The question of whether artificial intelligence can be conscious has moved well beyond science fiction. It now sits at the center of scientific debate and is increasingly shaping discussions about a range of contentious issues, from AI ethics to animal welfare, fetal development, and laboratory-grown brain tissue.

However, according to a new analysis published in Neuron, the science used to answer that question may not actually be measuring what researchers think it is. A research team led by Hakwan Lau at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, with collaborators from the Université de Montréal and New York University, argues that many common experimental methods in consciousness research do not separate subjective experience from general information processing.

In the paper, The Ethical Impasse of Current Consciousness Science, the researchers argue that current scientific tools may not be capable of reliably detecting consciousness.

The Measurement Problem

Consciousness research relies heavily on methods such as visual masking, binocular rivalry, and the detection of perceptual limits. These methods usually compare brain responses when a person is aware of something versus when they are not. The idea is that the difference between these two cases shows whether conscious experience is present or not.

Lau and his team challenge this assumption. When experiments make a stimulus invisible, they often reduce both conscious awareness and the brain’s ability to process information about that stimulus. This means that what appears to be a marker of consciousness in the brain may actually reflect general cognitive activity.

“Many current theories of consciousness appear to be supported by a range of experimental findings,” Lau said. “But those findings may actually reflect general information processing rather than consciousness itself — so it remains difficult to conclude that these theories truly explain consciousness.”

A Historical Warning

The authors compare the current situation to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when strong claims about consciousness led to a crisis in psychology. The resulting backlash led to the rise of behaviorism, which focused only on observable behavior and halted consciousness research for many years.

Researchers caution that a similar situation could occur again. As AI systems become more advanced and public interest in machine consciousness increases, scientists are under pressure to provide answers. If researchers make strong claims about consciousness in AI, organoids, or fetuses that lack robust methods to support them, scientific credibility could be undermined.

Better Science Required

The authors suggest a different approach. Conditions like blindsight, in which people with brain damage can respond to stimuli they do not report seeing, offer a more controlled way to study consciousness. Another example is hemispatial neglect, where patients fail to notice one side of their visual field while still having basic perception. For researchers, these conditions provide a rare opportunity to separate awareness from information processing and investigate each process on its own.

These conditions show that subjective experience and information processing are distinct from one another. The team says that building experiments around this difference is needed to make reliable scientific claims about consciousness.

The implications of this study extend far beyond the academic world. Deciding whether non-human entities are conscious has direct legal and ethical concerns. The researchers say that the science behind these decisions must meet high standards.

“Questions about consciousness increasingly carry ethical and societal implications,” Lau said. “If scientific claims about consciousness are going to influence discussions about animal welfare, AI ethics, or bioethics, then the scientific foundations supporting those claims must be especially rigorous.”

The researchers conclude that the most urgent challenge is not deciding whether AI, animals, or organoids are conscious, but developing better tools to identify consciousness if it emerges.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

In the realm of human behavior and nutrition, it is a familiar admonition: never shop for groceries on an empty stomach. This age-old advice, often shared informally, now finds support in groundbreaking research emerging from the University of Otago’s Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka Institute. Their latest scientific inquiry delves deeply into the intricate interplay between physiological states and mental imagery related to food, shedding new light on why hunger alters not only our desire for food but also the vividness with which we visualize it.

This pioneering experimental study, led by PhD candidate Maggie Hames, sought to navigate the neural and cognitive mechanisms underpinning our mental experiences of food. By examining how hunger and satiety modify food-related mental imagery, the research offers vital clues to understanding the subjective experience of craving. The team’s insights contribute notably to the broader discourse on eating behavior, appetite regulation, and the psychobiological factors influencing dietary decisions.

Participants in the study—approximately 60 individuals—underwent controlled conditions in which they were asked to conjure sensory details of food items, specifically focusing on the imagined smell, flavor, and texture. These tasks were performed both while the participants were hungry and after reaching a state of fullness. The researchers employed rigorous experimental procedures to quantify the vividness, ease, and temporal dynamics of these imagined sensory experiences, seeking to determine how metabolic status modulates food-related cognition.

Among the salient findings was a marked increase in the ease and intensity of food imagery during hunger. Subjects reported more vivid and faster-evoked mental representations of food flavors when fasting compared to when satiated. This enhanced imagery under hunger suggests a physiological priming effect that heightens sensory processing linked to food anticipation. Such a mechanism may serve evolutionary functions—enhancing the motivation to seek and consume energizing nutrients when the organism is metabolically depleted.

