bioRxiv Preprint ServerOctober 31, 2025Tomas Hampejs, David Tomecek, Stanislav Jiricek et al.
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Understanding how spontaneous, rather than experimentally induced, thoughts relate to brain activity remains a major challenge. We combined simultaneous fMRI and EEG recordings with Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to link momentary, naturally occurring experiences to their neural signatures during rest. Using machine-learning classification of 240 time-locked samples from eight...
BACKGROUND: Over the past ten years, several psychedelic compounds, including tryptamines like lysergic acid diethylamide/LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and dimethyltryptamine/DMT, have been tested in clinical trials for a range of psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety and depression. While these compounds are relatively available for treatment, ketamine and its S(+) enantiomer, esketamine, are...
Background/Objectives: Patients in palliative care often experience multifaceted forms of suffering that extend beyond physical symptoms, including existential distress, loss of meaning, and emotional pain. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) has emerged as a promising intervention for alleviating such complex forms of suffering, yet models specifically tailored to palliative populations...
Research SquareOctober 24, 2025Emilio Durán, Manuel Vázquez-Frutos, Elisa Alcocer et al.
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Abstract Objectives: Depression is linked to abnormalities in resting-state networks (RSNs) such as the Default Mode Network (DMN), Salience Network (SN), and Frontoparietal Network (FPN). Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are effective for treating depression, but their impact on functional connectivity (FC) within and between RSNs remains unclear. This systematic review synthesizes...
Abstract This article investigates how the Sufi theorist Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī’s (d. 638/1240) conception of metaphysical perplexity ( ḥayra ) relates to the entropic brain hypothesis, which has been proposed by Robin Carhart-Harris in the fields of human neuroscience and psychopharmacology. Studies have demonstrated a correlation between the ego and the default mode network ( DMN ). The ego...
Dissociative disorders (DDs), a group of trauma-related psychiatric conditions, are characterized by disruptions in consciousness, memory integration, identity coherence, and perceptual continuity. These disorders present significant diagnostic challenges due to symptom overlap with other psychiatric conditions and the lack of objective biomarkers. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance...
Psychedelic-assisted therapies are re-emerging as credible options in psychological care amid a high global burden of mental ill-health and limited response to first-line treatments. Once marginal, psychedelics are now part of mainstream research and policy debate, while remaining illegal or tightly restricted in many jurisdictions. Classic and atypical compounds (e.g., psilocybin, MDMA) act...
Abstract Evaluating consciousness levels after coma remains clinically challenging, and probing the brain’s functional hierarchy offers model-based biomarkers of brain states. We characterize the hierarchy loss in disorders of consciousness (DoC) via departures from non-equilibrium dynamics. Irreversible, directed interactions are indexed by deviation from the fluctuation– dissipation theorem...
The neural mechanisms underlying the cognitive metacontrol states of persistence and flexibility are not yet fully understood but are thought to be modulated by frontal and striatal dopamine, respectively. In this study, we attempted to induce persistence and flexibility states by having participants engage in 2 creativity tasks (remote associates task and alternative uses task) and 2...
Neuromodulation of subcortical network hubs by pharmacologic, electrical, or ultrasonic stimulation is a promising therapeutic strategy for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC). However, optimal subcortical targets for therapeutic stimulation are not well established. Here, we leveraged 7 Tesla resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data from 168 healthy subjects from the Human...