ArticleNeuroscience of consciousness2017
Self unbound: ego dissolution in psychedelic experience.
Article in Neuroscience of consciousness, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Default Mode Network Modulation by Psychedelics: A Systematic Review.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Pooled it
- Enhanced visual contrast suppression during peak psilocybin effects: Psychophysical results from a pilot randomized controlled trial.Journal of vision · 2024Trial
- P300-mediated modulations in self-other processing under psychedelic psilocybin are related to connectedness and changed meaning: A window into the self-other overlap.Human brain mapping · 2020Trial
- Intact neurophysiological markers of death denial in long-term ayahuasca users.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Psychedelic therapy and cultural humility.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- Learning from boundlessness: epistemic shifts towards a holistic worldview following psychedelic experiences.Npj mental health research · 2026Article
- Phenomenology of Psychedelic Experiences and Psychedelic-Associated Distressing Effects: Quantifying Subjective Experiences.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2026Review
- Mystical but not challenging experiences predict symptom improvement after psilocybin for treatment-resistant OCD.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- The experiential self state as affective salience: a dual-self states framework for consciousness and self-transcendence.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Psychedelic integration beyond the verbal: participatory-imaginal processing as a hypothesis-generating therapeutic framework.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Prometheus unbound? Oceanic affectivity and the neuropsychodynamics of addiction.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Molecules, meaning, and physiology: disentangling the active ingredients of psychedelic therapeutics.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- The Relationship Between Psychedelic Use and Positive Adult Development in Emerging Adulthood: An Integrative Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Review
- A Fragmented Mind: Altered States of Consciousness and Spirit Possession Between Rituals and Therapy.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2025Article
- Deconstructing Psychedelic Phenomenology: A Thematic Analysis of Discrete Phases of the Psychedelic Experience.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- From Efficacy to Effectiveness: Evaluating Psychedelic Randomized Controlled Trials for Trustworthy Evidence-Based Policy and Practice.Pharmacology research & perspectives · 2025Review
- Training the embodied self in its impermanence: meditators evidence neurophysiological markers of death acceptance.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- My Bad, You Got This: witnessing, therapist attitude and the synergy between psychedelics and inner healing intelligence in the treatment of trauma.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Eigenmodes of the deep unconscious: the neuropsychology of Jungian archetypes and psychedelic experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Review
- Oceanic states of consciousness-an existential-neuroscience perspective.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
8 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
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or 'I' distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such 'ego dissolution' experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. Combining recent work on the 'integrative self' and the phenomenon of self-binding with predictive processing principles yields an explanation of ego dissolution according to which self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. The self-model is not a mere narrative posit, as some have suggested; it has a more robust and ubiquitous cognitive function than that. But this does not mean, as others have claimed, that the self-model has the right attributes to qualify as a self. It performs some of the right kinds of functions, but it is not the right kind of entity. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.