Chris Timmermann

NEW from me:

Political hostility, high visa fees and (in the case of the UK) stagnant incomes are making the UK and US less attractive destinations for top international talent.

That steep decline in the appeal of moving to the US after 2016 is 👀

BBC Radio 4 - Understand, The Trip Tim Hayward looks at the science, culture, history - and future - of psychedelics.

NEW TEN-PART AUDIO SERIES about #PSYCHEDELICS
Out now on BBC Sounds - and other podcast spaces.

Co-written & presented by the beautifully curious @timhayward.bsky.social
Production, sound design and mix by me.

It's been a fascinating and challenging process to get here...

I do hope you'll listen.

With immense pleasure, here is our #TICS opinion paper on "mind blanking"!
@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

**Where is my mind?**
A neurocognitive investigation of mind blanking
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

With Jenny Windt, @antoinelutz.bsky.social and @ademertzi.bsky.social

Exploring 5-MeO-DMT as a pharmacological model for deconstructed consciousness - PubMed 5-MeO-DMT is a short-acting psychedelic that is anecdotally reported to induce a radical disruption of the self and a paradoxical quality of aroused, waking awareness that is nevertheless devoid of an...

Thanks to our DMT Research Group members James Sanders, David Reydellet, Tommaso Barba Malin Uthaug et al. Currently following up this with a proper lab study of 5-MeO + experience sampling. Read the full paper here pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40260121/ n/n

How could a state of deconstructed consciousness correspond to cortical disinhibition? Working hypothesis: an overflooding of attentional/perceptual resources leads to the inability of the mind/brain to process such information and make meaningful ‘gestalts’. 7/n

EEG revealed the 5-MeO experience to be characterised by a broad reduction of alpha and posterior beta power. These findings are consistent with those we have found in previous research with DMT and other psychedelics and point towards a state of cortical disinhibition. 6/n

Doubling on the idea of 'deconstructed consciousness', analyses indeed revealed these peak experiences lacked embodied and narrative dimensions of the self, while also being devoid of thoughts and phenomenal distinctions while being disconnected from the environment. 5/n

The often-used questionnaire ASC mostly did not capture these peak experiences (black dots below), confirming our previous call to employ advanced phenomenology in consciousness studies (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36566091/). 4/n

We characterised the different phases of the experience and its transitions (whenever we could). For about 1/3 of experiences, we identified an ‘everything/nothing’ stage where no sense of self or other contents were reported but awareness was preserved. 3/n

5-MeO is attractive for the science of consciousness as reports claim it dissolves time, space, self, and other contents resulting in so called ‘pure awareness’. We went to retreats in the Netherlands and Spain were participants had it and assessed EEG and phenomenology. 2/n

Our new paper - the first peer-reviewed brain and phenomenological examination of 5-MeO-DMT is out in Neuro of Consciousness.

TLDR: We tested whether ‘the mount Everest’ of psychedelics could induce a complete state of consciousness deconstruction while preserving awareness. 1/n

#neuroskyence

Age-related differences in 1/f aperiodic EEG/MEG signals can be driven by cardiac rather than brain activity 👇

#interoception 🧠🫀 #neuroskyence

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Language creates an altered state of consciousness | Jeremy I Skipper

Check this out by Jeremy Skipper at @thelablab.bsky.social iai.tv/articles/lan...

Maybe a good time to remember that mice have tiny hyperconnected brains. An estimated 97% of all possible connections between brain areas exist in mice, vs ~62% in macaques and marmosets.

No wonder everything is everywhere in mice, they have all-to-all connectivity!

doi.org/10.1093/cerc...

2/ Our comment is a response to both the charge from 'IIT-concerned et al' that IIT is pseudoscientific (we disagree) www.nature.com/articles/s41... and to the response by Tononi et al www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats to Lisa Luan for a successful PhD defence leading our extended DMT studies at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social . Very proud to call her my first completed PhD student and in awe of how she managed to meticulously carry out some of the most extreme studies one could think of

Plasma proteomic signatures of social isolation and loneliness associated with morbidity and mortality - Nature Human Behaviour Shen et al. characterize protein signatures in the blood associated with social isolation and loneliness, demonstrating how these link social isolation and loneliness to an increased risk of disease a...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Loneliness and social isolation literally kills 👇🏼

Benny Shanon, one of the pioneers of modern psychedelic research, has recently passed away. If you haven't done so, check out his book Antipodes of the Mind, one of the most influential and beautiful books I have read. May his contributions carry forward in our work and explorations of consciousness

Psychedelic-mediated Reversal of General Anesthesia and Restoration of Brain Dynamics in Rat

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If you have experience with psychedelics or meditation please consider participating and sharing

Anthropology of Consciousness | AAA Journal | Wiley Online Library Within recent years, an increasing number of people and researchers in the Global North have become interested in psychedelic substances and their therapeutic application. While much of the current m...

'The narrative and embodied dimensions of psychedelic integration'

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Really excited about this paper out today in @natureneuro.bsky.social
If you are interested in how to characterise the role of the DMN in human cognition you really should check it out.
a 🧵

The architecture of the human default mode network explored through cytoarchitecture, wiring and signal flow - Nature Neuroscience The default mode network (DMN) is implicated in cognition and behavior. Here, the authors show that the DMN is cytoarchitecturally heterogeneous, it contains regions receptive to input from the sensory cortex and a core relatively insulated from environmental input, and it uniquely balances its output across sensory hierarchies.

Out in @natureneuro.bsky.social today 🥂

Cytoarchitecture, wiring and signal flow of the human default mode network

Combining 3D histology, 7T MRI, and connectomics to explore DMN structure-function associations

Led by Casey Paquola, @themindwanders.bsky.social & a terrific team of colleagues 🙏

Psilocybin increases emotional empathy in patients with major depression - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - Psilocybin increases emotional empathy in patients with major depression

Hi everyone, we have published a new paper showing that #psilocybin increases emotional #empathy in patients living with depression for at least two weeks after a single administration. If you are interested in #psychedelics and #social cognition, take a look here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

Dynamical constraints on neural population activity - Nature Neuroscience Oby, Degenhart, Grigsby and colleagues used a brain–computer interface to challenge monkeys to override their natural time courses of neural activity. They found the time courses to be highly robust, ...

Is our brain infinitely flexible or constrained? Oby & colleagues cleverly uses BCIs to test what cortical activity can/can't be generated quickly. Highly recommend!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And you can get a tl;dr + my takes on why this is exciting here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Intriguing, looking forward to read :)

Multimodal neurophenomenology of advanced concentration absorption meditation: An intensively sampled case study of Jhana Using a combination of fMRI, EEG, and phenomenology ratings, we examined the neurophenomenology of advanced concentrative absorption meditation, namel…

Very proud to have contributed to this work with @matthewsacchet.bsky.social and his team exploring the neurophenomenology of advanced Jhana meditation. Notice the strong similarities with psychedelic states, especially in EEG findings. Stay tuned for more www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Me please