Blog

  1. Home
  2. Blog

Decoding Depth of Meditation: EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana Practitioners

By 2,407 Views 0 comments0 comments
Manuscript, Proceedings, Protocol-002

Get The Article

  • Article PDF
  • Biological Psychiatry Article

PDF

Decoding Depth of Meditation: Electroencephalography Insights From Expert Vipassana Practitioners

Cite This Work

  • APA
  • MLA
  • Bibtex

Reggente, N., Kothe, C., Brandmeyer, T., Hanada, G., Simonian, N., Mullen, S., & Mullen, T. (2024). Decoding Depth of Meditation: EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana Practitioners. Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science, 5(1), 100402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100402

Reggente, Nicco, et al. “Decoding Depth of Meditation: EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana Practitioners.” Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science, vol. 5, no. 1, Oct. 2024, p. 100402, doi:10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100402.

@article{Reggente_Kothe_Brandmeyer_Hanada_Simonian_Mullen_Mullen_2024, title={Decoding Depth of Meditation: EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana Practitioners}, volume={5}, url={https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100402}, DOI={10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100402}, number={1}, journal={Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science}, author={Reggente, Nicco and Kothe, Christian and Brandmeyer, Tracy and Hanada, Grant and Simonian, Ninette and Mullen, Sean and Mullen, Tim}, year={2024}, month=oct, pages={100402} }

Since it’s inception, the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies has been driven by a mission to create what we call a “Qualia Compass”—a tool that can collect “mental souvenirs” from hard-to-achieve states of consciousness. The purpose? To help individuals return to those states more easily and remain there longer through personalized, multivariate neurofeedback. This ambitious project seeks to, first, democratize access to profound meditative experiences that typically require years of dedicated practice.

Our recent research represents a significant step toward this goal, successfully decoding self-reported meditative depth using EEG data from expert Vipassana practitioners. Rather than simply distinguishing meditation from mind-wandering (as most previous research has done), we’ve tackled the more nuanced challenge of differentiating between various depths of meditation—a critical advancement for developing effective neurofeedback tools.

Beyond Binary Classifications

Traditional approaches to meditation research often suffer from what we might call the “soup versus salad problem.” The vast majority of neuroscientific investigations into meditation have focused on comparing meditation to mind-wandering—essentially contrasting two fundamentally different cognitive states, akin to comparing soup to salad. While this approach has yielded valuable insights, it falls short of our more ambitious goal: understanding the subtle gradations within meditative states themselves.

Our research adopts the perspective of a master chef who, rather than comparing soup to salad, focuses on discerning subtle variations within a single complex soup (variations A1 and A2). This approach acknowledges that to truly master the art of making exceptional soup—or in our case, to understand and facilitate profound meditation—we must develop a nuanced understanding of the elements that differentiate various iterations of the same fundamental state. By examining gradations within the meditative experience, we can identify the specific neural patterns that characterize progressively deeper states of meditation.

This focus on nuances within a singular state promises to deepen our understanding of meditation’s neural correlates. Yet pursuing this approach introduces a methodological challenge that French philosopher Auguste Comte identified: one cannot simultaneously observe oneself walking on the street from a balcony. In meditation research, this manifests as the “observer effect”—the act of reporting one’s meditative state inevitably disrupts that state. That is, the moment we try and observe the state we wish to measure is the same moment that it is no longer that state.

The Spontaneous Emergence Solution

To address this dilemma, we introduced “spontaneous emergence” as an experiential sampling method. Rather than interrupting meditation with systematic probes, participants naturally reported their meditative depth when they spontaneously emerged from deeper states. This approach yielded comparable decoding performance to traditional probing methods while preserving ecological validity—providing a less intrusive way to gather phenomenological data during meditation.

Our study involved 34 expert Vipassana practitioners who visited our lab on two separate occasions. Using source-localized EEG activity in the theta, alpha, and gamma frequency bands, we built machine learning models that could predict meditative depth in unseen sessions—essentially, we trained the models on data from one visit and tested them on the other.

Remarkable Results

Despite conventional EEG channel-level methods failing to show significant correlations with meditation depth, our multivariate machine learning approaches demonstrated remarkable accuracy in predicting participants’ self-reported depth ratings. This suggests that the neural dynamics of varying meditation depths are too complex and non-linear to be captured by traditional univariate analyses.

Our best models achieved performance levels comparable to those seen in established EEG-based brain-computer interfaces, with area under the curve (AUC) scores approaching 0.81 for distinguishing between low and high meditation depths. To put this in perspective, this means our algorithm could correctly classify 81 out of 100 different depth reportings in the high versus low domain. This level of accuracy is particularly impressive considering the subtle, internally-generated nature of meditative states, approaching the performance of well-established brain-computer interfaces used for detecting much more distinct phenomena like imagined hand movements.

For the continuous 0-5 scale, our models achieved a mean absolute error (MAE) as low as 1.15, substantially better than chance (1.51). Think of this as a meditation depth “thermometer” that’s typically just over one degree off—if a practitioner reports being at level 4, our algorithm might predict 3 or 5, but rarely would it mistake a shallow level 1 for a profound level 5 experience.

Perhaps most remarkably, the “spontaneous emergence” method—where participants naturally reported their depth when emerging from meditation—performed just as well as the more intrusive probing approach, while providing more ecological validity and yielding more data points.

The connectivity patterns we observed revealed fascinating neural signatures across frequency bands. In the theta band, we found increased frontal-midline activity—a known signature of focused-attention meditation—within a complex interplay of activations in right parietal and frontal pole regions. Alpha band activity showed distinct increases in midline parietal regions complemented by left parietal reduction, partially mapping onto trait-level mindfulness. Meanwhile, gamma band activity revealed increased occipitoparietal activity causally influencing midline parietal regions.

Ecological Validity and Phenomenological Coherence

Further analysis revealed that the spontaneous emergence method not only generated significantly more data points (45.6% higher reporting frequency) than the probe-based approach but also demonstrated stronger correlations with post-session assessments of meditation quality. Participants reported substantially higher confidence in their depth ratings when self-determining when to report (“emerge” condition) versus when prompted (“probe” condition). This enhanced metacognitive certainty was reflected in post-session questionnaire responses, where Toronto Mindfulness Scale (TMS) scores and Meditation Depth Index (MEDI) ratings showed stronger alignment with data collected during spontaneous emergence blocks. The phenomenological coherence between in-session spontaneous reports and post-session reflective assessments suggests that the emergence method captures more authentic aspects of the meditative experience—preserving the integrity of both the subjective experience and its neural correlates. This finding has profound implications for meditation research methodology, indicating that less intrusive approaches may yield more ecologically valid data while simultaneously improving participants’ ability to maintain deeper meditative states.