Surprisingly, the study unearthed a nuanced dissociation between different sensory modalities in mental imagery. While flavor imagery was significantly influenced by hunger, the mental visualization of texture appeared consistently more accessible irrespective of metabolic state. This finding challenges prevailing assumptions within food science that flavor dominates the mental representation of food reward, proposing instead that texture occupies a crucial cognitive dimension that is perhaps more stably encoded.

Associate Professor Mei Peng, a co-author and principal investigator of Otago’s Sensory Neuroscience and Nutrition Lab, emphasized the physiological embedding of these mental processes. Her commentary underscores that the brain’s food imagery is not merely a passive psychological phenomenon but intricately linked with bodily signals reflecting nutritional status. This tight integration might explain why cravings intensify under fasting conditions, as the brain magnifies the rewards associated with food through more vivid and compelling mental imagery.

The implications of this research extend into applied nutritional science and public health domains. Understanding the neurocognitive substrates of food cravings offers opportunities to develop targeted interventions that modulate mental imagery as a strategy to manage overeating and obesity. For example, cognitive-behavioral therapies could harness these findings to attenuate hunger-enhanced food imagery or retrain sensory expectations to promote healthier eating patterns.

Additionally, the distinction between flavor and texture representation in the mind invites further investigation into sensory-specific satiety and preference formation. Food texture, often underappreciated, may play an unrecognized role in dietary choices and satisfaction. Knowing how texture imagery remains stable regardless of hunger states could inform the design of satiety-inducing foods and novel food products aimed at improving appetite control while maintaining palatability.

This research emerges from a collaborative effort funded by the Marsden Fund, uniting expertise from the University of Otago and the University of Oxford. The cross-continental partnership underscores the universal relevance of dissecting how human cognition interacts with metabolic cues to regulate eating behavior. Their results, published recently in the esteemed journal Appetite, add a sophisticated layer of understanding to the biopsychological nexus of hunger and food perception.

By bridging sensory neuroscience with experimental psychology and nutrition, the study offers a multidisciplinary perspective on appetite control. The methodological approach, combining subjective assessments of mental imagery with rigorous experimental manipulation, exemplifies sophistication in probing the elusive interface of mind and body. Through such research, the fields of applied food science and behavioral nutrition move closer to elucidating the foundational processes that drive our eating habits.

In conclusion, this compelling investigation reveals that hunger does more than increase our desire to eat—it sharpens our sensory imagination of food, particularly flavors, which amplifies cravings and potentially influences decision-making. The intriguing constancy of texture imagery points to a complex sensory architecture in how we mentally simulate food experiences. As we grapple with global issues of diet-related health conditions, insights like these pave the way for novel approaches to managing appetite and promoting healthier lifestyles through the modulation of mental food imagery.

Subject of Research: People
Article Title: Assessing the relationship between food-related mental imagery and appetite
News Publication Date: 13-Jun-2026
Web References: DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2026.108592

Keywords: food science, mental imagery, hunger, appetite, sensory neuroscience, flavor perception, texture perception, eating behavior, food cravings, experimental study

Brain scans suggest long COVID’s biggest clues may lie in the brain’s emotion centers, not widespread inflammation. A new brain imaging study suggests that persistent symptoms of long COVID may not be driven by ongoing brain inflammation, as many researchers have suspected. Scientists in Finland used advanced imaging techniques to examine the brains of people [...]

Some effects can be traced to chemical signals inside appetite neurons.

Amateur male soccer players had greater changes in certain blood markers associated with neural damage the harder and more frequently they headed balls.

People with a rare genetic disorder that damages the amygdala are helping neuroscientists rethink how the brain shapes fear, trust and concern for others.

A recent clinical trial in Sweden found that a single oral dose of psilocybin reduced depressive symptoms within 48 hours in participants suffering from moderate to severe depression. Participants also reported improvements that persisted for more than three months.

The study, carried out at the Northern Stockholm Psychiatric Clinic and published in JAMA Network, is the first randomized, double-blind trial of psilocybin for depression in Sweden. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet followed 35 participants for 12 months, making this one of the more rigorous long-term, placebo-controlled studies of psilocybin therapy for major depressive disorder.

Most antidepressants take anywhere from two to six weeks before patients begin to notice any change, and even then, about two out of three people don’t fully recover after their first round of treatment. If psilocybin’s fast-acting effect holds up in larger studies, it could provide doctors with a much-needed alternative method for treating depression.

