Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
July 6, 2009
R. Nathan Spreng, Cheryl L. Grady
1,023 citations
A core brain network called the default mode network (DMN) supports three distinct self-referential processes: remembering the past, imagining the future, and understanding others' minds. Functional MRI scans revealed a common pattern of neural activation across all three processes within the DMN. Autobiographical remembering and prospection more strongly engaged midline DMN structures, while theory-of-mind reasoning more strongly engaged lateral DMN areas. Activity in a key DMN node, the medial prefrontal cortex, correlated with activity in other DMN regions during all three tasks. The findings suggest the DMN provides a shared neural foundation for simulating internal experiences.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
June 1, 2010
Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Athena Demertzi, Manuel Schabus et al.
460 citations
Resting brain activity reveals two anticorrelated cortical systems linked to conscious awareness: an extrinsic system (lateral fronto-parietal areas) associated with external awareness and an intrinsic system (medial brain areas) associated with internal awareness. In 31 healthy volunteers, external and internal awareness were significantly anticorrelated, with a mean switching frequency of 0.05 Hz, similar to BOLD fMRI slow oscillations. In 22 volunteers, fMRI showed that precuneus/posterior cingulate, anterior cingulate/mesiofrontal cortices, and parahippocampal areas (intrinsic system) correlated with internal awareness, while lateral fronto-parietal cortices (extrinsic system) correlated with external awareness.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
October 1, 2005
Olivia Carter, David C. Burr, John D. Pettigrew et al.
236 citations
A hallucinogenic drug that activates serotonin receptors, psilocybin, impaired healthy volunteers' ability to track moving objects but did not affect their spatial working memory. Blocking the 5-HT2A receptor with ketanserin before psilocybin did not prevent this attentional deficit, pointing to the 5-HT1A receptor as the likely cause. The authors suggest the impairment may stem from a reduced ability to filter out distractions rather than a loss of attentional capacity. Eight participants completed both tasks under placebo, psilocybin, ketanserin, and the combination.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
April 17, 2014
Benjamin Baird, Jonathan Smallwood, Antoine Lutz et al.
169 citations
When the mind wanders, the brain's response to sensory input becomes less consistent from one moment to the next, particularly in theta-band oscillations over parietal regions. Using an experience sampling method with continuous EEG, the authors found that task-unrelated thought reduced the P1 event-related potential, replicating prior work. Time-frequency analysis showed decreased theta-band phase-locking, indicating lower temporal fidelity in the brain's response to stimuli. Additionally, mind-wandering required more cortical processing to re-engage with a task. These results suggest that attentional states shape neural processing of sensory input by affecting the consistency of oscillatory responses.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 29, 2008
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
135 citations
The human mind has limited information processing capacity, as shown by the attentional blink—a failure to identify the second of two targets presented close together. This deficit is thought to arise from overinvesting limited resources in processing the first target. Previous research found that intensive meditation training aimed at reducing elaborate object processing decreased brain resource allocation to the first target and improved identification of the second.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
April 15, 2016
Maxine T. Sherman, Ryota Kanai, Anil K. Seth et al.
134 citations
Spontaneous alpha-band neural oscillations in the brain periodically transmit prior expectations to the visual cortex, biasing both objective decisions and subjective confidence before a stimulus appears. In a detection task with scalp EEG, prestimulus occipital alpha phase predicted the weighting of expectations on yes/no decisions and on confidence judgments, independent of attention. These findings suggest that alpha oscillations change the baseline from which evidence accumulation begins, shaping early visual processing and informing how expectations influence perception at the neural level.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
October 25, 2016
Benjamin W. Mooneyham, Michael D. Mrazek, Alissa J. Mrazek et al.
