Here, we present a large-scale, multi-center dataset of combined magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, along with eye-tracking data and high-resolution structural MRI (T1); complementing with iEEG and fMRI datasets that are shared in accompanying data papers. The data was obtained through an adversarial collaboration between advocates of two neuroscientific...
Background. The perception of internal bodily states (interoception) serves as a fundamental mechanism of traumatic experience. In clinical practice, this experience often remains unarticulated and phenomenologically inaccessible due to a deficit in the skill of tacting private events. This creates a fundamental obstacle to the integration of traumatic experience within Trauma-Focused...
The Hemispheric Disparity Theory conceptualizes one facet of consciousness, defined as the "conscious-mind" experience. Rather than a unified agent, conscious experience arises from the dynamic interplay between a left hemisphere specialized in order and abstraction through dynamic temporal modeling, and a right hemisphere specialized in contextual integration, coherence, and model updating...
Recent work in the structural approach to consciousness has shown great promise as a research paradigm for the formal and empirical study of the phenomenal qualities of experience, i.e., qualia. In this paradigm, qualia are characterized by modeling the internal organization of parts within an experience, or by modeling external relations between instances of experience. A major next step for...
Abstract Background and Purpose Music plays a central role in psychedelic-assisted therapy, yet few methodologies exist to create and assess therapeutic playlists. This study aimed to illustrate a methodology for developing and evaluating a music playlist for a clinical psilocybin trial using an integrative framework grounded in theory, intentionality, and metrics. Methods A playlist was...
While meditation has been increasingly associated with challenging and adverse experiences, especially in more advanced and high-density practices, little is known about how advanced practitioners experience, make sense of, and integrate non-ordinary experiences that may disrupt their sense of self, reality, embodiment, and meaning. Building on recent advances in the scientific study of...
Psilocybin is among the serotonergic psychedelics closest to potential FDA approval, with growing evidence of therapeutic benefit across psychiatric conditions. As clinical trials expand, systematic characterization of adverse events (AEs) remains essential. While transient hypertensive responses are well documented, hypotensive events such as neurocardiogenic syncope (NCS) are rarely reported....
Maintaining effective blinding is a major methodological challenge in psychedelic research. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of blinding integrity in 120 healthy volunteers who received either psilocybin, MDMA, or methylphenidate (active placebo) in a double-blind, randomized controlled trial. Using a multi-level assessment incorporating forced-choice substance guesses, certainty...
What neural events precede conscious reports? Hemisphere-asymmetric attentional networks are causally related to conscious perception (Kaufmann et al., 2024; Bartolomeo et al., 2025), but their spectrotemporal dynamics remain unclear. Here, we used magnetoencephalography to examine brain oscillations occurring in human participants (male and female) before a near-threshold target during the...
Natural states of consciousness are thought to be regulated by deep brain structures such as the thalamus. However, very little is known about the underlying electrophysiology in humans. Here, using a rare opportunity to directly record from the human thalamus, we identify a hitherto-unreported brain-state-specific oscillation of approximately 19-45 Hz. This oscillation is present only during...