Ruben E. Laukkonen | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Past Psychedelic Use Predicts Divergent Thinking

Psychedelics have shown potential in treating a range of mental health conditions, yet far less is known about their impact on creativity. This study examined three components of creativity-divergent thinking, cognitive reflection, and insight in a large sample (N = 5,905) from the Great British Intelligence Test. We compared performance between individuals with past psychedelic use and those without such use. Psychedelic users scored significantly higher on divergent thinking than both non-drug users and drug users who had not used psychedelics. However, they did not score higher on measures of cognitive reflection, number of insights, or insight accuracy. These findings suggest that naturalistic psychedelic use may be associated with enhanced divergent thinking, but not enhanced insight-related performance. Future research should aim to establish causality through prospective designs and controlled studies incorporating long-term follow-up, biological data, and personality structure assessment.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2025

Meditative absorption shifts brain dynamics toward criticality

Criticality describes a regime between order and chaos that supports flexible yet stable information processing. Here we examine whether neural dynamics can be volitionally shifted toward criticality through the self-regulation of attention. We examined ten experienced practitioners of meditation during a 10-day retreat, comparing refined states of meditative absorption, called the jhanas, to regular mindfulness of breathing. We collected electroencephalography (EEG) and physiological data during these practices and quantified the signal's dynamical properties using Lempel-Ziv complexity, signal entropy, chaoticity and long-range temporal correlations. In addition, we estimated perturbational sensitivity using a global auditory oddball mismatch negativity (MMN) during meditation. Relative to mindfulness, jhana was associated with pronounced self-reported sensory fading, slower respiration, higher neural signal diversity across multiple measures, reduced chaoticity, and enhanced MMN amplitude over frontocentral sites. Spectral analyses showed a flatter aperiodic one over f component and a frequency-specific reorganization of long-range temporal correlations. Together, increased diversity with reduced chaoticity and heightened deviance detection indicate a shift toward a metastable, near-critical regime during jhana. We propose an overlap of the phenomenology of jhana with minimal phenomenal experiences in terms of progressive attenuation of sensory content with preserved tonic alertness. Accordingly, our findings suggest that criticality is a candidate neurophysiological marker of the absorptive, minimal-content dimension of the minimal phenomenal experience.

q-bio.NC↗