Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus

Lyu, Dian; Stieger, James; Xin, Cindy; Ma, Epm; Lusk, Zoe; Aparicio, Mariel Kalkach; Werbaneth, Katherine; Perry, Claire; Deisseroth, Karl; Buch, Vivek; Parvizi, Josef

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2023.05.013

Cited by 26 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Crucially, mean heart rate assessed during the peak DMT effects was further used to differentiate participants showing either sustained increased or normal heart rate after DMT injection. Our findings are in line with human intracranial electrophysiological studies showing that medial parietal areas, including the anterior precuneus, are causally involved in the processing of the bodily sense of self (Lyu et al, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Specifically, psilocybin has been shown to induce reduced cerebral blood flow and BOLD activity in medial parietal areas (Carhart-Harris et al, 2012), in line with the DMTinduced midline parietal deactivations found in our study. Recent human intracranial electrophysiological studies have revealed that posteromedial cortical rhythms play a crucial role in sustaining self-referential functions as proven by both pathological seizure-based (Lyu et al, 2023) and ketamine-induced dissociations (Vesuna et al, 2020). When considering the role of hippocampal deactivations, previous rs-fMRI studies found that psychedelics induce a decrease in the amplitude of spontaneous BOLD signal fluctuations within the parahippocampal gyri and induce an uncoupling between the hippocampus/parahippocampus and other DMN regions .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Successful regulation of the sympathetic nervous system may be mechanistically linked to midline parietal and temporal deactivation patterns (Beissner et al, 2013) underlying altered embodied experiences commonly induced by psychedelics, including ego dissolution (Carhart-Harris et al, 2012;Muthukumaraswamy et al, 2013;Lebedev et al, 2015) and self-dissociation (Lyu et al, 2023). Furthermore, those with the more modest heart rate increases were those who rated highest for the "meaningfulness" of the experience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dynamic medial parietal and hippocampal deactivations under DMT relate to sympathetic output and altered sense of time, space, and the self

Pasquini,

Simon,

Gallen

et al. 2024

Preprint

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N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a serotonergic psychedelic, known to rapidly induce short-lasting alterations in conscious experience, characterized by a profound and immersive sense of physical transcendence alongside rich and vivid auditory distortions and visual imagery. Multimodal neuroimaging data paired with dynamic analysis techniques offer a valuable approach for identifying unique signatures of brain activity - and linked autonomic physiology - naturally unfolding during the altered state of consciousness induced by DMT. We leveraged simultaneous fMRI and EKG data acquired in 14 healthy volunteers prior to, during, and after intravenous administration of DMT, and, separately, placebo. EKG data was used to derive continuous heart rate; fMRI data was preprocessed to derive individual dynamic activity matrices, reflecting the similarity of brain activity in time, and community detection algorithms were applied on these matrices to identify brain activity substates. We identified a brain substate occurring immediately after DMT injection, characterized by increased superior temporal lobe activity, and hippocampal and medial parietal deactivations under DMT. Superior temporal lobe hyperactivity correlated with the intensity of the auditory distortions, while hippocampus and medial parietal cortex hypoactivity correlated with scores of meaningfulness of the experience. During this first post-injection substate, increased heart rate under DMT correlated negatively with the meaningfulness of the experience and positively with hippocampus/medial parietal deactivation. These results suggest a chain of influence linking sympathetic regulation to hippocampal and medial parietal deactivations under DMT, which combined may contribute to positive mental health outcomes related to self-referential processing following psychedelic administration.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dynamic medial parietal and hippocampal deactivations under DMT relate to sympathetic output and altered sense of time, space, and the self

Pasquini,

Simon,

Gallen

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…When integrating our findings into the larger picture of dissociative seizure pathophysiology, we hypothesise that the heightened autonomic arousal leads to a reduction in interoceptive processing, which in turn reduces body awareness. Body awareness is mediated by posterior-mesial regions including the posterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus, 36 which have been found to be altered or related to illness characteristics in patients with dissociative seizures and other forms of dissociative symptoms. 27 37 This interpretation would be in line with illness models centring around the role of interoceptive and affective mind-brain-body processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heartbeat evoked potentials and autonomic arousal during dissociative seizures: insights from electrophysiology and neuroimaging