Next Steps: Personalized Neurofeedback

These findings represent a critical step toward developing more sophisticated, multivariate-based neurofeedback systems. By identifying the neural correlates representing different gradations of meditative depth, we can move beyond the limitations of traditional univariate neurofeedback protocols that risk misinterpreting certain states of consciousness as meditative.

Our ultimate goal is to use these personalized, real-time neural signatures to create adaptive neurofeedback systems that guide individuals toward deeper meditation states—serving as the “training wheels” that gradually become unnecessary as practitioners develop their own metacognitive skills for recognizing and maintaining profound meditative states.

By achieving a better understanding of Vipassana meditation, which underlies many modern mindfulness practices, this research stands to significantly advance the rapidly expanding realm of meditation-based interventions, potentially making these powerful practices more accessible and effective for a broader population.

Read more

Virtual Reality vs. Reflective Chamber: New Study Shows Both Can Help Reduce Anxiety

By 2,245 Views 0 comments0 comments
Manuscript, Proceedings, Protocol-004

Get The Article

  • Article PDF
  • PLOS Mental Health Article

PDF

Contrasting cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to breathwork vs. naturalistic stimuli in reflective chamber and VR headset environments

Cite This Work

  • APA
  • MLA
  • Bibtex

Simonian, N., Johnson, M. A., Lynch, C., Wang, G., Kumaravel, V., Kuhn, T., Schoeller, F., & Reggente, N. (2025). Contrasting cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to breathwork vs. naturalistic stimuli in reflective chamber and VR headset environments. PLOS Mental Health., 2(3), e0000269. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000269

Simonian, Ninette, et al. “Contrasting cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to breathwork vs. naturalistic stimuli in reflective chamber and VR headset environments.” PLOS Mental Health., vol. 2, no. 3, Mar. 2025, p. e0000269, doi:10.1371/journal.pmen.0000269.

@article{Simonian_Johnson_Lynch_Wang_Kumaravel_Kuhn_Schoeller_Reggente_2025, title={Contrasting cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to breathwork vs. naturalistic stimuli in reflective chamber and VR headset environments}, volume={2}, url={https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000269}, DOI={10.1371/journal.pmen.0000269}, number={3}, journal={PLOS Mental Health.}, author={Simonian, Ninette and Johnson, Micah Alan and Lynch, Caitlin and Wang, Geena and Kumaravel, Velu and Kuhn, Taylor and Schoeller, Félix and Reggente, Nicco}, year={2025}, month=mar, pages={e0000269} }

The newest study from the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies has found that anxiety-reducing experiences created in a novel “reflective chamber” environment called the MindGym can be successfully translated to more accessible virtual reality (VR) formats without losing their effectiveness. This finding opens up new possibilities for making anxiety management tools more widely available to those who need them.

The Challenge of Anxiety Management

With anxiety affecting nearly 20% of adults globally and existing treatments facing limitations like side effects and relapse potential, there’s an urgent need for innovative approaches. Traditional anxiety interventions, while beneficial, often face accessibility challenges – particularly in urban environments where access to natural settings for stress relief can be limited.

A Tale of Two Technologies

We compared two different approaches to delivering calming experiences: the MindGym, a chamber with reflective walls and programmable LED lighting, and an Oculus VR headset. We tested these platforms using two types of anxiety-reducing content: a guided breathwork exercise and naturalistic rain sounds. The study involved 126 participants, where we measured motion sickness, anxiety, valence, arousal, mindfulness, mood, cognitive performance, and physiological responses like heart rate and breathing patterns.

Screenshot of the rain stimuli

Results

Contrary to expectations, both the MindGym and VR platforms proved equally effective at reducing anxiety. This was particularly noteworthy because the VR experience was actually a recording of the MindGym environment rather than a fully interactive virtual space. The study found significant improvements across all conditions in:

– Cognitive performance

– Anxiety reduction

– Overall mood

– Breathing patterns (especially in the breathwork conditions)

Individual Differences Matter

Interestingly, the research revealed that personal characteristics played a significant role in how people responded to the interventions. People who scored higher on measures of “absorption” (the tendency to become deeply engaged in experiences) reported stronger feelings of awe and ego dissolution. Additionally, more open-minded individuals showed greater anxiety reduction during breathwork sessions compared to rain sound sessions.

What’s next? 

The study’s findings are exciting because they suggest that effective anxiety-reducing experiences can be created in specialized environments like the MindGym and then successfully adapted for more accessible VR platforms. This could lead to the development of widely available, standardized anxiety management tools that maintain their therapeutic effectiveness across different delivery systems.**

Current Limitations and Future Directions

While the immediate effects were promising, the benefits didn’t last long-term – follow-up measurements a week later showed anxiety levels had returned to baseline or higher. This suggests that regular practice or multiple sessions might be necessary for sustained benefits. Future research will focus on developing more complex, immersive experiences and investigating how these interventions might work for different types of anxiety.

The research represents an important step forward in making effective anxiety management tools more accessible to the general public, potentially bridging the gap between traditional therapies and the growing need for accessible mental health solutions. As we continue to face increasing mental health challenges globally, such technological innovations offer hope for more widely available and effective anxiety interventions.

The first author, N.S., is in the chamber.
Read more

Can Aesthetic Chills Make Us More Generous? A Dictator Game Study

By 3,901 Views 0 comments0 comments
E4001, Musings

For one of our recent studies, we brought participants to the lab where they were presented with a series of auditory stimuli proven to cause chills in over 2/3 of the population while we recorded their neural and physiological data. Participants then completed tasks examining their post-intervention feelings, perspective-taking, and reactions to moral dilemmas, as well as ecologically valid tests of their non-strategic generosity (measured by costly sharing with real members of the LA community).

Prior to the study, all participants underwent an extensive battery of measures including:

These measures helped replicate prior findings in a single on-site study and assess both the independent effects of our intervention and the mediating effects of individual trait differences, which will help us better personalize future interventions and studies.

On the day of the study, participants were exposed to three chills-inducing stimuli that we have shown in over 7,000 diverse subjects across multiple countries to cause chills in approximately 75% of participants. Half of the participants additionally received a chills-augmenting intervention delivered by our patented frisson device strapped to their back, which delivers a cold stimulus along the spine timed to precise points where our previous studies showed chills were most likely to occur.

During the intervention, we recorded participants’ heart rate, skin conductance, and neural signals via scalp electrodes. While analysis of these signals is ongoing, our main hypothesis is that signal changes associated with psychedelic states of self-transcendence should be present in response to chills and should mediate the intervention’s transformative effects.