95 citations
During tasks requiring continuous engagement, the mind alternates between focused attention and mind-wandering. Using a dynamic functional connectivity approach with a sliding window, distinct brain states involving the executive control, salience, and default networks were identified during a sustained attention task focused on breathing sensations. The frequency of these states correlated oppositely with dispositional mindfulness, suggesting they correspond to focused attention and mind-wandering. A mindfulness intervention increased the frequency of the state associated with focused attention, especially in those who improved most in dispositional mindfulness. These findings support that mind-wandering involves corecruitment of executive and default network regions.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
August 15, 2002
Dan Lloyd
92 citations
Functional brain imaging and phenomenology can be combined to study human consciousness. Four preprocessed fMRI datasets from the National fMRI Data Center were reanalyzed: response competition, object representation, word reading, and spatial working memory. Phenomenology provided initial structures—phenomenal intentionality, superposition, and temporality—that guided empirical predictions. Multivariate analyses of 27 subjects revealed analogues of these structures, especially temporality. In a second approach, artificial neural networks were trained on 21 subjects to detect whether present experience contains past and future brain states; nets were successfully trained to extract aspects of relative past and future states compared to controls. The exploratory study concludes these neurophenomenological methods warrant further application.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
May 31, 2017
Lampros Perogamvros, Benjamin Baird, Mitja Seibold et al.
76 citations
Spontaneous thoughts occur during wakefulness, NREM sleep, and REM sleep, and all share activation in the midcingulate cortex. Waking thoughts additionally involve a medial prefrontal region linked to metacognition and have more metacognitive content than sleep thoughts. REM sleep thoughts are more social in content. The findings suggest a core neural substrate for thoughts across behavioral states, with medial prefrontal regions contributing to metacognitive qualities during wake.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
August 1, 2019
Anthony P Zanesco, Brandon G King, Chivon Powers et al.
40 citations
Improvements in perceptual discrimination from intensive meditation training can alter brain signals related to attention and perception, but only when the task difficulty is fixed rather than adjusted to match the person's improving ability. In two three-month meditation retreats, participants performed a continuous visual task while brain activity was recorded. When the target difficulty was held constant, training reduced declines in early sensory processing and shifted the timing of those brain signals. Changes in later processing stages correlated with better perceptual thresholds. No such brain changes occurred when task difficulty was increased to keep pace with participants' improving skill. The findings show that directed mental training can modify electrophysiological markers of attention and perception, depending on how task demands relate to the individual's capacity.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
November 1, 2024
Isaac N Treves, Kannammai Pichappan, Jude Hammoud et al.
35 citations
Greater trait mindfulness, measured by self-report scales, is consistently linked with reduced amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli, increased cortical thickness in frontal and insular regions, and decreased connectivity within the default-mode network, converging with findings from intervention studies and mindfulness experts. However, associations with EEG metrics and between-network resting-state fMRI remain inconclusive. The authors recommend larger samples, multivariate approaches, and careful reliability testing, urging a move away from simplistic explanations of mindfulness and brain function.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Johannes G. Ramaekers, Pablo Mallaroni, Lilian Kloft et al.
15 citations
In members of the Santo Daime church who regularly consume ayahuasca in a ritual setting, the brew's main psychoactive compound DMT drives feelings of oceanic boundlessness, visual restructuring, and ego dissolution, with these effects correlating with peak DMT concentration in the blood. However, measures of mental imagery—including visual perspective shifting, vividness of imagery, and associative thinking—did not noticeably differ between sober and ayahuasca conditions, though subjective cognitive flexibility was lower under ayahuasca. Two mental imagery measures (perspective shifts and cognitive flexibility) correlated with peak DMT levels. Long-term ayahuasca use may produce compensatory or neuroadaptive effects that dampen the acute impact on mental imagery.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Rajanikant Panda, Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Andrea Piarulli et al.
15 citations
During hypnosis, brain connectivity changes in ways that suggest more efficient cognitive processing and less mind-wandering. In nine healthy participants, hypnosis increased delta-wave connections between frontal brain regions and between frontal and parietal regions. It decreased alpha and beta-2 connections among frontal, parietal, and midline areas. Network analysis showed greater segregation of short-range connections in delta and alpha bands and greater integration of long-range connections in beta-2 bands. Frontal and right parietal electrodes became central hubs. These altered dynamics may reflect a modified balance between internal and external awareness networks.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 1, 2023
Charlotte Martial, Héléna Cassol, Mel Slater et al.