Flasbeck,

Jungilligens,

Lemke

et al. 2024

BMJ Neurol Open

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IntroductionDissociative seizures often occur in the context of dysregulated affective arousal and entail dissociative symptoms such as a disintegration of bodily awareness. However, the interplay between affective arousal and changes in interoceptive processing at the onset of dissociative seizures is not well understood.MethodsUsing retrospective routine data obtained from video-electroencephalography telemetry in a university hospital epilepsy monitoring unit, we investigate ictal changes in cardiac indices of autonomic arousal and heartbeat evoked potentials (HEPs) in 24 patients with dissociative seizures.ResultsResults show autonomic arousal during seizures with increased heart rate and a shift towards sympathetic activity. Compared with baseline, ictal HEP amplitudes over central and right prefrontal electrodes (F8, Fz) were significantly less pronounced during seizures, suggesting diminished cortical representation of interoceptive information. Significant correlations between heart rate variability measures and HEPs were observed at baseline, with more sympathetic and less parasympathetic activity related to less pronounced HEPs. Interestingly, these relationships weakened during seizures, suggesting a disintegration of autonomic arousal and interoceptive processing during dissociative seizures. In a subgroup of 16 patients, MRI-based cortical thickness analysis found a correlation with HEP amplitudes in the left somatosensory association cortex.ConclusionsThese findings possibly represent an electrophysiological hint of how autonomic arousal could negatively impact bodily awareness in dissociative seizures, and how these processes might be related to underlying brain structure.

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“…The amygdala supports the emotional experience associated with the retrieval of personal memories [102]. The precuneus is an associative region within the human posteromedial cortex [103] involved in visuo-spatial perspective taking [104] and supposedly a core system for the sense of self [27,105] (see also [106]).…”

Section: The Neural Correlates Of Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Projective Consciousness Model: Projective Geometry at the Core of Consciousness and the Integration of Perception, Imagination, Motivation, Emotion, Social Cognition and Action

Rudrauf,

Sergeant-Perthuis,

Tisserand

et al. 2023

Brain Sciences

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Consciousness has been described as acting as a global workspace that integrates perception, imagination, emotion and action programming for adaptive decision making. The mechanisms of this workspace and their relationships to the phenomenology of consciousness need to be further specified. Much research in this area has focused on the neural correlates of consciousness, but, arguably, computational modeling can better be used toward this aim. According to the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM), consciousness is structured as a viewpoint-organized, internal space, relying on 3D projective geometry and governed by the action of the Projective Group as part of a process of active inference. The geometry induces a group-structured subjective perspective on an encoded world model, enabling adaptive perspective taking in agents. Here, we review and discuss the PCM. We emphasize the role of projective mechanisms in perception and the appraisal of affective and epistemic values as tied to the motivation of action, under an optimization process of Free Energy minimization, or more generally stochastic optimal control. We discuss how these mechanisms enable us to model and simulate group-structured drives in the context of social cognition and to understand the mechanisms underpinning empathy, emotion expression and regulation, and approach–avoidance behaviors. We review previous results, drawing on applications in robotics and virtual humans. We briefly discuss future axes of research relating to applications of the model to simulation- and model-based behavioral science, geometrically structured artificial neural networks, the relevance of the approach for explainable AI and human–machine interactions, and the study of the neural correlates of consciousness.

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Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus

Cited by 26 publications

References 69 publications

Dynamic medial parietal and hippocampal deactivations under DMT relate to sympathetic output and altered sense of time, space, and the self

Dynamic medial parietal and hippocampal deactivations under DMT relate to sympathetic output and altered sense of time, space, and the self

Heartbeat evoked potentials and autonomic arousal during dissociative seizures: insights from electrophysiology and neuroimaging

The Projective Consciousness Model: Projective Geometry at the Core of Consciousness and the Integration of Perception, Imagination, Motivation, Emotion, Social Cognition and Action

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