Post-intervention, participants reported their levels of self-transcendence and mood, were tested again on their maladaptive schemas, and engaged in two tasks designed to assess their actual helping decisions:

  1. Moral dilemmas task: Participants made difficult choices about moral situations where the welfare of the few was weighed against the welfare of many. Through process dissociation, we extracted two independent measures of moral decision-making: deontological inclination (the drive to avoid harm regardless of circumstances) and utilitarian inclination (the drive to maximize welfare for the maximum number of people).
  2. Dictator game: This task measured non-strategic generosity by having participants share money at their discretion with real community members, anonymously and without supervision. The task was designed so participants knew their decisions would affect real people using real money, but that no one involved with the experiment would review their decisions or know their choices.

We administered the dictator game two weeks before the on-site visit and again after the chills task to examine:

  • Whether the chills-augmenting intervention causes more chills
  • Whether chills augmentation leads to greater downstream self-transcendence and generosity
  • Whether getting chills causes increases in self-transcendence and generosity independently of augmentation
  • Whether getting chills mediates the intervention’s effect

While detailed analysis of these behavioral measures and their relationships is ongoing, we can report our primary findings:

  1. Those in the frisson-augmented condition showed greater aversion to harming others in moral dilemmas, and showed less maladaptive beliefs related to emotional deprivation. 
  2. Those who experienced chills behaved more generously toward high income avatars (toward whom participants are generally less generous), in other words, they were more generally egalitarian across conditions.
  3. The more chills participants experienced, the more connected they felt to others, and the more motivated they felt to help others and live in a virtuous way. 

Our task over the next several months is to qualify, situate, and disentangle the reasons for these main effects. We’ll determine who was more prone to respond to our intervention and what other downstream beliefs and states were changed that might explain increased generosity after these extraordinary experiences.

This will inform ongoing studies to better personalize interventions, as well as complex systems-based simulations to help us understand how democratizing such experiences could change society and culture.

Stay tuned!

*As described to our participants, we have calculated the amount of money shared with each LA community member, and they are being compensated as this post is being drafted.

Read more
an illustration of neuroprint showing a brain being dipped in ink as an imagery for personalized responses to different pieces of neural content.

In Pursuit of a ‘Neuroprint’ for Neuroscience-Based Personalization

By 318 Views 0 comments0 comments
Musings

The Challenge of Individual Variation

Just as fingerprints represent multivariate patterns with sufficient uniqueness and stability to serve as forensic evidence in criminal proceedings, our brains harbor distinctive topographies of response to the world around us. These neural landscapes, shaped by genetics, experience, and countless moments of conscious and unconscious processing, hold the key to understanding why we respond so differently to therapeutic interventions, experiential technologies, and even the media we consume.

Consider how a single piece of music might bring one person to tears (or chills) while leaving another unmoved, or how a particular therapeutic approach might transform one individual’s life while proving ineffective for another. These variations are not mere quirks of personality but reflect fundamental differences in our neural architecture – differences that have remained largely opaque to systematic investigation and, even more so, utility.

The Precedent for Precision

In an age where Netflix algorithms predict our entertainment preferences and genetic analyses forecast our responses to pharmaceuticals, we stand at the threshold of a new frontier in precision neuroscience. The modern digital landscape has already demonstrated the power of predictive analytics in domains ranging from social media engagement to consumer behavior. Companies like Strain Genie have pioneered the use of genetic markers to predict individual responses to various compounds. Yet the brain, our most complex organ, has remained somewhat elusive to such precise prognostic approaches.

Foundations in Cognitive Neuroscience Research

Our research team’s work in utilizing resting-state fMRI to predict therapeutic outcomes in OCD patients represents a crucial step forward. By analyzing neural activity patterns before treatment, we’ve successfully forecast therapeutic responses six weeks into the future. Similarly, our ability to predict aesthetic chills from trait questionnaires has opened new windows into understanding transformative experiences and their potential impact on mental health.

Of particular clinical significance is our work in stratifying disorders of consciousness, where predictive neuroimaging has proven instrumental in determining care trajectories and probability of recovery for individuals in comatose states. These prognostic capabilities hold profound implications for medical decision-making and resource allocation in critical care settings. Additionally, our research has extended into the domain of gender-affirming healthcare, where we’ve successfully predicted individual responses to cross-sex hormone therapy, enabling more personalized and effective treatment protocols.

Further expanding the scope of predictive neuroscience, our investigations into memory encoding strength have yielded remarkable insights with direct applications to forensic psychology. By quantifying the neural correlates of memory formation, we can now predict the reliability of episodic recall – a breakthrough that holds particular relevance for evaluating the veracity of eyewitness testimonies in legal proceedings. This development represents a significant advance in bringing objective neuroscientific measures to bear on crucial questions of judicial reliability.

The Neuroprint Protocol: A Theoretical Framework

Building upon these foundational studies, we propose Neuroprint – a theoretical protocol conceived at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS) that transcends traditional psychometric approaches by capturing the intricate dimensionality of individual neural response patterns. This framework acknowledges the brain as a uniquely sophisticated information processing system whose response characteristics extend far beyond the reductive categorizations offered by personality inventories or standard resting-state analyses.

The protocol’s methodological innovation lies in its systematic mapping of neural response topographies across multiple domains of conscious experience. Drawing inspiration from the precise characterization achieved in fingerprint analysis, where minute variations in dermal ridge patterns yield unique identifiers, Neuroprint employs a multi-layered stimulus paradigm designed to probe both fundamental sensory processing and higher-order cognitive responses.

At its foundation, the protocol implements precisely calibrated sensory sweeps that systematically traverse fundamental perceptual dimensions. Visual stimulation progresses through the complete visible spectrum (380-700 nm), executing bidirectional ROYGBIV sequences that map chromatic response characteristics with high granularity. Parallel auditory stimulation spans the full range of human hearing (20 Hz to 20 kHz), methodically exploring both pure tonal progressions and complex harmonic structures that reveal individual variations in acoustic processing.

Building upon this foundational sensory mapping, the protocol extends into increasingly complex domains of perceptual and cognitive processing. A carefully curated sequence of ecologically valid stimuli probes universal response patterns: the sound of infant vocalizations that tap into deeply conserved caregiving circuits, the rhythmic patterns of biological motion that engage social perception networks, and the acoustic signatures of environmental threats that activate ancient survival mechanisms. These universal probes – ranging from heartbeats and breathing patterns to footsteps and tool use sounds – provide a baseline for understanding fundamental neural response characteristics.

a high sensory stimuli neuroprint

The protocol culminates in its most sophisticated element: the systematic presentation of cultural motifs that engage higher-order cognitive and emotional processing networks. This component employs rapid sequences of culturally embedded stimuli – fragments of wedding marches and funeral dirges, snippets of victory celebrations and lullabies, elements of ritual music and social ceremonies – each carefully selected to probe the neural signatures of learned cultural associations while maintaining cross-cultural validity. Urban soundscapes (traffic patterns, subway rhythms, cafe ambiance) and natural phenomena (flowing water, crackling fire, rustling leaves) provide additional layers of ecological complexity.

