Multimodal Ganzfeld-induced visual experiences are associated with alongside mental experiences and distinct EEG microstate dynamics
- 1Translational Research Center, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Bern, Switzerland
Abstract
During wakefulness, we are used to perceive the environment through our senses, act on it and take these inputs to update our experiences and build the perceptions. When the inputs are not longer accurate or structured, people would sometimes have hallucinatory experiences. Whether such experiences are associated with distinct patterns of thought, and how they relate to large scale brain dynamics, remains unclear. To address these questions, we combined experience sampling protocol with EEG recording during multimodal Ganzfeld, where participants were exposed to unstructured, uniform visual and auditory stimulation. Participants repeatedly reported the complexity of their visual experiences together with ongoing thoughts related to perceptual belief, prediction perception mismatch, active updating, and prior mentation. EEG microstates were extracted to characterize the temporal dynamics of large-scale brain networks. We found that visual complexity was related to some of the four dimensions, but partly distinct in simple and complex visual experiences. These phenomenological changes were accompanied by distinct, and often nonlinear, dynamics of large-scale brain networks involved in visual processing, salience detection, and internally directed cognition. It also indicates that this paradigm might be a valuable model for investigating the mechanisms underlying hallucinatory experiences in psychosis.
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BibTeX
@misc{wang2026multimodal,
title = {{Multimodal Ganzfeld-induced visual experiences are associated with alongside mental experiences and distinct EEG microstate dynamics}},
author = {X. Wang and Y. Pomorin and E. Peters and D. Erlacher and T. Koenig},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.64898/2026.08.28.747793},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.28.747793v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Multimodal Ganzfeld-induced visual experiences are associated with alongside mental experiences and distinct EEG microstate dynamics
AU - X. Wang
AU - Y. Pomorin
AU - E. Peters
AU - D. Erlacher
AU - T. Koenig
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/28
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.08.28.747793
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.28.747793v1
AB - During wakefulness, we are used to perceive the environment through our senses, act on it and take these inputs to update our experiences and build the perceptions. When the inputs are not longer accurate or structured, people would sometimes have hallucinatory experiences. Whether such experiences are associated with distinct patterns of thought, and how they relate to large scale brain dynamics, remains unclear. To address these questions, we combined experience sampling protocol with EEG recording during multimodal Ganzfeld, where participants were exposed to unstructured, uniform visual and auditory stimulation. Participants repeatedly reported the complexity of their visual experiences together with ongoing thoughts related to perceptual belief, prediction perception mismatch, active updating, and prior mentation. EEG microstates were extracted to characterize the temporal dynamics of large-scale brain networks. We found that visual complexity was related to some of the four dimensions, but partly distinct in simple and complex visual experiences. These phenomenological changes were accompanied by distinct, and often nonlinear, dynamics of large-scale brain networks involved in visual processing, salience detection, and internally directed cognition. It also indicates that this paradigm might be a valuable model for investigating the mechanisms underlying hallucinatory experiences in psychosis.
ER -