortex is weakly modulated by conscious perception 2,3 , yet a pure signal of conscious perception has not been found anywhere in the brain. Here, we employed Neuropixels recordings across multiple face patches in inferotemporal and prefrontal cortex during a binocular flash...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 15, 2026
Musashi Yamakawa, 博之 吉留, Haruki Kawagoe et al.
preprint
The afferent vagus nerve transmits interoceptive signals to the brain but a systematic understanding of how vagal signals affect brain-wide neuronal dynamics remains elusive. Here, comprehensive spatiotemporal analyses across the entire mouse brain revealed that vagus nerve stimulation activated neuronal ensembles within the default mode network (DMN). In contrast, vagal-independent mechanisms...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 14, 2026
Greg Cooper, Devon Stoliker, Sebastian Vincent Astl Delgado et al.
preprint
Language helps organise experience into an idiosyncratic, temporally extended sense of self. We therefore used fMRI to investigate whether greater similarity between participants in the activity of language-associated brain regions accompanied psilocybin-induced loss of selfhood. Participants heard music and viewed moving clouds at baseline and after 19 mg psilocybin. At each brain location and...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 13, 2026
Claudio Agnorelli, Joseph Peill, Danielle Kurtin et al.
preprint
Neuroplasticity, the brain's capacity to reorganise its structure and function, is a transdiagnostic feature across psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases and a putative mechanism of action for pharmacological interventions. [11C]-UCBJ positron emission tomography (PET), which quantifies synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A) density, offers the most direct in vivo measure of human...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 11, 2026
Ratna Mahathi Vuruputuri, Vaishnavi Reghunath, Shreyasi Mukherjee et al.
preprint
Abstract Background The head-twitch response (HTR) is a serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT 2A R) dependent behavioral correlate of serotonergic psychedelic action in rodent models. Although cortical 5-HT 2A Rs have been implicated in HTRs, the contribution of specific cortical circuits to this behavior remains poorly defined, with a few reports implicating the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in the...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 11, 2026
Bingchuan Liu, David A. Bjånes, Liang She et al.
preprint
Abstract Understanding the neural correlates of consciousness poses a central challenge in neuroscience, with longstanding debate over which cortical areas underlie subjective sensory perception 1–3 . In the tactile domain, posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and primary somatosensory cortex (S1) are candidate cortical substrates for neural correlates of consciousness due to their crucial roles in...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 2, 2026
Madison J Oulton, Gracious D. S. Kasheke, Kelly A. Meaney et al.
preprint
We have examined how ibogaine may enhance synaptic plasticity and neural repair. Extracellular efflux analysis showed that ibogaine (3, 10 or 30 μM) produced a rapid (<5 minutes) and concentration-dependent suppression of mitochondrial function and glycolysis in mouse cortical neurons. Cell-based imaging demonstrated this metabolic inhibition was preceded by an elevation of the mitochondrial...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 1, 2026
Adam P.D. Ponzi, Katsunori Miyahara, Keisuke Suzuki
preprint
The neural mechanisms underlying spontaneous perceptual switches during bistable perception, particularly the dynamic interplay between large-scale brain networks, remain incompletely understood. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in six participants and a bistable kinetic depth effect (KDE) stimulus, we investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of brain activity associated...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 28, 2026
Gabriela Sawicka, Marian Martínez-Marín, Christopher Timmermann et al.
preprint
Psychedelic compounds such as N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) induce rapid and profound changes in conscious experience, requiring neuroimaging measures that capture how brain dynamics evolve across space and time. Emerging evidence suggests that rotational (vortex-like) dynamics may contribute to the coordination of large-scale neural activity. Here, we introduce two vorticity-based metrics;...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 21, 2026
Ryoichi Watanabe, Jue Wang, Masafumi Oizumi et al.
preprint
Whether subjective colour experience (e.g., experience of 'red') is shared across children and adults remains a foundational question in developmental psychology and consciousness research. To test this, we compared the relational structures of their colour experiences and identified the mapping that best preserved these structures. Using pairwise similarity judgements for 13 basic colours, we...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 21, 2026
Judith Kunze, Justus Student, Sarah Tune et al.
preprint
Non-invasive proxies of cortical excitation--inhibition (E:I) balance, are increasingly used to understand human neural dynamics; especially so the aperiodic (1/f) electroencephalographic (EEG) exponent. Ketamine, an NMDA-receptor antagonist, is thought to shift this balance toward excitation. Propofol, a GABAA-receptor agonist, should behave oppositely. Here we show that these pharmacological...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 18, 2026
Aurora Savino, Carla Liaci, Giorgio R. Merlo et al.
preprint
Background Classic psychedelics are serotonergic agents increasingly recognized for their ability to produce rapid and long-lasting therapeutic effects in several neuropsychiatric conditions, yet the molecular mechanisms that translate acute serotonergic perturbation into long-term brain adaptation remain poorly understood. Psychedelic action is commonly attributed to enhanced neuronal...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 13, 2026
Tae Jun Park, Sang Woong Park, Solah Park et al.
preprint
Abstract MK-801, a phencyclidine (PCP) derivative also known as dizocilpine, is a potent noncompetitive antagonist of the N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAr). The NMDAr plays a critical role in mediating excitatory synaptic transmission in the central nervous system (CNS) and is important in regulating synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory. MK-801 is known to induce schizophrenia-like...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 8, 2026
Tomokazu Tsurugizawa, Aya Takemura
preprint
A single injection of a subanesthetic dose of ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, induces schizophrenia-like behavior in mice. Previous studies investigated the effect of single injection of ketamine on behavior and c-Fos expression in mice dose-dependently. However, there has not been functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to investigate the effect of ketamine in mice. Here, we...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 8, 2026
Zefan Zheng, Darinka Trübutschek, Yongchun Cai et al.
preprint
Abstract Consciousness is mostly studied as if it were composed of independent snapshots, aggregating reports over trials and experimental contexts, disregarding any temporal aspect. However, almost nothing is known about how conscious experience spontaneously fluctuates in time. To shed light on the temporal dynamics of conscious awareness, we evaluated the temporal autocorrelation of...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 6, 2026
Adam Dawoud, Achla Gupta, Ivone Gomes et al.
preprint
Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) continues to be a pressing public health crisis, marked by high relapse rates and limited treatment options. Ketamine, a non-competitive N-Methyl-D-Aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, has emerged as a promising therapeutic for numerous psychiatric illnesses due to its robust antidepressant properties and glutamate-mediated synaptic plasticity. However, ketamine's...