Each stimulus presentation within this hierarchical paradigm elicits distinct spatiotemporal patterns of neural activation, characterized by unique amplitudes, latencies, and topographical distributions across recording channels. These evoked responses, analogous to individual ridges in a fingerprint, constitute discrete features in a high-dimensional space of neural reactivity. The aggregation of these responses – thousands of precisely characterized neural events spanning sensory, cognitive, and cultural domains – generates a comprehensive feature set that forms the individual’s neuroprint. This multidimensional characterization of neural response patterns provides an unprecedented framework for capturing the brain’s inherent complexity, establishing a quantitative basis for understanding individual differences in experiential processing.

The proposed protocol would orchestrate a carefully choreographed sequence of stimuli: sweeping colors that dance across the visual field, precisely calibrated sounds that traverse the frequency spectrum, and tactile sensations that map the body’s landscape. Like collecting thousands of evoked response potentials, each stimulus interaction would contribute to a high-dimensional portrait of neural function. These responses, captured through EEG or fMRI, would form the features of an individual’s unique neuroprint – a theoretical construct that we anticipate will bridge current limitations in predictive neuroscience.

Predictive Power Through Pattern Recognition

The true power of this approach lies in its predictive capabilities. By leveraging advanced machine learning techniques and collaborative filtering – similar to how Netflix identifies patterns among viewers – we can use your neuroprint in concert with our growing database of behavioral responses to interventions to minimize uncertainty about your potential response to various interventions. This approach transcends traditional one-size-fits-all paradigms, offering a pathway to truly personalized therapeutic and experiential interventions.

Future Directions and Planned Implementation

The theoretical implications of the Neuroprint protocol extend far beyond academic interest. Planned collaborations with Lumena and the Institute for Meditation Brainwave Research will explore practical applications that could revolutionize how we approach mental health treatment, meditation practice, and experiential therapy. By understanding the unique neural fingerprint that each individual brings to these interventions, we anticipate being able to better match people with the approaches most likely to benefit them.

As IACS prepares to implement and validate this theoretical framework, our vision extends beyond mere data collection – we aim to map the infinite variations of human experience, one neuroprint at a time. This endeavor represents a step toward a future where interventions can be precisely tailored to each individual’s neural architecture, maximizing effectiveness while minimizing the cost – both temporal and financial – of finding the right approach for each person.

The pursuit of realizing the Neuroprint protocol represents more than just technological innovation; it embodies our commitment to understanding the profound uniqueness of each human brain. In this pursuit, we’re not just proposing a tool – we’re developing a new language for understanding the individual variations that make each of us uniquely human, and in doing so, laying the groundwork for new pathways to healing and transformation.

chills can help anhedonia

Chills Improve Reward Learning in Anhedonic Depression

By 3,609 Views 0 comments0 comments
E4001, Manuscript, Proceedings

Get The Article

  • Article PDF
  • Journal of Affective Disorders Article

PDF

Aesthetic chills modulate reward learning in anhedonic depression

Cite This Work

  • APA
  • MLA
  • Bibtex

Jain, A., Schoeller, F., Esfand, S., Duda, J., Null, K., Reggente, N., Pizzagalli, D. A., & Maes, P. (2024). Aesthetic chills modulate reward learning in Anhedonic depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 370, 9–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.038

Jain, Abhinandan, et al. “Aesthetic chills modulate reward learning in Anhedonic depression.” Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 370, Oct. 2024, pp. 9–17, doi:10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.038.

@article{Jain_Schoeller_Esfand_Duda_Null_Reggente_Pizzagalli_Maes_2024, title={Aesthetic chills modulate reward learning in Anhedonic depression}, volume={370}, url={https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.038}, DOI={10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.038}, journal={Journal of Affective Disorders}, author={Jain, Abhinandan and Schoeller, Felix and Esfand, Shiba and Duda, Jessica and Null, Kaylee and Reggente, Nicco and Pizzagalli, Diego A and Maes, Pattie}, year={2024}, month=oct, pages={9–17} }

Working with Abhi Jain at MIT Media Lab and Diego Pizzagalli’s team at McLean Hospital, we recently investigated whether aesthetic chills could improve reward learning in individuals with anhedonic depression– an important follow-up on our work showing how chills can update depression schemas.

Anhedonia – the reduced ability to feel pleasure or motivation – affects up to 70% of depressed patients and predicts poor treatment outcomes. Current antidepressants (SSRIs) can sometimes worsen anhedonic symptoms, leaving that patient population in need for new treatment options.

Based on previous findings showing aesthetic chills engage the brain’s mesocortical reward circuit, we tested whether aesthetic chills could temporarily improve reward learning in anhedonic individuals. To measure reward learning, we used our collaborator Diego Pizzagalli’s probabilistic reward task (PRT). The PRT measures how well people modify their behavior based on rewards – participants have to identify subtle differences between stimuli (e.g., distinguishing between images with slightly different numbers of dogs vs cats), with one option being rewarded more frequently than the other. Healthy people quickly develop a bias toward the more rewarded option, while anhedonic individuals typically show no response.

In our study of 103 depressed participants, anhedonic individuals who experienced chills showed significantly improved reward learning (p = .004) compared to non-responders. This effect was specific to high anhedonia participants – we saw no significant changes in those with low anhedonia or controls.

this figure shows how aesthetic chills increase reward bias in individuals with depression and anhedonia


The study used validated stimuli from ChillsDB, developed in our earlier work.

Our team is now working with ketamine clinics to implement aesthetic chills induction alongside ketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression. The rationale is compelling: ketamine rapidly enhances neuroplasticity and dopaminergic function, while aesthetic chills naturally engage reward circuitry in a targeted way depending on the content used (speech, poetry, stories, films). By combining these approaches, we hope to amplify therapeutic effects and potentially extend ketamine’s antidepressant benefits.

We’re particularly interested in how chills might enhance the psychedelic-like experiences many patients report during ketamine sessions. Early observations suggest that carefully selected aesthetic stimuli could help guide these experiences in therapeutically meaningful directions. If you’re a clinician working with ketamine or a researcher interested in this approach, we’re looking to expand our clinical partnerships. We’re particularly interested in sites that can implement rigorous protocols and already collect standardized data. If you’re interested in collaborating or learning more, please reach out: felix@advancedconsciousness.org. 

Read more

Aesthetic Chills and Self-Transcendence: Another step toward the democratization of mystical experience

By 3,841 Views 0 comments0 comments
E4001, Manuscript, Proceedings

Get The Article

  • Article PDF
  • PLOS Mental Health Article

PDF

Self-transcendence accompanies aesthetic chills

Cite This Work

  • APA
  • MLA
  • Bibtex

Christov-Moore, L., Schoeller, F., Lynch, C., Sacchet, M., & Reggente, N. (2024). Self-transcendence accompanies aesthetic chills. PLOS Mental Health, 1(5), e0000125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000125

Christov-Moore, Leonardo, et al. “Self-transcendence accompanies aesthetic chills.” PLOS Mental Health, vol. 1, no. 5, Oct. 2024, p. e0000125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000125.

