rs-fMRI is used to investigate human brain connectivity changes induced by prolonged microgravity in cosmonauts before and after spaceflight, with both persistent and reversible location specific chan...

Purpose Here, we combined a longitudinal design to assess whole-brain hyper- and hypo-connectivity in the different clinical phases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) with a multimodal approach to understand...

Children and teenagers with a higher body mass index exhibit unique brain wave patterns that point to a reduction in neural inhibition. These neurological differences might make it harder for affected...

A comprehensive review of brain imaging research suggests problematic smartphone use is associated with distinct neural differences. These variations appear in brain areas tied to reward processing, i...

A new neuroimaging case study published in the journal NeuroImage explored how a woman can voluntarily enter a transcendental visionary state that closely resembles psychedelic experiences but without using any substances. The participant, a 37-year-old woman referred to as AVP, demonstrated the ability to self-induce this unique state during 20 separate fMRI sessions. Her experiences included vivid geometric imagery, altered perception of time, loss of body boundaries, and a profound sense of unity and serenity. Unlike typical drug-induced or hypnotic states, her trance was fully controllable and repeatable, providing scientists a rare chance to study a non-ordinary state of consciousness in its pure form. Brain scans revealed that as she transitioned into the trance, connectivity between sensory networks such as visual, somatosensory, auditory, and motor regions markedly decreased, effectively isolating her from external sensory input. Meanwhile, connectivity increased within frontoparietal and salience networks—areas associated with internal attention, self-monitoring, and cognitive control—corresponding with her reports of inward focus and lucidity. The brain also displayed lower entropy and higher complexity, suggesting a structured, stable pattern of neural activity rather than random noise. These findings indicate that the brain can spontaneously reorganize its large-scale networks to generate deeply altered conscious experiences without pharmacological assistance. However, since this is a single-subject study, researchers emphasize the need for more participants to determine whether similar patterns occur in others who can consciously induce such states.

Deery et al. report that there is a reconfiguration of metabolic brain networks in ageing that is different to haemodynamic alterations and is more strongl

Does beauty in music resonate differently in our brains? New research using brain imaging uncovers intriguing patterns of neural connectivity that distinguish our responses to aesthetically pleasing and less appealing sounds.