Psilocybin vs. Placebo

All 35 participants suffered from recurrent moderate to severe major depressive disorder. Researchers randomly assigned 17 people to receive a 25 mg oral dose of psilocybin and 18 others to receive an active placebo. The placebo was niacin, a vitamin known to cause temporary flushing and tingling sensations to help mimic the experience of taking a drug.

Everyone in the study also participated in five psychotherapy sessions spread over 17 days. This included a session to prepare participants before taking the drug, the dosing session itself, and three follow-up sessions to help process their reported experiences. On the day of treatment, participants wore eyeshades and listened to music for several hours, with clinical staff nearby to monitor their safety.

Clinicians who did not know which treatment participants received used the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), a 0 to 60-point assessment, to measure depressive symptoms at days 8, 15, 42, and 365 after the initial dose.

Clinically Significant Results

By day 8, people who received the psilocybin dose had an average drop in MADRS score of 7.27 points compared with the placebo group. Researchers say that a difference of this size is statistically significant. This difference continued through day 15 and day 42. By the end of the first year, researchers no longer observed a clear difference between the groups.

Participants’ self-assessments began to show improvement even sooner. Using a self-report version of the MADRS, the group that received the psilocybin dose reported significant improvement starting on the second day; the difference in self-reported assessments between groups persisted until about day 102.

At six weeks, remission rates (defined as a MADRS score below 10) were at 53% in the psilocybin group and 6% in the niacin group. By the end of the year, both groups had similar outcomes, as the placebo group showed gradual improvement over time.

“Our results suggest that psilocybin can provide rapid, clinically meaningful improvement in depression and may serve as an alternative to standard treatment when fast symptom reduction is important,” said lead author Hampus Yngwe, a consultant psychiatrist and PhD student at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience.

The Psychedelic Caveat

The psychedelic effects of psilocybin made it difficult to keep participants unaware of which treatment they received. After the first year, 94% of those in the psilocybin group and all in the niacin group correctly identified which dose they received.

This is important to note because a person’s expectations can shape how they report their symptoms. The researchers pointed out this limitation and said the effect size might partly be due to participants believing they had received the real drug. Clinician ratings, which were also unaware of the administered doses, showed a similar, though smaller, benefit for the psilocybin group compared to self-reports, which supports this concern.

“We want to understand how factors such as treatment expectations and lack of blinding affect the results, as previous studies may have exaggerated the treatment effects,” Yngwe said.

What Comes Next

Most reported side effects were mild and brief. Headache, anxiety, and hallucinations were the most common adverse effects reported in the psilocybin group. However, two participants experienced severe anxiety that required medical attention in the weeks after dosing. The researchers say this finding highlights the need for careful patient selection and follow-up in future studies.

“It is important to emphasize that the treatment is not risk-free and that some patients may need extra support,” said senior author Johan Lundberg, professor at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience.

The research team plans to analyze PET scans and biological samples collected before and after dosing to see whether psilocybin changes synaptic density in the brain. This could help explain how the drug produces its rapid antidepressant effect and whether repeated dosing might extend this benefit.

While these results are encouraging, the study only included 35 people at one clinic, which makes it hard to draw broad conclusions about long-term effects. Larger and more diverse studies will be needed before psilocybin therapy could become a standard treatment.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

Neuralink’s first female PRIME trial participant, Audrey Crews, is now creating abstract art using the company’s brain-computer interface.

Crews, who was paralyzed from the neck down at age 16, has been creating memorable abstract art with her mind using an innovative brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.

Crews is the 9th Neuralink participant and the first woman to receive the implantable device in the PRIME clinical trials.  

With fewer than 100 people worldwide with BCIs, Crews has found herself at the intersection of art and the future of bneuroscience. By using only the power of thought, Crews has created vibrant abstract art with rich color and shapes.

On her website, she explains why creating this art is important to her: “My mission is to expand the boundaries of human expression and share the u

nseen landscapes of the mind,” Crews says. 

Her artwork has evolved stylistically since her first showcase on X in 2025, at which time she was learning to draw her name.

“I tried writing my name for the first time in 20 years. Im working on it,” Crews said in a post on X. 

“I’ll never forget the moment I used my thoughts to write my name, ‘Audrey,’ on a laptop screen for the first time in two decades. I even drew hearts and a slice of pizza, which felt like a small miracle! I shared that moment on X, laughing about my progress,” Crews said on her website.

