Experimental Brain Research
June 1, 2013
Briony J. Catlow, Shijie Song, Daniel Paredes et al.
266 citations
Psilocybin, a serotonin 2A receptor agonist, facilitates extinction of conditioned fear responses in mice, with low doses producing faster extinction than high doses or saline. The drug also reduces hippocampal neurogenesis in a dose-dependent manner, but the low doses that enhanced extinction did not decrease neurogenesis and instead showed a trend toward increase. This suggests that psilocybin's effect on fear extinction may involve brain regions other than the hippocampus, such as the amygdala, which processes fear perception. Psilocybin and similar agents warrant exploration as potential treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder and related conditions.
Experimental Brain Research
March 15, 2016
James Danckert, Colleen Merrifield
203 citations
Boredom arises when people cannot engage with their surroundings even though they want to. It feels negative and is linked to depression and aggression. Using brain scans, researchers found that during boring tasks and boredom-inducing videos, a brain region called the anterior insula cortex showed activity that moved in the opposite direction from the default mode network (DMN), a set of regions active when the mind wanders. In contrast, when participants felt interested, the anterior insula worked in sync with both the DMN and attentional control regions. This suggests boredom reflects a failure to engage brain networks needed for focusing attention during monotonous activities.
Experimental Brain Research
March 1, 2015
Tomohisa Asai
40 citations
The rubber hand illusion (RHI) makes people feel that a fake hand is their own when they see it stroked in sync with their own hidden hand. This illusion typically causes a sense that their real hand has shifted toward the fake hand (proprioceptive drift). Two experiments show that participants' actual hand, resting on a movable board, physically moved toward the rubber hand during synchronous stroking. Even when the board was fixed, participants unconsciously pushed force toward the rubber hand. These results suggest that awareness of one's body and one's actions are tightly linked, forming a unified sense of self as a single agent.
Experimental Brain Research
September 1, 2018
James Head, William S Helton
39 citations
Mind-wandering is thought to involve perceptual decoupling, where attention shifts away from external tasks. The standard method for studying mind-wandering relies on participants reporting their mental state after a behavior, which may not accurately capture real-time awareness. An alternative approach presented a word before a catch trial; after the trial, participants reported awareness of the word, tried to recognize it, and indicated whether they were on- or off-task. Explicit and implicit awareness of the word were independent of self-reported mind-wandering. This contradicts the idea that mind-wandering reports reflect perceptual decoupling. Instead, such reports may be post-hoc explanations for performance errors.
Experimental Brain Research
May 4, 2025
Ceyda Özler, Esra Özkan, Narges Shomalizadeh et al.
1 citation
Ketamine and rapastinel both produce rapid and sustained antidepressant-like effects in mice, despite having opposing actions on the NMDAR. Using a chronic unpredictable mild stress model in 46 male mice, the study found that both drugs restored reduced BDNF concentrations in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus and reduced anhedonia and passive coping behavior. A CaMKII inhibitor, TatCN21, unexpectedly enhanced rapastinel's effects but blocked ketamine's effects, indicating that the CaMKII/CREB pathway plays a differential role in mediating these antidepressant-like actions. The findings suggest distinct mechanisms for these two rapid-acting antidepressants.
Experimental Brain Research
February 17, 2026
Eleonora Malloggi, Enrica L Santarcangelo, Ursula Debarnot
Breath-holding duration increases across repeated trials regardless of whether a person imagines normal breathing or focuses on the sensation of holding their breath. Hypnotizability, imagery abilities, and interoceptive sensibility together influence this improvement and the accompanying subjective experience and autonomic responses. In 33 healthy participants classified as low-to-medium or medium-to-high hypnotizables, breath-holding duration grew with practice under both cognitive conditions. Heart rate rose more during motor imagery than during internally focused attention, while skin conductance decreased similarly in both tasks. Individual differences in imagery and interoceptive awareness masked any direct effect of hypnotizability on the experience and heart rate changes.