13 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) can be partially induced in a virtual reality setup. Seven healthy participants wore a VR headset and saw their virtual body from a ceiling viewpoint; in one condition their real movements were mirrored onto the virtual body, in the other they were not. Participants reported strong sensations of floating and being high up, but only weak to moderate feelings of being out of their body. Brain activity recorded with 128 electrodes showed that these subjective experiences were linked to increased delta and decreased alpha power, reduced theta complexity, and increased beta-2 connectivity, supporting the idea that delta activity plays a prominent role in certain conscious states.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
June 1, 2024
Łucja Doradzińska, Michał Bola
12 citations
Visual awareness negativity (VAN), an early brain response measured by EEG, is not an attention-independent marker of conscious visual perception. Reanalysis of data from 41 participants showed that VAN's amplitude in the early time window (140-200 msec) depended heavily on attention; the effect of awareness disappeared for neutral faces that were task-irrelevant distractors. In a later window (200-350 msec), VAN appeared across all conditions but was larger for fearful or task-relevant faces. These findings challenge the idea that VAN purely reflects phenomenal awareness, instead showing it is influenced by both stimulus saliency and task demands.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Fabienne Picard
11 citations
Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy where seizures begin with ecstatic or mystical experiences, including feelings of enhanced self-awareness, mental clarity, unity with everything, bliss, and physical well-being. This perspective article describes the phenomenology and historical context of these seizures, identifying the anterior insula as the primary brain structure involved. The authors propose that temporary disruptions to anterior insula activity may interrupt interoceptive prediction errors, leading to an absence of uncertainty and a sense of bliss, as perfect prediction of the body's physiological state is mimicked. An alternative hypothesis suggests the anterior insula processes surprise, and epileptic discharge may interrupt unexpected events, producing a sense of complete control and oneness with the environment.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
May 14, 2025
Ruby M. Potash, Sean D. Van Mil, Mar Estarellas et al.
7 citations
During an advanced concentrative absorption meditation called jhana, characterized by highly stable attention and mental absorption, the brain's nonoscillatory dynamics—captured by nonlinear connectivity metrics—distinguish the meditative state better than oscillatory synchrony. Combining attention-related phenomenological ratings with these nonlinear metrics improves the detection of the meditative state compared to using neural data alone. Deeper absorption states show an equalization of feedback and feedforward processes, suggesting a balance between internally and externally driven information processing. The findings, based on EEG recordings from a single meditator with over 20,000 hours of practice across 29 sessions, offer initial insights into the distinct neural dynamics of refined conscious states.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
December 30, 2025
Evan Lewis-Healey, Carla Pallavicini, Federico Cavanna et al.
4 citations
The psychedelic drug DMT rapidly reorganizes conscious experience and brain activity, but the link between brain dynamics and subjective effects remains unclear. In a blinded, dose-dependent study, 19 participants received 20 mg or 40 mg of DMT. The higher dose produced more intense visual hallucinations and emotional experiences. Electroencephalography data showed that alpha power and permutation entropy best tracked moment-to-moment changes in subjective experience, while Lempel-Ziv complexity—previously thought to be a strong correlate—showed the weakest association. The findings indicate that the relationship between neural complexity and psychedelic phenomenology is less straightforward than hypothesized.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
May 27, 2026
Alejandro Chandia-Jorquera, Sean D. Van Mil, Mar Estarellas et al.