@article{Christov-Moore_Schoeller_Lynch_Sacchet_Reggente_2024, title={Self-transcendence accompanies aesthetic chills}, volume={1}, url={https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000125}, DOI={10.1371/journal.pmen.0000125}, number={5}, journal={PLOS Mental Health}, author={Christov-Moore, Leonardo and Schoeller, Felix and Lynch, Caitlin and Sacchet, Matthew and Reggente, Nicco}, year={2024}, month=oct, pages={e0000125}, language={en} }


Some of the smallest things are the most important. These small, important things and events can escape our notice and study for a long time. They are special precisely because they are small and, paradoxically, everywhere. An incredibly important and heretofore unknown component of the human circulatory system went unnoticed until just the last decade, despite thousands of years of studying human anatomy, because it was wispy, small, and everywhere. Such is the case with the aesthetic chills phenomenon, which few people even think to name or pay attention to, yet which all of us experience. In our search to democratize non-ordinary, mystical, transformative experiences, it may prove to be a key ally—a living biological demonstration of the fact that aesthetics began not in commerce, but in religion and our encounter with the transcendent.

Over the last year, our lab has found that aesthetic chills can not only be reliably evoked, but they also show many of the classical properties of transformative psychedelic experiences. They seem to alleviate depressive symptoms, maybe even reverse maladaptive, deep-seated beliefs, and seem deeply tied to our deepest beliefs and insights. In this study, we sought to examine whether the experience of aesthetic chills could, in fact, bear the characteristics of a tiny, self-transcendent, mystical experience.

To investigate this, we exposed 3,000 people from all over California to a series of songs, videos, and speeches that previous studies had found to consistently cause chills in a majority of people examined. We had them fill out questionnaires that examined their demographic qualities, personality traits, proneness to religious experiences and thinking, and even their political orientation. Then we showed them the video or song and had them fill out another series of questionnaires, assessing their mood, asking them whether they got chills and how intense they were, and importantly, asking if they experienced any of the classical three components of a crucial state known as self-transcendence.

A brief aside on what self-transcendence is: first coined in the 1980s within nursing literature, it was a trait used to describe a state or proclivity that seemed to correlate with and predict long-term health and well-being among people approaching old age. The state was characterized by:

1. Feelings of becoming one with everything, of ego dissolving

2. Feeling connected to one’s deeper self, to the world, and to other people

3. A sense of moral elevation, a motivation to live a nobler or more virtuous life, and a sense of compassion towards others

As it turns out, self-transcendence predicts well-being, resilience to adverse events, and prosocial, empathetic behavior in people of all ages, nationalities, creeds, and orientations. Importantly, having a self-transcendent event—whether it be a major life event, a psychedelic experience, an advanced meditative state, or immersion in nature—has been shown to cause greater well-being, greater resilience, and a greater inclination to help others.

What we found and replicated in independent samples in both California and Texas, as well as in yet another recent replication (in total, some 5,000 people), was an incredibly significant and robust relationship between the experience of chills, its intensity, and self-transcendence. Over and over again, with remarkable consistency, if a person experiences chills and to the extent to which they experience them, they will also report feeling that their ego is dissolved, that they are connected to the world and their deeper selves, and that they feel motivated to live in a kinder, nobler, more virtuous way.

In fact, adding chill-inducing music to a guided meditation increases people’s perception of its self-transcendent qualities and enhances the impact and sense of immersion people report from the meditation. What these findings reveal is that this small but ubiquitous human experience may be a microcosm of the transformative, mystical experiences often considered to be elusive or difficult to achieve for most of the population.

The more we can harness these little experiences and combine them, the more we may be able to bring these central meaning-making experiences—once thought to be the sole domain of psychedelics, religion, or advanced meditation—to that vast mass of people who, in our modern era, are perhaps too skeptical for religion and averse to the psychedelic experience. This could help improve their lives, improve their behavior towards others, and sustain a sense of meaning otherwise all too often taken up by consumerism or demagogues.

Read more

Arousal Regulation by the External Globus Pallidus: A New Node for the Mesocircuit Hypothesis

By 3,787 Views 0 comments0 comments
Manuscript

Get The Article

  • Article PDF
  • Brain Sciences Article

PDF

Arousal Regulation by the External Globus Pallidus: A New Node for the Mesocircuit Hypothesis

Cite This Work

  • APA
  • MLA
  • Bibtex

Zheng, Z. S., Reggente, N., & Monti, M. M. (2023). Arousal regulation by the external globus pallidus: a new node for the mesocircuit hypothesis. Brain Sciences, 13(1), 146. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13010146

Zheng, Zhong Sheng, et al. “Arousal regulation by the external globus pallidus: a new node for the mesocircuit hypothesis.” Brain Sciences, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 146, doi:10.3390/brainsci13010146.

@article{Zheng_Reggente_Monti_2023, title={Arousal regulation by the external globus pallidus: a new node for the mesocircuit hypothesis}, volume={13}, url={https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13010146}, DOI={10.3390/brainsci13010146}, number={1}, journal={Brain Sciences}, author={Zheng, Zhong Sheng and Reggente, Nicco and Monti, Martin M.}, year={2023}, month=jan, pages={146} }

Introduction

In the intricate architecture of the brain, the External Globus Pallidus (GPe) has traditionally been recognized as a cornerstone in motor control. However, recent research reveals a more profound narrative—one where the GPe emerges not just as a facilitator of movement, but as a pivotal regulator of arousal and consciousness. This evolving perspective invites us to reconsider the Mesocircuit Hypothesis, integrating the GPe as a crucial node that orchestrates the delicate interplay between wakefulness and sleep.

The Mesocircuit Hypothesis and the GPe’s Expanding Role

The Mesocircuit Hypothesis (MH) offers a framework for understanding consciousness, focusing primarily on the thalamus as the central relay in sustaining arousal. Yet, the basal ganglia, particularly the GPe, have often been overlooked in this context. The GPe, once seen merely as a relay in motor pathways, now emerges as an integral regulator within the mesocircuit, influencing both motor and non-motor functions.

  • Enhancing the MH Framework: Integrating the GPe into the MH enriches our understanding of arousal regulation, bridging the gap between motor control and cognitive states.
  • Interconnected Networks: The GPe’s extensive connections with cortical and subcortical structures underscore its role in harmonizing neural processes essential for maintaining consciousness.
  • Dynamic Modulation: The GPe’s ability to modulate inhibitory and excitatory signals positions it as a dynamic regulator, vital for adaptive arousal responses.