“It’s humbling to know my journey is helping Neuralink refine this technology, which could one day let millions control devices with their minds,” she added.  

Since then, Crews’ art has evolved, and she has also launched her online NeuraArt Studio, where fans can purchase limited-edition prints of her artwork.

Amid the BCI company’s efforts, Neuralink states that its devices are still “investigational and not FDA approved.” 

However, in January of this year, the company said in a statement that a “primary ‌aim of our expanding clinical trials is to better understand these variations and improve both our hardware and the overall procedure for every participant.”

Neuralink began human trials of its brain implant in 2024 after resolving safety concerns raised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had previously declined to approve its initial application in 2022.

For Crews, what she has achieved lies at the intersection of current implantable BCI technology and fine abstract art, signaling a fundamental reframing of what it means to create, perceive, and even experience such creative products—a shift from something merely observed to something partially constructed by BCI users through thought.

“This breakthrough didn’t just restore my ability to create—it ignited a passion for art that had been dormant for too long,” she says. Crews’ art can be viewed, and prints are available for purchase, on her NeuraArt Studio website.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

A former Harvard chemistry professor convicted in the United States for concealing ties to a Chinese talent program is now leading a state-backed brain-computer interface laboratory in Shenzhen, raising fresh concerns about the geopolitical race for emerging technologies.

Former Harvard scientist Charles Lieber, 67, has rebuilt his research career in China, where he currently directs the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies (i-BRAIN). In 2021, he was convicted in the United States for lying to federal investigators about his financial ties to a Chinese talent recruitment program, as well as for tax-related offenses. He was sentenced to prison and later placed under home confinement before relocating to Shenzhen in 2025.

Considered a leading authority in BCI research and development, Lieber now serves as director of i-BRAIN, a laboratory operating under the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), a government-backed institution. The laboratory’s primary focus includes primate research and BCI chip development.

Lieber said during a Shenzhen government news conference in December, “I arrived on April 28, 2025, with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes.” He added, “Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader.”

According to Reuters, the lab provides Lieber with resources beyond what he had access to in the United States, including dedicated nanofabrication equipment and extensive primate research facilities.

Experts have previously warned U.S. officials and Congress about the privacy implications of BCI technologies, as well as potential military applications that enhance cognitive performance on and off the battlefield. Lieber’s return to cutting-edge research has renewed debate in the United States over technology security and scientific cooperation with China.

“China has weaponized against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation,” Glenn Gerstell, an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former general counsel for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), told Reuters on  May 1. “They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re ​taking advantage of it.”

China’s policy of “military-civil fusion,” which encourages collaboration between civilian research institutions and the military, has increased those concerns in the United States. In July 2025, the Chinese government announced its goal of becoming the “gold standard” for BCI competitors worldwide. 

At i-BRAIN, Lieber’s team is reportedly currently hiring international researchers to conduct experiments involving rhesus monkeys, which have been used for BCI testing at many other companies, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

In recent years, Neuralink employees have reported ongoing mistreatment and deaths of rhesus monkeys, where death certificates are openly available to see. But Musk took to the popular social media outlet X, stating that “No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant. First, our early implants, to minimize risk to healthy monkeys, we chose terminal monkeys (close to death already).”

The i-BRAIN lab also offers chip-manufacturing tools, including ultraviolet lithography systems used to create tiny electronic circuits. 

Washington and Wall Street Brace for the BCI Era

In October of last year, Morgan Stanley released a private report titled, “Neuralink: AI in your brAIn” addressing that Elon Musk and Neuralink are at the forefront of a larger technological shift that society may not be ready for: one with staggering implications that could ultimately impact everything from healthcare to gaming, defense, investing, and society at large. The report also addressed the challenges of a potential “neuro-elite” evolving over time. 

“As AI moves into the physical world through expressions ranging from robotaxis to humanoids and autonomous weapons systems, we recommend paying closer attention to developments in brain-computer interface,” a portion of the paper states, under a section titled “Prometheus Shrugged.”

A month before this report was released, on September 24, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with Senators John Cornyn and Ron Wyden, proposed legislation to regulate BCIs, requesting that the FTC review the policy for long-term use.

Named the MIND Act, guidelines should be created alongside a framework to address ethical concerns and safeguard American interests.

Altogether, as the race to merge minds and machines intensifies, the broader consequences of who controls these technologies—and how they are used—remain in question.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Most people assume dreaming is something exclusive to sleep; however, a new study from the Paris Brain Institute suggests otherwise.