3 citations
Pure awareness, a state of minimal phenomenal experience, can be reliably studied through transcendental meditation. In 33 experienced TM practitioners compared to controls doing mental counting, TM produced significantly greater intensity and temporal variability of pure awareness, unrelated to years of practice. Using EEG and multivariate classification, a double dissociation emerged: temporal entropy and aperiodic dynamics best distinguished TM from counting, while low-frequency functional connectivity best distinguished TM from its own baseline. These differences reflected distributed neural patterns, not localized effects. TM showed little carryover into rest, unlike counting. The findings characterize pure awareness electrophysiologically and support neurophenomenology as a framework for studying minimal experience.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 30, 2025
Karen R Konkoly, Saba Al-Youssef, Christopher Y Mazurek et al.
3 citations
Alpha oscillations, a hallmark of waking visual perception when eyes close, do not reliably increase during lucid dreams when dreamers signal that their dream-eyes are closed. In 150 signals from 11 lucid dreamers, dream-eye closure was associated with fading visual content only about half the time. In three participants where visual content presence versus absence could be compared, increased alpha power accompanied momentary lack of visual content. Real-time reporting via sniffing patterns enables dynamic investigation of dream perception.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
May 30, 2024
Biyu J. He
2 citations
The field of consciousness science has grown exponentially over the past five years, following three decades of foundational work by a small group of researchers. In June 2023, a three-day workshop funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation convened experts to assess the current state of the field and identify promising future research directions. The resulting Special Focus includes empirical and theoretical contributions from invited speakers. The author advocates for stronger connections between consciousness science and other cognitive neuroscience subdisciplines, arguing that modern neuroscience must address the challenge of studying subjective experiences.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 7, 2026
Andrew E Budson, Hinze Hogendoorn, Donna Rose Addis
Consciousness may be the explicit memory of past events or the cognitive capacity to simulate events, used to remember the past, experience the present, or imagine the future. Perceptual mechanisms represent an ongoing, editable best estimate of past, present, and future. At milliseconds to seconds timescales, there may be no hard boundary between perception and memory. Conscious perceptions, decisions, and actions are simulations of prior unconscious sensations, decisions, and actions. The neural correlates of consciousness may thus be those of simulation or explicit memory, involving the default mode, frontoparietal control, and salience networks. Each aspect of consciousness may have its own neural correlate.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Vasil Kolev, Kosio Beshkov, Peter Malinowski et al.
Spectral Granger causality analysis of EEG recordings from 22 long-term meditators revealed distinct directed connectivity patterns for three meditation styles compared to rest. Focused attention meditation reduced posterior-to-anterior influences in alpha and beta bands and decreased interhemispheric frontal connectivity, indicating attenuated bottom-up sensory processing. Open monitoring meditation increased left-to-right posterior connectivity, suggesting enhanced top-down modulation supporting expanded awareness. Loving kindness meditation showed interhemispheric symmetry, bidirectional posterior-anterior influences, and beta-band engagement, implying coactivation of systems supporting emotional balance, equanimity, and prosocial attitude.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Charlotte Martial, Olivia Gosseries
Episodes of disconnected consciousness—where a person is outwardly unresponsive but still has mental experiences without awareness of their surroundings—occur in sleep, anesthesia, meditation, hypnosis, trance, and life-threatening situations like coma. When such episodes follow a life-threatening event and include features like out-of-body experiences or bright lights, they are called near-death experiences. Research suggests that the brain's back regions may be necessary for conscious experience, but how external stimuli are blocked during these states remains unknown. This special focus presents studies on ecstatic epilepsy, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, and ayahuasca, examining their phenomenology and neural mechanisms to better understand consciousness and dissociation.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
February 6, 2025
Lara C Krisst, Steven J Luck
Conscious visual awareness can arise rapidly, within about 160 milliseconds of seeing a stimulus, supporting theories that place the origin of awareness early in visual cortex rather than requiring later interactions with frontoparietal regions. Using electroencephalography (EEG) and multivariate pattern classification, the authors decoded which of two competing visual gratings participants consciously perceived during binocular rivalry. Decoding accuracy for the perceived orientation exceeded that for the suppressed, unconscious orientation starting at 160 milliseconds after stimulus onset, consistent with theories predicting a rapid onset of visual awareness within roughly 200 milliseconds.