GPe’s Role in Sleep-Wake Regulation

The GPe’s influence extends deeply into the regulation of sleep-wake cycles, orchestrating the transitions that govern our daily rhythms. Animal studies illuminate the GPe’s dual capacity to promote wakefulness and facilitate restful sleep, underscoring its significance in maintaining sleep architecture.

  • Damage to the GPe: Disruption of the GPe leads to heightened wakefulness intertwined with fragmented sleep patterns, revealing its role in stabilizing sleep.
  • Stimulation of the GPe: Enhancing GPe activity promotes sleep, particularly non-REM (NREM) sleep, crucial for restorative processes.
  • Connection with the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus (TRN): The GPe’s interaction with the TRN plays a vital role in sensory gating, ensuring that extraneous stimuli do not disrupt sleep by modulating thalamocortical neuron activity.

Neurochemical Insights: Adenosine and Dopamine

The GPe’s interactions with neurochemicals such as adenosine and dopamine reveal the biochemical underpinnings of arousal regulation.

  • Adenosine (A2A) Receptors: Abundant in the striatum, these receptors facilitate sleep promotion when activated. The GPe’s interaction with adenosine receptors positions it as a mediator in the transition to sleep.
  • Dopamine (D2) Receptors: Dopamine modulates GPe activity through D2 receptors, influencing arousal states. In conditions like Parkinson’s Disease, where dopamine levels are compromised, sleep disturbances often manifest, highlighting the GPe’s role in maintaining sleep-wake balance.

The GPe in Disorders of Consciousness

Beyond its role in normal sleep-wake regulation, the GPe emerges as a key player in disorders of consciousness (DOC), offering new avenues for understanding and treatment.

  • Functional Connectivity and Atrophy: In DOC patients, pallidal atrophy, particularly within the GPe, correlates with measures of behavioral arousal and neural complexity, suggesting its vital role in sustaining consciousness.
  • Pharmacological Interventions: Medications like Zolpidem (Ambien), typically used for insomnia, paradoxically enhance arousal in some DOC patients. This effect is likely mediated by the GPe’s extensive GABAergic connections, which modulate thalamocortical activity.
  • Differential Connectivity: The GPe’s robust connections with the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and central thalamic nuclei, as opposed to the GPi’s motor-centric connections, indicate a specialized role in cognitive arousal and consciousness.

Integrative Perspectives on the GPe’s Functionality

The GPe’s complex role in the broader neural landscape extends beyond traditional motor control, embedding itself within the nuanced interplay of consciousness and arousal.

  • Bridging Motor and Cognitive Domains: The GPe’s involvement in both motor and non-motor functions positions it as a crucial intersection within the brain’s network, influencing cognitive processes as well as physical actions.
  • Therapeutic Potential: Understanding the GPe opens new avenues for therapeutic interventions, particularly in treating sleep disorders, DOC, and neuropsychiatric conditions through targeted modulation of its activity.
Figure 1
Proposed Striato-Pallidal Circuitries for Promoting Sleep. Two potential routes by which the GPe may mediate cortical activity are illustrated: (A) the Cortico-Striato-Pallido-Cortical route and (B) the Cortico-Striato-Pallido-Reticulo-Thalamo-Cortical route. These circuits highlight the GPe’s role in regulating sleep-wake cycles through its connections with the cortex and thalamic reticular nucleus.

Conclusion

The External Globus Pallidus, once a peripheral player in the orchestra of neural functions, now takes center stage as a conductor of arousal and consciousness. Its integration into the Mesocircuit Hypothesis not only broadens our understanding of the brain’s regulatory mechanisms but also offers new insights into the treatment of disorders related to consciousness and sleep. As we continue to explore the GPe’s intricate pathways and interactions, we open the door to innovative therapies and a deeper understanding of the brain’s orchestration of wakefulness and rest.

Read more

How floating in darkness challenges our concept of the self

By 3,436 Views 0 comments0 comments
Musings

Excerpt adapted from Buddha in the Float Tank

What is a float tank? What does it teach us about perception, selfhood, and out-of-body experiences?

The tank is a lightproof, soundproof chamber filled with saline water. This solution, saturated with Epson salt, is so dense that one floats effortlessly, with no muscle tension. What’s more, the water is heated to the temperature of the skin. Thus, besides being dark and silent, the tank is also absent of any gravitational, tactile, or thermal sensations. The so-called proprioceptive sense, which operates outside the traditional five senses to locate limbs and other body parts in space, also goes dormant in the tank. Once the body is still, floating effortlessly, all that’s left is the mind.

Except, the mind is all you ever had to begin with. Everything you ever see, hear, or touch is happening in the mind. How could it be otherwise? Nothing really changes in the tank. The tank just reveals the nondual nature of consciousness.

What is nonduality?

Here, we need to get philosophical for a moment. The term nondual emphasizes that subject and object are not separate. The world is not “out there” while the self is “in here”. The perceiver and the perceived are one. Consider this illustration below from Wikipedia. If “I” am located somewhere internal to my head, watching the world outside like a person in a movie theater, then how does this little homunculus perceive the inside of the theater? There would need to be a little person in his head, and so forth, ad infinitum.

The ordinary, dualistic way of thinking about perception leads to an infinite regress. Illustration by Wikimedia users Reverie, Pbroks13, and Was a bee. CC-BY-SA-2.5,2.0,1.0

It’s one thing to grasp nonduality intellectually. It’s another thing entirely to grasp it through direct experience. The illusion of separateness from the world is so convincing that we rarely glimpse through it.

The float tank makes it easier to see through this illusion. The ordinary sense of being a subject in the head looking out at objects in the world ceases when that world disappears in the tank. One no longer feels that they are experiencing things from a distance. Rather, there is just consciousness.

Out-of-body experiences

There’s another curious consequence of the zero-stimulus environment called dissociation, or extreme psychological detachment. Here, we encounter a paradox: the body is perceived more clearly, but in a new, non-self context. On the one hand, it’s unsurprising that one becomes more aware of bodily sensations in the float tank, for these are the only sensory channels that are still buzzing with information. Indeed, enhanced cardiorespiratory awareness in the tank has been reported in scientific research. On the other hand, because one no longer feels like a subject internal to the body, the body is no longer the center of awareness. Nondual awareness is centerless, which probably explains reports of out-of-body experiences in the tank (including my own brief experience).Except where noted otherwise, the above reflections on floating and nondual awareness are anecdotal, based on my own float sessions. However, the idea that floating alters self-perception in a manner similar to meditation or even psychedelics drugs is also supported by a neuroimaging study of healthy volunteers who had brain scans before and after three float sessions. These volunteers showed changes in the brain’s default mode network—widely regarded as a neural substrate of the autobiographical self—similar to what has been reported in other studies of meditation and psychedelic substances like psilocybin and LSD.

