PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Ketamine was originally developed as a dissociative anesthetic and has remained a valuable agent in anesthesia related to its ability to preserve airway reflexes and relative hemodynamic stability. Over time, its clinical applications have expanded beyond procedural sedation to include roles in pain management and psychiatry. In pain medicine, the therapeutic rationale is...
Scientific ReportsApril 21, 2026Rong Ding, Daojie Wang, Guoxin Wang et al.
Elderly colorectal cancer (CRC) patients face high risks of postoperative depression state, inadequately addressed by opioid-based analgesia. Esketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist with rapid antidepressant effects, offers potential benefits but lacks evidence in this population. This double-blind RCT enrolled 99 elderly (≥ 65 years) CRC resection patients, randomized to three postoperative...
Current accounts of affect in the philosophy of mind, affective neuroscience, and consciousness studies fall into three broad classes — phenomenological, functional, and eliminativist — each presupposing a shared prior assumption that none specifies: that the systems under analysis are bounded, persisting units whose affective states can be coherently analyzed. Adjacent traditions...
This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized data from 13 clinical trials (n=606) evaluating psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Despite early enthusiasm, the pooled standardized mean difference (-0.79, 95% confidence interval: -3.98 to 2.40, p=0.63) revealed no statistically significant overall antidepressant effect, with...
We aim to investigate the spatial experience of patients with chronic scotomas caused by lesion to early visual cortex, including primary visual cortex (V1) and adjacent extrastriate visual areas. These experiments are conducted as part of an adversarial collaboration testing contrasting theories of consciousness: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and two Predictive Processing accounts,...
In this paper, I defend the claim that objectivity, in classical phenomenology, is best read as an instituted invariant: not a static given but the diachronic achievement of cooperative validation within transcendental intersubjectivity, mediated by technics—above all, writing and inscription—that ensure the iterability, transmissibility, and public critique of sense. The essay unfolds in five...
Art TherapyApril 20, 2026Rebecca Ann Wilkinson, Alyssa B. Gursky
Renewal of research into psychedelics indicates their ability to provide relief from challenging conditions like trauma, treatment resistant depression, addictions, and end-of-life distress. Psychedelics appear to promote neuroplasticity, stimulate creativity, dampen fear responses, circumvent psychological defenses, soften rigid beliefs, and foster profound feelings of unity. The non-verbal,...
AbstractThis paper presents a model of consciousness grounded in hemispheric lateralization and theDefault Mode Network (DMN). Building on McGilchrist's Master/Emissary framework,Schore's developmental neuroscience, and Porges' polyvagal theory, it argues that the righthemisphere constitutes primary consciousness (Type 1) while the left hemisphere constructsthe narrative self (Type 2). The DMN...
Background/Objectives: Mindfulness-based interventions are widely used to reduce psychological distress. Their long-term neurophysiological correlates remain insufficiently characterized. Using a portable Muse InteraXon® EEG device, this study aimed to evaluate (i) the extent to which a 12-month combined mindfulness and gratitude-based intervention reduces anxiety, depression, and perceived...
In service to the mathematical underpinnings of the Information Integration Theory of Consciousness (IIT), we introduce four principled measures of integration based on the partial information decomposition framework. We compare our measures to current IIT practice in simple deterministic networks. Our measures are the first IIT-related state-dependent integration measures to naturally obey...