ReviewBrain : a journal of neurology2010
The default-mode, ego-functions and free-energy: a neurobiological account of Freudian ideas.
Review in Brain : a journal of neurology, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 165 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
165 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy for treating anxiety, depression, and existential distress in people with life-threatening diseases.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Tasks activating the default mode network map multiple functional systems.Brain structure & function · 2022Pooled it
- Neural correlates of psychodynamic and non-psychodynamic therapies in different clinical populations through fMRI: A meta-analysis and systematic review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Spontaneous and deliberate creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure.Translational psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Me, myself, bye: regional alterations in glutamate and the experience of ego dissolution with psilocybin.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2012Trial
- A graph theory approach to chart the architecture of dream and mind-wandering reports.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Freud's Model of the Mind Within a Predictive Processing Neuroscientific Paradigm.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The neural correlates of shared and individual experience.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Witnessing and imagination: Proust, trauma, and the expansion of consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Case Report: Amplified psychoanalysis? Psychoanalysis, OCD and MDMA in a clinical case study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Bridging dream and wake states: a new tool for consciousness research.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- The Relationship Between Psychedelic Use and Positive Adult Development in Emerging Adulthood: An Integrative Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Review
- Homeostasis and dyshomeostasis in language and violent acting out. A dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis.American journal of psychoanalysis · 2025Article
- Fearful symmetry in altered states: a bi-logic account of psychedelic action.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Eigenmodes of the deep unconscious: the neuropsychology of Jungian archetypes and psychedelic experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Review
- Effects of insecure attachment on fMRI resting state functional connectivity in poly drug use disorder.PloS one · 2025Observational
- Sex-specific differences in brain activity dynamics of youth with a family history of substance use disorder.Nature. Mental health · 2025Article
- Aesthetic quality of psychedelic experience is linked to insight and psychological outcomes.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Psychoanalytically informed MDMA-assisted therapy for pathological narcissism: a novel theoretical approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
105 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This article explores the notion that Freudian constructs may have neurobiological substrates. Specifically, we propose that Freud's descriptions of the primary and secondary processes are consistent with self-organized activity in hierarchical cortical systems and that his descriptions of the ego are consistent with the functions of the default-mode and its reciprocal exchanges with subordinate brain systems. This neurobiological account rests on a view of the brain as a hierarchical inference or Helmholtz machine. In this view, large-scale intrinsic networks occupy supraordinate levels of hierarchical brain systems that try to optimize their representation of the sensorium. This optimization has been formulated as minimizing a free-energy; a process that is formally similar to the treatment of energy in Freudian formulations. We substantiate this synthesis by showing that Freud's descriptions of the primary process are consistent with the phenomenology and neurophysiology of rapid eye movement sleep, the early and acute psychotic state, the aura of temporal lobe epilepsy and hallucinogenic drug states.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.