Functional connectivity, or statistical relationships, between and within hubs of the default mode network is reduced by floating in healthy volunteers. Blue lines show relationships that are weaker after the experience. A similar yet weaker pattern was observed for a control condition in which volunteers reclined in a chair in a dark and quiet room instead of floating. Source: Al Zoubi et al. 2021 Human Brain Mapping

Conclusion

Of course, there’s still much that we don’t know about how floating compares to other altered states of consciousness, and whether it has similar (and likely safer) therapeutic potential as psychedelics seem to have for mental illness. I strongly advocate for future research to address these questions.This exert was adapted from a recent post, Buddha in the Float Tank, on Joel Frohlich’s Substack newsletter, Something It’s Like. Click to the link above to read the full post, including Joel’s perspective on inner and outward journeys in the context of travel.

Read more
Erik Hoel

Interview with Erik Hoel, neuroscientist and author

By 4,002 Views 0 comments0 comments
Musings

In my last post, I shared my reflections on Erik Hoel’s wonderful book on the science of consciousness, The World Behind the World. As a follow up, he was kind enough to answer my questions over email about both his book and his very exciting career. Erik was a professor at Tuft’s University until 2023, when he left academia to work full time on his Substack newsletter, The Intrinsic Perspective. He holds a doctorate in neuroscience, which he earned working under Giulio Tononi on the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He wears many hats as a writer: popular non-fiction (The World Behind the World), essayist (The Intrinsic Perspective), and novelist (The Revelations, published in 2021).

“I think there’s been too much focus on technological progress as the driver of human civilization and not enough on the cognitive tools”

Joel:       The beginning of your book introduces the intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives in the context of Julian Jaynes’s work. Do you think the seemingly impoverished accounts of subjective experience by ancient people, noted in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, are really telling us how ancient people thought about consciousness per se, or the development of selfhood? For example, if ancient people interpreted their thoughts as the gods speaking to them, could this suggest that they had not yet developed the sort of selfhood that we take for granted today?

Erik:       They were people steeped in myth and metaphor. Religion for them was like science is for us – it was the way the world works. So I think they still had selves, in the modern sense, but their reality model was so different it looks as if they themselves were different. Additionally, and I try to stress this point in the book, we have all sorts of cognitive abstract tools that they didn’t. These are things that took a long time to develop, and include the ability to even talk about selves in detail, describe consciousness in detail, and so on, things I group under “the intrinsic perspective.” Even a teenager can now do stream of consciousness writing without having read Joyce – they’ve absorbed the ability by osmosis. But that had to be invented. I think there’s been too much focus on technological progress as the driver of human civilization and not enough on the cognitive tools, like the ability to describe consciousness, better narrative abilities, clearer causal reasoning, even empiricism itself.

Read Joel Frohlich’s reflections on The World Behind the World and accompanying photos
featuring Stella Dorrestein from an earlier blog post.


“I don’t know if emptiness or non-self is really anything fundamental to human nature”

Joel:       Your writing on the intrinsic perspective strongly emphasizes the literary development of the novel, and literary techniques like stream of consciousness, as central to this perspective’s development in Western culture. How do you perceive the novel’s role in exploring subjective experiences in comparison to more formal introspective practices like meditation? Do you practice meditation?

Erik:       I don’t practice meditation. But I’m familiar with it – regularly in my childhood actual Buddhist monks would stay at our house. My mother would host them to teach classes at her bookstore, or build sand mandalas. Perhaps seeing that these were people, up close, made the mysticism of the whole thing a lot less attractive.

Joel:       Are there aspects of subjective experiences which are rarely introspected upon in novels? For instance, one might not learn about the optic blindspot from reading fiction, much less deeper aspects of experience that are fundamental in the Buddhist tradition, such as emptiness or non-self.

Erik:       I don’t know if emptiness or non-self is really anything fundamental to human nature, given the scope of human civilization. I think you can get to such states, with practice, but there’s a reason it takes practice.

Joel:       In your work, you discuss the prospect of adding selfhood as an axiom to IIT (the integrated information theory of consciousness developed by Giulio Tononi). How do you perceive schools of Buddhism or Advaita, which are centered on concepts of non-self or non-duality?

Erik:       I think these are of phenomenological interest, but again, does a meditator experiencing some hard-to-reach state of consciousness tell us anything of deep scientific interest about consciousness? Honestly, probably not. I’m actually bearish on any approaches to consciousness like that, instead of reflecting on normal, untrained phenomenology, so much as such a thing exists (the latter is what IIT does).

Is non-self fundamental to human experience? Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash.

Joel:       Paraphrasing Theodosius Dobzhansky, you’ve written that nothing in the brain makes sense except in light of consciousness. Is this true for all disciplines in neuroscience? For instance, do neuroscientists studying motor disorders like Parkinson’s disease need the intrinsic perspective?

Erik:       I think it’s a problem of scale. If Parkinson’s really is just a problem with dopaminergic neurons totally localized to the substantia nigra, then no, you don’t need a theory of consciousness. But I’m pretty clear that a lot of molecular neurobiology can proceed apace without a theory, and if Parkinson’s can be explained entirely that way, then it falls under that umbrella. It’s cognitive neuroscience that is in trouble without a theory of consciousness.

“I think [my] book is sort of fundamentally complete in that it really doesn’t focus much on the news of the day.”

Joel:       You’ve written about the stagnation of progress in neuroscience due to its preparadigmatic immaturity. If we had a comprehensive theory of consciousness tomorrow, what is the first practical breakthrough you would anticipate?

Erik:       There wouldn’t just be one first one, there would be a Cambrian explosion. I would expect to basically throw out the textbooks and write new ones, and that would start happening immediately. But from a very practical perspective probably the first main effect would be to resolve longstanding debates about AI consciousness, either how to build it or why it’s impossible and to what degree current systems count, which has significant practical implications for basically everyone given how integrated the technology already is becoming with search, operating systems, etc. 

Joel:       How far can the NCC (neural correlates of consciousness) approach take us toward practical advances without a guiding theory of consciousness? For example, there’s great interest now in developing non-hallucinogenic psychedelic drugs. Do you think this effort can succeed without a theory driven approach?

Erik:       We’ve identified plenty of drugs that work on the brain prior to a theory of consciousness, but it’s mostly either (a) luck, or (b) simply variations on what we know works already, which was originally a consequence of luck. So it could very well work. Personally, I doubt that the antidepressant effects can be simulated without the experience, however.

How far can the science of the mind progress without a theory of consciousness? Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

Joel:       You’ve had a lot of news to reflect on in your Substack newsletter for the past year. Shortly before your book came out last year, LLMs like ChatGPT exploded onto the scene; then, shortly after the book’s release, a letter attacking IIT as pseudoscience was posted on PsyArXiv. Is there anything new you wish you could have included in your book? If so, how might it have covered these topics?