The study found that the strange, shifting mental experiences we usually associate with dreaming can also occur while we are awake. These episodes leave a measurable trace in the brain. The results, published in Cell Reports, challenge the common idea that dreaming and waking thought are completely separate experiences.

“Being awake is not synonymous with being attentive, fully aware of one’s surroundings, or able to act and think rationally,” said Delphine Oudiette, co-leader of the institute’s DreamTeam and senior author of the study. “We now know that there is a continuum between wakefulness and sleep, with intermediate states such as mind-wandering or mind-blanking, during which certain regions of the brain may be asleep.”

at the Edge of Sleep

To investigate how the brain transitions from wakefulness to sleep, the researchers worked with 92 people who often take naps and could describe their thoughts when prompted. The experiment was based on a method used by Thomas Edison, who would fall asleep while holding a heavy object. When he drifted off, the object would fall and wake him up, allowing him to recall what he was thinking at the edge of sleep.

In this study, participants held a bottle as they became drowsy. If the bottle dropped or an alarm sounded, they were asked to describe what they had been thinking about in the last ten seconds. They also rated their experiences based on how strange, changeable, spontaneous, and awake they felt. Throughout the process, the researchers recorded their brain activity using an EEG. The researchers then used a clustering algorithm to group the mental experiences based on the data. This allowed the team to identify patterns in participants’ reports without imposing predefined categories.

Four Separate Mental States

The analysis revealed four distinct types of mental states, rather than the two categories people usually expect (awake and asleep).

One type consisted of quick, involuntary flashes of images or memories that seemed to come out of nowhere. Another was grounded in the outside world, with people noticing sounds or staying tuned in to their surroundings. A third was filled with strange, dream-like experiences, such as seeing tiny aliens or feeling ants crawling on the skin, with scenes shifting rapidly. The last type focused on logical, focused thinking, such as planning or mentally running through a schedule.

All four types of mental states were found at every stage the researchers measured, including when participants were fully awake, just falling asleep, or in light sleep. This means that dream-like thoughts can happen while awake, and logical thinking can occur during sleep.

One participant, who was fully awake, said she saw ants crawling over her body with crossword puzzles in the background. Another participant, who was asleep by all measures, spent that same time mentally planning the next day’s schedule.

“The mental states traditionally associated with dreaming can arise just as well when we are asleep as when we are awake,” said lead author Nicolas Decat, a PhD student at the Paris Brain Institute. “The content of our thoughts does not follow the boundaries between waking and sleep.”

A Distinct Brain Pattern

The researchers also found a specific pattern in the brain linked to dream-like experiences. EEG data showed that the connection between the front and back parts of the brain, which are important for logical thinking and visual processing, became weaker during these states. When this connection is reduced, the brain seems less able to organize thoughts logically.

A Tool for Insomnia Diagnosis

These results could help improve the diagnosis of some sleep disorders. For example, people with paradoxical insomnia often say they feel awake all night, even when sleep tests show they were asleep. Traditional methods typically rely on brainwave patterns, which do not always align with patients’ subjective experience.

Oudiette said the study suggests using mental content as a new way to diagnose insomnia. This approach may more closely match what patients actually experience each night and could eventually help identify objective markers of the condition.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

A new study shows that one psychedelic experience doesn’t just alter how a person feels; it may also change the brain itself. Researchers at UC San Francisco and Imperial College London found that a single 25 mg dose of psilocybin produces signs of likely anatomical changes in the brain that persist for at least a month after the experience.

Published in Nature Communications, the study was conducted in healthy adults with no prior psychedelic use. These results may help explain why psilocybin-assisted therapy is being explored as a treatment for depression, anxiety, and addiction.

The researchers identified a key mechanism behind these changes. Instead of focusing on a single brain region, they identified brain entropy as a key factor linking the experience to later outcomes.

What the Brain Looks Like on Psilocybin

Brain entropy refers to the diversity of neural activity happening at any given moment. A low-entropy brain tends to fall into predictable, repetitive patterns. A high-entropy brain is processing a richer, more varied stream of information. Within 60 minutes of taking the 25 mg dose, EEG recordings showed a sharp spike in entropy.

This increase in entropy persisted longer than the drug’s immediate effects. People who experienced the biggest jumps in entropy also reported more psychological insight the next day, saying they felt a deeper sense of emotional self-awareness. These insights coincided with improvements in well-being that lasted for at least two to four weeks.

