James Thurbon, Annabelle Mitchell, Jordan J Wehrman et al.
preprint
Flicker light stimulation shows promise for inducing visual imagery, altered states of consciousness, and changes in arousal, with potential applications in relaxation and imagery-based therapeutic interventions. However, optimal utility depends on identifying how viewing conditions shape subjective and physiological outcomes. We examined whether eye condition (open, closed) modulates...
Hannes Schätzle, Frederic von Wegner
Abstract Subanaesthetic ketamine alters the content of consciousness while leaving responsiveness intact. We asked whether this state can be decoded from single eyes-closed EEG epochs, and how spectral power and phase-based connectivity compare when used as features. Re-analysing openly available 62-channel EEG from ten participants (awake versus subanaesthetic ketamine), we trained classifiers...
Fabio Mattiussi, Patrizio Tressoldi
preprint
This study investigates the perspectives of Advanced Meditators (AMs) on death, focusing on their beliefs, emotional responses, and sense-making processes related to the end of life. Drawing on the responses obtained through direct interviews with 45 experienced practitioners, we utilized thematic analysis to identify a distinctive pattern of existential attitudes shaped by long-term...
Otto Lehto, Liam D. Ryan
preprint
The problem of other minds takes an especially acute form in thorny comparative cases, when we ask whether an infant is more, less, or differently conscious than an adult, or whether an octopus is more, less, or differently conscious than a dog. These judgments must be made in the absence of a settled theory of consciousness while navigating significant empirical uncertainties. For all these...
G Samuelson
preprint
Dreaming is among the most vivid demonstrations that consciousness can occur in a state of relative sensory disconnection. This paper reviews whether dream experience is better explained as an endogenous neurocognitive construction or as evidence of contact with another dimension, multiverse branch, or anomalous informational domain. The review integrates literature from the neuroscience of REM...
Ramin Bidari
preprint
This paper explores the profound relationship between energetic consciousness and the brain, arguing that consciousness is an independent force beyond time and space that utilizes the brain as a tool for experiencing reality. Unlike traditional neuroscientific perspectives that consider the brain as the source of consciousness, this study suggests that consciousness actively alters the brain’s...
Suresh Kumar.S
preprint
Some argue that the ontology of the mental is a metaphysical and irreducible one, in spite of the emerging physicalism in scientific basis for models of mind and self, based on materialistic reductionism. However a model of a physical mind localized in brain based consciousness can still accommodate the non-local or rather metaphysical and disembodied aspects, as a study of the findings of...
Arthur Stewart
preprint
Global Workspace Theory (GWT) proposes that a mental state is conscious if and only if its content is broadcast in a global workspace. Baars (1988) developed the cognitive workspace account. Dehaene and colleagues (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001; Dehaene, 2014) developed the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) variant, identifying the workspace with a fronto-parietal network and proposing ignition...
Dustin Marlan
preprint
The law has long protected movement through physical space. This Article asks whether it should also protect movement through mental space. Psychedelics are reemerging in law and culture after decades of prohibition, but the prevailing justifications for reform--medical utility, religious freedom, neurodiversity, free speech, and especially cognitive liberty--either protect too few or fail to...
Dian Lu, Adapa Ram, Robin Carhart-Harris et al.
preprint
Abstract Large-scale functional connectivity (FC) networks are typically treated as discrete neuroanatomical entities, yet their organisation in regions where multiple systems converge remains poorly understood. Here we investigate the posterior precuneus (PCu)—a key hub of the default mode network (DMN) situated at the interface with the frontoparietal control network (FPCN)—using a...