Erik:       I think the book is sort of fundamentally complete in that it really doesn’t focus much on the news of the day. That’s both an advantage of books and a disadvantage. I probably wouldn’t write a book about AI, since it’s changing so fast there’s no point. At least, right now.

Joel:       What’s next for your career? Are you working on a new book?

Erik:       I do have plans for more books, and I’m doing some private research on the side about consciousness and emergence. But what’s immediately next is just a bunch of essays and ideas planned for my newsletter.

“I’m very excited for the next generation of consciousness researchers”

Joel:       If you could invite any living author or scientist to write a foreword to the next edition of The World Behind the World, whom would you invite and why?

Erik:       There are a number of people, from Anil Seth to David Chalmers to Giulio Tononi (my PhD mentor) that I think are still doing really interesting work. But I sort of know most of their opinions, so what they’d say wouldn’t surprise me. I’m very excited for the next generation of consciousness researchers, so perhaps someone whose name I don’t currently know, but will in the future.

Erik Hoel’s doctoral supervisor, Giulio Tononi, is the author of Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul.
Photo by Joel Frohlich, featuring Stella Dorrestein.

Joel:       What sort of reception has The World Behind the World received since it came out last year? Are you pleased with how it’s been received? How has it been received in academia? Has anyone tried to pull you back into the ivory tower?

Erik:       I don’t keep track of the reception of anything I do, on any sort of level. I retweet what I get tagged in, just because that’s what you’re supposed to do, it’s what the person expects, and it’s a strategy on social media about which I don’t have to put much thought in. But I learned long ago that actually tracking down anything else is just a path to pain. All you can do is just put things out in the world and hope people like them or that they have some influence, but you can’t think about it too long. As for myself, no one has tried to pull me back into academia, even though Tufts University still brags about me on Twitter and refers to me “Tufts’ Erik Hoel” and so on. I left for a number of reasons, some more personal than others, but one of the more practical ones was that I was afraid it would be a continuing struggle to get grants for my research. Several months after I left, I heard from a grant source that I had gotten something like a half-million-dollar grant from an application they had had languishing for years. But of course, they now wouldn’t award it. So I feel I have unfinished business in academia, and would like to return at some point to in a research position, while continuing to write. I do miss working with PhD students on new projects; I think I ran an inventive and interesting lab. If some institution reached out with an offer of an affiliation for a research professorship, I wouldn’t say no.

Read more
array of animal consciousness

Revisiting Animal Consciousness

By 3,553 Views 0 comments0 comments
Musings

The New York Declaration (released April 19, 2024)

Last month, a prominent group of 39 cross-disciplinary scientists released The New York Declaration of Animal Consciousness, acknowledging (1) the “strong scientific support” of conscious experience in birds and mammals; (2) “the realistic possibility of conscious experience” in all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects);” and that (3) it is “irresponsible to ignore that possibility [of conscious experience] in decisions affecting that animal.”

Among the initial signees are Anil Seth, Christof Koch, and David Chalmers. The declaration focuses on phenomenal consciousness (sentience, subjective experience). It seeks to encourage research and funding for animal consciousness (towards improved theories of consciousness overall), and puts forth a consensus among leading scientists: “certainty about consciousness should not be required for consideration of welfare risks” (Andrews et al., 2024).

Advancements since the Cambridge Declaration (2012)

The recent Declaration is not the first of its kind. In 2012, a group of neuroscientists released The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, recognizing the need for the field of consciousness research to reassess some of its key assumptions. They concluded that “humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness” and that many non-human animals have the capacity for conscious awareness and intentional behaviors (Low et al., 2012).

A flourish of research in animal cognition in the ensuing decade has yielded remarkable findings of conscious activity, often in previously overlooked species. In the last two years alone we’ve learned that bees display apparent play behavior, zebrafish show signs of curiosity, and fruit flies have active and quiet sleep–and social isolation disrupts their sleep patterns (Andrews et al., 2024). This emerging picture of “surprisingly rich inner lives” across the animal kingdom prompted top researchers in biology, cognitive science and philosophy (Jeff Sebo, Kristen Andrews, and Jonathan Birch) to further update where the science is and where it is heading. 

New paradigm for understanding internal states

This recent Declaration presents an exciting opening for a more comprehensive view of consciousness than previously imagined. It signals a new paradigm of research into animal cognition, looking beyond the capacity for intentional behavior and moving towards understanding internal states.

The 2024 Declaration shows a move away from the hyperfocus on neurological substrates, with a growing recognition that (1) in other animals, the architecture for consciousness may look completely different than in humans, and (2) consciousness may not necessarily be “generated.”

Multidimensional framework

It also shows a shift in the types of thinking about parameters for consciousness, marking a move to a more multidimensional framework approach–and improved experimental design–to consider conscious experience across species. 

For example, the cleaner wrasse fish appear to pass a version of the mirror-mark test, and garter snakes pass a scent-based version of the mirror-mark test (Andrews et al., 2024). A visual mirror-mark test would not be appropriate for snakes, whose sensory systems rely on scent to navigate, yet an appropriately designed test has indicated species-specific markers of self-recognition. Notably, neither fish nor reptiles were included in the earlier Cambridge Declaration. Considering species on their own terms may help us better understand consciousness in general. 

AI-generated depiction of a fish taking the mirror test, a way scientists assess self-awareness in animals. The test involves exposing an animal to a mirror and observing their behavior. If they show signs of self-directed behaviors (like touching a mark placed on their body only visible in the mirror), it suggests they recognize themselves and possess a degree of self-awareness.

Towards new theories of consciousness

Since the original Cambridge Declaration we’ve witnessed a proliferation in substrate-independent theories of consciousness and evidence for the possibility for non-local consciousness. 

The widening picture of sentience could further support views that consciousness evolved much earlier than previously assumed or that it may be primary (meaning that, like energy, consciousness may be fundamental, as opposed to an emergent property of physical matter or processes). 

Significance for consciousness research

In our ongoing search to understand consciousness, the evidence of widespread animal sentience has very real-world implications for how we interact with other species. Recognizing the current state of science on this topic sets a public record that may be used to guide further research and inform policy, without waiting for scientists to solve “the hard problem” of consciousness. The New York Declaration makes a meaningful, actionable, and exciting step forward in consciousness research.

References:

  • Andrews, K., Birch, J., Sebo, J., and Sims, T. (2024) Background to the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness. nydeclaration.com.
  • Low, P., Panksepp, J., Reiss, D., Edelman, D., Van Swinderen, B., & Koch, C. (2012, July). The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. In Francis Crick Memorial Conference (Vol. 7). England: Cambridge.
Read more
Copyright (c) 2023 Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS) | Privacy Policy