Pharmacological Research
August 26, 2026
Mattia Giovenzana, Noemi Nicosia, Stefano Spinosa et al.
Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) comprise a heterogeneous group of conditions arising from altered brain development and leading to impairments in social, cognitive, emotional, and motor domains. Clinical manifestations are highly variable in severity and symptom profile, reflecting the complex and multifactorial etiology of NDDs. Available treatments are limited to early behavioral...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 25, 2026
David (daoud) Matta
preprint
A companion paper argued that consciousness science makes explanatory claims of five distinguishable strengths, and that the strongest—why physical organization is accompanied by experience—remains open. This paper asks a prior question: what is referred to when Buddhist sources speak of consciousness? The answer is not one thing. Early Buddhist analysis treats viññāṇa as constitutively...
BJPsych Open
August 25, 2026
Edward Chesney, Millie Lloyd, Sébastien Brodeur et al.
BACKGROUND: Cannabis use is common in people with psychosis and is associated with poor outcomes. AIMS: To assess insight into cannabis use disorder, perceptions about how cannabis use influences mental health and the desire to change cannabis use among people with psychotic disorders. METHOD: Adults with a psychotic disorder and comorbid cannabis use disorder were asked about the impact of...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 25, 2026
Roberto De Filippo, Ryan Gillis, David G Wyrick et al.
preprint
Abstract Psilocybin profoundly alters visual perception, yet the neuronal mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. Here we combined large-scale Neuropixels recordings with cell-type-specific optogenetics in head-fixed mice performing a visual change-detection task. Psilocybin severely impaired task performance without overt motor deficits. In cortex, the drug modestly suppressed...
Research in Phenomenology
August 25, 2026
Daniel Reid Smyth
Abstract Hermann Schmitz offers one of the most extensive descriptions available of embodied space, characterizing it as pre-sensorial, indivisible, and surfaceless yet capable of disclosing absolute locations. Schmitz nevertheless anchors the felt body’s absolute location in temporal irruption rather than in the ability for lived space to ground itself in rest. This article argues that...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 25, 2026
David (daoud) Matta
preprint
Where is consciousness located, and how is it generated? These are routinely treated as two formulations of one problem, yet they assert different things and rest on different evidence. This paper proposes a five-level taxonomy of explanatory claims—location, correlation, causal dependence, constitution, and generation—and uses it as an analytical instrument throughout. Each level is logically...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
August 25, 2026
Praachi Tiwari, Bryan W. Jenkins, Catherine F Moore et al.
Psychedelics have emerged as promising pharmacological agents for treating a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. While preclinical studies have provided valuable insight into the neural mechanisms underlying their effects, systematic characterization of psychedelic effects on inherent spontaneous behaviors in animal models remains limited. In the current study, male and female Sprague-Dawley...
Frontiers in Psychology
August 24, 2026
Jian-Nor Shih
The rapid growth of AI companionship has raised urgent questions about the psychological mechanisms underlying human-AI relationships. This paper investigates why and how users construct and become entrenched in relationships with AI. Drawing on the Consciousness-Only school of Buddhist psychology, this paper applies the three-natures framework and eight-consciousnesses model. According to this...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 24, 2026
Sidário Rodrigues Malheiros-junior
preprint
This theoretical manuscript develops an energetic formalization of Antonio Damasio’s architecture of selfhood. Damasio’s distinctions among the proto-self, core self, and autobiographical self are converted from a descriptive taxonomy into a conditional and falsifiable model of functional endurance. For each functional layer, usable free-energy delivery is compared with time-dependent...
Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly
August 24, 2026
Gary Enos
Participants in a Phase 2a trial of a single‐dose psychedelic in combination with cognitive‐behavioral therapy (CBT) for alcohol use disorder (AUD) used terms such as “cleansing” and “rebirth” to describe the impact of their study experience. All but two of the study's 10 interviewed participants reported eliminating or reducing drinking over a 12‐week follow‐up, though several described their...