Psychedelics
September 8, 2026
Hongyuan Li, Xiaohui Wang
Central nervous system (CNS) injuries remain challenging to treat due to limited neurogenesis, inhibitory extracellular environments, and maladaptive neuroimmune responses. Psychedelic compounds, including classical serotonergic psychedelics, dissociative anesthetics, and empathogens, have re-emerged as mechanistically distinctive “psychoplastogens” capable of rapidly and persistently enhancing...
Biosystems
September 8, 2026
Emiliano Bruner
Frequently, the terms self and ego are employed as synonyms. From the one hand, this can obscure and confound different experiences related to consciousness. On the other hand, this can limit the use of these concepts when trying to express the human potential, and enhance well-being. Following the principles of ecology, system theory, and extended cognition, I propose an operational definition...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
September 7, 2026
Flávio Marco Rego da Silva
preprint
Consciousness science routinely operationalizes theoretical constructs — integration, complexity, coupling, level — as measurable proxies, and then tests hypotheses about the constructs through the proxies. This chain is only as strong as its weakest translation. We present a post-execution proxy-fidelity audit framework, developed and applied across 18 consecutive research cycles of a...
Harm Reduction Journal
September 7, 2026
Konstantinos Farsalinos
Background: The contemporary landscape of psychoactive substance regulation is characterized by a striking policy paradox. On one hand there is the gradual liberalization and mainstreaming of the cannabis market (the "Green Wave"), propelled by principles such as human rights, harm reduction, criminal justice reform, social equity, and economic efficiency. This coincides with a...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
September 7, 2026
Christian Alexander Brown
preprint
This research essay/article argues that cannabis can reasonably be described as psychedelic in a phenomenological sense, even though it is not pharmacologically classified as a classic serotonergic psychedelic such as LSD or psilocybin. The central distinction is between pharmacology and phenomenology: THC acts primarily through the endocannabinoid system, especially CB1 receptor signaling, yet...
Mindfulness
September 7, 2026
Ben C. L. Yu, Floria H. N. Chio, Hin-Tak Sik et al.
Abstract Objectives Mindfulness is widely recognized as a multidimensional construct, though some of its components have faced criticism. Nonjudgment, operationalized as approaching inner experiences without evaluation, is one such debated aspect. In contrast, discernment emphasizes the importance of actively assessing the wholesomeness of mental states. This study investigated which of these...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
September 7, 2026
Flávio Marco Rego da Silva
preprint
Meditation research has measured isolated physiological channels for decades, but the set of peripheral signs has rarely been treated as a field — a totality whose inter-channel dependency structure is itself the observable. We tested whether a guided meditation session moves the integrated peripheral field, or only the individual signs, in the public WESAD dataset (15 subjects; within-subject...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
September 7, 2026
Sabrina Wong, Gia Han Le, Simryn Selby et al.
Extant literature indicates mitochondrial dysfunction may contribute to the pathophysiology of depressive disorders. Preclinical data indicate that anesthetic doses of ketamine are associated with deficits in mitochondrial viability and function. Ketamine and esketamine have demonstrated rapid antidepressant effects in persons with difficult-to-treat depressive disorders. Herein, we aim to...
OSF Preprints
September 6, 2026
Richard James Lucido
preprint
This study builds upon previous experiments testing the Consciousness Causes Collapse (CCC) hypothesis. Previous studies by the author investigated the CCC using subliminal priming. This current experiment simplifies the paradigm by removing primes entirely and focusing directly on the temporal duration of wavefunction collapse. We hypothesize that consciousness is discrete and operates in...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
September 6, 2026
Denis O. Drobyshev
preprint
This paper proposes agonistic flow as a distinct cognitive state accessed through sustained voluntary confrontation with physiological limits, integrating Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory, Dietrich's transient hypofrontality hypothesis, and Noakes's central governor model. We define diagnostic criteria, identify boundary conditions separating productive self-destruction from pathology, and review...