Virtual Reality
August 25, 2026
Liat Abouhav, Keren Nitzan, Ravid Doron
Abstract As mental health challenges continue to rise, there is increasing interest in interventions that promote psychological change through emotionally and experientially rich states. One well-studied example involves mystical-type experiences, typically reported in psychedelic-assisted interventions. Virtual reality (VR), with its immersive and embodied qualities, has emerged as a promising...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 18, 2026
Christian Dombrowe
Abstract The scholarly, legal, and regulatory discourse on deliberately altered states of consciousness lacks a neutral vocabulary: its inherited terms — hallucinogen, psychedelic, entheogen — each embed a verdict on the nature of the states they name, forcing a position before argument begins. This essay proposes two process-oriented terms to close the gap. Noopoietics (from νοῦς and ποίησις)...
Brain : a journal of neurology
August 7, 2026
Dorottya Szocs, Andrea I Luppi, Peter Coppola et al.
The precise neuromodulatory mechanisms underlying consciousness and its disorders, despite growing evidence in both animals and humans, remain poorly understood at the subcortical level. The basal ganglia, a key component of the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loop, are known to play a crucial role in mediating consciousness and behavioural responsiveness to the environment. Here, we...
Frontiers in Psychology
July 30, 2026
Lena Erdmann, Barbara Breitenstein, Maria Badanova et al.
BackgroundResearch suggests that high ventilation breathwork (HVB) improves mental health by reducing experiential avoidance (EA) through altered states of consciousness (ASCs). The present study examined whether EA during participants’ most recent breathwork session predicted mental well-being afterward. Additionally, the study examined the relationships between EA, ASCs, emotional...
PsyArXiv Preprints
July 16, 2026
This paper proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting immersive neurogastronomic experiences as a form of ambient cognitive modulation. The framework originates in the direct, informal observation of approximately 6,000 guests conducted by the first author over more than six years of operation at Sensorium — an eleven-seat neurogastronomic restaurant with a controlled multisensory...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
July 1, 2026
Athanasia Kontouli, Michael J Hove, Alexandre Lehmann et al.
This review integrates anthropological and neuroscientific perspectives to elucidate music-induced trance processes and their relevance to non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs). The objectives are to deepen the understanding of trance phenomena, delineate links across diverse trance expressions, and inform future neuroscientific research. Drawing on anthropological insights, we examine...
Journal of Quantum Science of Consciousness.
June 29, 2026
Allison Saltzman
Non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) have long been described across cultures and spiritual traditions, while contemporary research increasingly examines them through neural, physiological, and phenomenological dimensions.This narrative literature review explores nonpathological NOSC across meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychedelic experiences, near-death experiences, and mystical...
PsyArXiv
June 26, 2026
preprint
This study investigates the effects of three variants of Restricted Environmental Stimulation Techniques (REST)—guided meditation, multimodal Ganzfeld (MMGF), and a control resting condition—on subjective experiences related to altered states of consciousness (ASC). Specifically, the study examines emotional responses, time perception, and perceived body boundaries, while also assessing the...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 22, 2022
Christopher Timmermann, Prisca R. Bauer, Olivia Gosseries et al.
145 citations
No contemporary unifying framework has been provided for the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs) despite increased interest in hypnosis, meditation, and psychedelics. NSCs induce shifts in experiential contents (what appears to the experiencer) and/or structure (how it appears). This can allow the investigation of the plastic and dynamic nature of experience from a multiscale...
ACS Pharmacol Transl Sci
December 10, 2020
David B. Yaden, Roland R. Griffiths
534 citations
Classic psychedelics produce altered states of consciousness that individuals often interpret as meaningful experiences. Across a number of human studies, when the participant-rated intensity of the overall drug effects are statistically controlled for, certain subjective effects predict therapeutic and other desirable outcomes. Underlying neurobiological mechanisms are likely necessary but not...
Sci Rep
November 19, 2019
Christopher Timmermann, Leor Roseman, Michael Schartner et al.