“Psychedelic means ‘psyche-revealing,’ or making the psyche visible,” said senior author Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, the Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor of Neurology at UCSF. “Our data shows that such experiences of psychological insight relate to an entropic quality of brain activity and how both are involved in causing subsequent improvements in mental health.”

How the Study Was Designed

The study included 28 healthy adults with no mental health diagnoses. The experiment had two phases. First, each person received a very low 1 mg dose of psilocybin, which acted as a placebo. Researchers then tracked their brain activity and structure using EEG, MRI, and diffusion tensor imaging over the next few weeks.

One month later, those same participants received the 25 mg dose. The researchers then repeated the same series of brain scans and assessments.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a technique that measures water movement along neural pathways, showed that participants’ brain connections were more structurally intact a month after the high dose. This finding is the opposite of what typically happens with aging, which tends to weaken these connections. The most noticeable changes were in pathways linking the front and middle parts of the brain, areas involved in self-reflection, emotional regulation, and decision-making.

The Trip Is the Treatment

All but one participant described the 25 mg experience as the most unusual state of consciousness they had ever experienced. The other person ranked it among their top five. A month later, the group also performed better on a test of cognitive flexibility, which measures how well a person can adapt their thinking to new information.

Author Taylor Lyons, PhD, a research associate at Imperial College London, pointed to this chain of effects as the study’s most significant takeaway.

“Psilocybin seems to loosen up stereotyped patterns of brain activity and give people the ability to revise entrenched patterns of thought,” Lyons said. “The fact that these changes track with insight and improved well-being is especially exciting.”

These results could guide future research. If brain entropy during the experience predicts how well the treatment works, scientists might be able to use it to calibrate dosage in real time. This could help ensure patients get enough to support insight and recovery, without so much that it causes excessive stimulation.

What Comes Next

Carhart-Harris noted that the therapeutic promise of psilocybin has been recognized for years. This study now provides new details about the biological mechanisms that may underlie its effects.

“We already knew psilocybin could be helpful for treating mental illness,” Carhart-Harris said. “But now we have a much better understanding of how.”

Microdosing is typically associated with psychedelics, specifically small, sub-perceptual doses of psilocybin or LSD that some people use to improve focus, mood, or anxiety. However, a new national survey upends this common association.

A research team at the University of California, San Diego, found that cannabis is the most widely microdosed substance in the United States. An estimated 24 million adults reported having microdosed cannabis at some point, nearly double the number who reported microdosing psilocybin or LSD. The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is among the first to examine national patterns of microdosing across multiple substances.

“Microdosing is often discussed in the context of psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD, but what surprised us most was that cannabis microdosing was almost twice as common,” said Kevin Yang, MD, a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and first author of the study. “That suggests conversations about microdosing may be overlooking a large group of people who are using small amounts of cannabis in similar ways.”

Survey Results

The team surveyed 1,525 adults across the U.S. in late 2023 using a probability-based panel designed to reflect the U.S. population to understand these trends nationally. They asked people whether they had ever intentionally taken very small amounts—roughly one-fifth to one-twentieth of a usual recreational dose—of substances like cannabis, psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA. The idea behind microdosing is to avoid the strong psychoactive effects while still hoping for subtle benefits.

About 9.4% of adults said they had microdosed cannabis at some point, compared to 5.3% for psilocybin, 4.8% for LSD, and 2.2% for MDMA. While fewer people reported currently microdosing, cannabis still led the way, with 3.3% of adults saying they use it in this way now.

People’s reasons for microdosing varied depending on the substance. Most cannabis microdosers said they were looking for medical benefits, like easing anxiety, depression, or chronic pain. On the other hand, those who microdosed psychedelics or MDMA tended to be after a gentler version of the recreational effects, rather than using them for health reasons.

Mental Health and Policy Patterns

The study found that people who rated their mental health as poor were more likely to report microdosing any substance. About 21% of adults with poor mental health said they had microdosed cannabis, compared to about 8% of those who described their health as excellent.

It is not yet clear whether people are microdosing as a way to cope with mental health challenges or for other reasons. Since the study was cross-sectional, capturing data at a single point in time, the researchers could not determine whether microdosing influences mental health or if people with mental health concerns are simply more drawn to the practice.

The study also found that people microdosed psychedelics more often in places that have decriminalized possession. This suggests that changes in policy may influence both access to these substances and people’s willingness to report using them.

The Evidence Gap

Although many people report microdosing, the researchers note that scientific evidence of its effects remains limited. Researchers have conducted few placebo-controlled trials, and those studies have produced inconsistent results so far. Most people who microdose do not test their substances, which raises concerns about contamination and dosing mistakes, especially with unregulated psychedelics.

Senior author Eric Leas, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health, pointed to a gap between public enthusiasm and clinical evidence. “There’s a lot of anecdotal enthusiasm around microdosing, especially for mental health,” Leas said. “But we still need rigorous studies to determine whether these perceived benefits are real, who might benefit and what the potential risks could be.”

These findings come at a time when cannabis legalization and psychedelic policy reforms are changing laws across the United States. As these changes continue, the researchers emphasize that understanding how and why people microdose will become increasingly important.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

Dreams can seem to occur at random, from everyday scenarios to unpredictable, surreal experiences. Now, a new study shows that our personal traits as well as real-life events and experiences actually shape what we dream about, creating patterns in our subconscious.

The study, published in Communications Psychology, analyzed thousands of dream and waking experience reports collected over four years. The researchers used natural language processing tools to quantify the structure of dreams. They found that personal traits like how often someone daydreams, their attitudes about dreams, and their sleep quality all influence dream content. Major shared life events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, also impacted what people dreamed about.

“Our findings show that dreams are not just a reflection of past experiences, but a dynamic process shaped by who we are and what we live through,” said Valentina Elce, researcher at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and lead author of the study.

Four Years of Dream Reports

The main dataset included 207 adults aged 18 to 70 who kept a dream diary for two weeks. Each morning, they wrote down everything they remembered from the night’s sleep. Once a day, at a random time, they also recorded what they had been thinking about in the previous 15 minutes. This created a set of waking experience reports to compare with their dream reports.

In addition to the daily records, the researchers collected detailed information about each participant’s sleep habits, cognitive skills, personality, and psychological traits. By the end, they had gathered 1,687 dream reports and 2,843 waking reports from the main group, plus 351 dream reports from 80 people during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy in spring 2020.

Dreams Reorganize Reality

When researchers compared participants’ reported dream experiences with situations they reported experiencing while awake, they noticed that dreams don’t simply replay scenarios from our daily lives. Instead, dreams seem to mix familiar places like workplaces, hospitals, and schools into new scenes that blend memories with imagination. Compared to reported waking experiences, the reported dreams tended to focus more on visual details, feature more characters, and make less logical sense. They were also less self-focused and less driven by conscious thinking.

These dream transformations weren’t the same for everyone. Participants who spent more time daydreaming during the day tended to have dreams that jumped rapidly from one scene to another. Those who placed more importance on dreams described them as more vivid and immersive. Sleep quality also played a role: participants who slept poorly showed different patterns in dream content when compared with those who slept better.

Pandemic Influenced Dreams

The lockdown dataset gave researchers a unique opportunity to see how a major external stressor, such as a pandemic, could affect dreams across an entire population.

Dreams recorded during the strict lockdown period were more emotionally intense and mentioned restrictions and limitations more often than dreams from later years. As people adjusted to the new situation, these differences faded. The results suggest that dreams reflect both our personal psychology and the social conditions we share.

AI as a Tool for Studying Consciousness

The team used three large language models, LLaMA 3, ChatGPT-4, and ChatGPT-4 Turbo, to rate dream reports on 16 different features, such as mood, excitement, strangeness, social content, spatial details, and freedom of movement. They combined the scores from the three models and checked them against human ratings. The results showed that these language processing tools could analyze the structure of dream reports as reliably as trained human evaluators. This finding could have uses that extend far beyond this study.

“By combining large-scale data with computational methods, we were able to uncover patterns in dream content that were previously difficult to detect,” Elce said. “This opens new possibilities for studying consciousness, memory, and mental health in a scalable and reproducible way.”

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

For many older adults, major surgery can bring important benefits. Procedures such as hip replacements can reduce pain and improve mobility, while abdominal surgeries can treat serious medical conditions and improve quality of life. However, a growing body of research suggests that surgery may affect more than just the body. It may also have lasting […]

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In an extraordinary leap forward in our understanding of social behavior, groundbreaking research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has unveiled how brains prepare for social interaction at the neural level even before any physical movement begins. Led by Dr. Lilah Avitan and her doctoral student Imri Lifshitz at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, this pioneering study uses zebrafish as a model to explore the mysterious neural orchestration that prompts social approach, shedding light on the cognitive underpinnings of sociability across species.