325 citations
Studying transitions in and out of the altered state of consciousness caused by intravenous (IV) N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT - a fast-acting tryptamine psychedelic) offers a safe and powerful means of advancing knowledge on the neurobiology of conscious states. Here we sought to investigate the effects of IV DMT on the power spectrum and signal diversity of human brain activity (6 female, 7...
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 28, 2019
Katrin H. Preller, Adeel Razi, Peter Zeidman et al.
303 citations
Psychedelics exert unique effects on human consciousness. The thalamic filter model suggests that core effects of psychedelics may result from gating deficits, based on a disintegration of information processing within cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) feedback loops. To test this hypothesis, we characterized changes in directed (effective) connectivity between selected CTSC regions after...
Elife
October 25, 2018
Katrin H. Preller, Joshua B. Burt, Jie Lisa Ji et al.
416 citations
Background: Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) has agonist activity at various serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine receptors. Despite the therapeutic and scientific interest in LSD, specific receptor contributions to its neurobiological effects remain unknown. Methods: We therefore conducted a double-blind, randomized, counterbalanced, cross-over studyduring which 24 healthy human participants received...
Neuroimage
October 3, 2017
Federico Cavanna, Martina G. Vilas, Matías Palmucci et al.
151 citations
The scientific study of human consciousness has greatly benefited from the development of non-invasive brain imaging methods. The quest to identify the neural correlates of consciousness combined psychophysical experimentation with neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the changes in neural activity associated with conscious vs. unconscious percepts....
PLoS One
August 31, 2010
Erich Studerus, Alex Gamma, Franz X. Vollenweider
693 citations
The original scales of the OAV were shown to be multidimensional constructs. Eleven new lower order scales were constructed and demonstrated to have desirable psychometric properties. The new lower order scales are most likely better suited to assess drug induced ASC.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
May 1, 2008
Melanie Boly, Christophe Phillips, L. Tshibanda et al.
396 citations
Spontaneous brain activity has recently received increasing interest in the neuroimaging community. However, the value of resting-state studies to a better understanding of brain-behavior relationships has been challenged. That altered states of consciousness are a privileged way to study the relationships between spontaneous brain activity and behavior is proposed, and common resting-state...
Psychological Bulletin
2005
Dieter Vaitl, Niels Birbaumer, John Gruzelier et al.
446 citations
The article reviews the current knowledge regarding altered states of consciousness (ASC) (a) occurring spontaneously, (b) evoked by physical and physiological stimulation, (c) induced by psychological means, and (d) caused by diseases. The emphasis is laid on psychological and neurobiological approaches. The phenomenological analysis of the multiple ASC resulted in 4 dimensions by which they...
Consciousness and Cognition
May 19, 2003
Arne Dietrich
486 citations
It is the central hypothesis of this paper that the mental states commonly referred to as altered states of consciousness are principally due to transient prefrontal cortex deregulation. Supportive evidence from psychological and neuroscientific studies of dreaming, endurance running, meditation, daydreaming, hypnosis, and various drug-induced states is presented and integrated. It is proposed...
Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging
November 1, 2001
Dietrich Lehmann, Pascal L Faber, Peter Achermann et al.
212 citations
Multichannel EEG of an advanced meditator was recorded during four different, repeated meditations. Locations of intracerebral source gravity centers as well as Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA) functional images of the EEG 'gamma' (35-44 Hz) frequency band activity differed significantly between meditations. Thus, during volitionally self-initiated, altered states of...
Pharmacopsychiatry
July 1, 1998
A. Dittrich
597 citations
The APZ questionnaire was developed in order to explore hypotheses on ASCs. First -- in a series of 11 experiments using different induction methods on N = 393 healthy subjects -- the hypothesis was tested that ASCs have major dimensions in common irrespective of the mode of their induction. In the International Study on Altered States of Consciousness (ISASC) the external validity of the...
Archives of General Psychiatry
September 1, 1966
Arnold M. Ludwig
640 citations
BENEATH man's thin veneer of consciousness lies a relatively uncharted realm of mental activity, the nature and function of which have been neither systematically explored nor adequately conceptualized. Despite numerous clinical and research reports on daydreaming, sleep and dream states, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, hysterical states of dissociation and depersonalization, pharmacologically...