At the core of this research lies the question that has fascinated neuroscientists for decades: How does the brain decide to engage with others? The team discovered that social approach is not an impulsive reaction but is preceded by a distinct and coordinated shift in brain-wide neural activity. By meticulously recording brain dynamics in real-time at single-cell resolution, they observed that this neural preparation begins several seconds before the zebrafish initiate movement toward another fish, indicating that social behavior arises from an active decision-making process rooted deeply in neural circuitry.

This neural “pre-decision state” is characterized by a strikingly distributed pattern, with increased activity in the pallium— a high-order brain region analogous to the mammalian cortex—while simultaneously, activity decreases in other brain regions. The pallium, often linked to complex behaviors and decision-making processes, emerges as a critical hub orchestrating the social drive. Contrary to the previous understanding that social behavior might depend on localized “social centers,” this study reveals that brain-wide network coordination shapes social action.

The zebrafish, a transparent and genetically tractable vertebrate, proved to be the ideal organism for this investigation. Its brain’s optical accessibility allowed the use of high-resolution fluorescence microscopy to create a three-dimensional projection of neural activity without invasive methods. In a novel experimental set-up, one fish was observed continuously to monitor its brain activity as it anticipated and responded to another’s movement, enabling the researchers to link dynamic neural patterns directly with impending social actions.

Importantly, the intensity of these coordinated neural patterns predicted not only whether a social approach would occur but also reflected the individual fish’s intrinsic social drive. Zebrafish exhibiting stronger pallium activation patterns before movement were consistently more socially engaged, suggesting that variations in social motivation could be discerned at the neural level before behavior manifests. This observation may extend beyond fish, providing a framework to understand individual differences in social behavior, including in mammals and humans.

The implications of this discovery ripple far beyond basic neuroscience. Understanding how the brain organizes itself seconds before social interaction offers a new lens to study social disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders or social anxiety, where disrupted brain network coordination might underlie behavioral deficits. These findings open pathways for future research aimed at deciphering the neural signatures that could serve as biomarkers or therapeutic targets for social dysfunction.

Dr. Avitan emphasized the novelty of identifying a brain-wide neural signature that predicts both the initiation and strength of social behavior: “Our findings indicate that the brain does not wait passively but actively gears itself for social engagement. The pallium’s role in this process highlights a conserved mechanism potentially present across vertebrates, offering clues about human social cognition as well.”

The methodological advancements in this study also deserve recognition. The team’s use of dynamic whole-brain imaging with unprecedented temporal resolution allowed them to capture the fluidity of neural transitions as social decisions formed and unfolded. This technological feat advances brain research by bridging the gap between neural activity patterns and observable social behavior in a living organism under ecologically relevant conditions.

Moreover, the identification of this “pre-decision” neural state challenges the oversimplified notion of the brain as a reactive organ. Instead, it portrays the brain as proactively setting the stage for complex social actions, making swift and nuanced decisions that integrate sensory information, prior experience, motivation, and motor planning. This integrative dynamic among disparate brain areas is an elegant example of how biological systems manage sophisticated behaviors through distributed processing.

Furthermore, the distributed neural dynamics observed encompass changes in both excitatory and inhibitory circuits within the zebrafish brain. The simultaneous upregulation and downregulation in different regions may reflect a fine-tuned balancing mechanism that optimizes the organism’s readiness for social engagement while suppressing competing non-social drives. This balance is likely crucial for adaptive social function.

The study fundamentally shifts our understanding by isolating a neural marker tied directly to social drive, enabling future comparative analyses across species, including mammals. Such cross-species insights could illuminate evolutionarily conserved principles governing social motivation and the neural plasticity that accommodates environmental and developmental influences on behavior.

Finally, with the advent of this knowledge, neuroscience enters a new era where predictive neural signatures of social behavior can be quantified and studied longitudinally. This opens exciting possibilities for personalized interventions to enhance social function or remediate social impairments by modulating neural circuits before the onset of social actions.

Subject of Research: Animals
Article Title: Distinct distributed neural dynamics predict pallium-dependent social approach
News Publication Date: 1-Jun-2026
Web References: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71666-8
Image Credits: Luke A. Hammond & Jeremy Ullmann
Keywords: Neuroscience, Behavioral psychology, Zebrafish, Social behavior, Neural dynamics, Pallium, Brain-wide coordination, Social drive, Fluorescence microscopy, Decision-making, Neuroethology, Vertebrates

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