Felix A. Schoeller

• PhD
• Senior Research Scientist at Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies

BACKGROUND Early maladaptive schemas (EMS) linked to depression are persistent, dysfunctional belief and behavior patterns acquired during critical developmental periods, resistant to change and challenging to address therapeutically. Peak emotional experiences have been shown to mitigate such schemas, suggesting a novel intervention pathway. OBJE...

Why does the same experience elicit strong emotional responses in some individuals while leaving others largely indifferent? Is the variance influenced by who people are (personality traits), how they feel (emotional state), where they come from (demographics), or a unique combination of these? In this 2,900+ participants study, we disentangle the...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a significant public health concern, with only a third of patients recovering within a year of treatment. While PTSD often disrupts the sense of body ownership and sense of agency (SA), attention to the SA in trauma has been lacking. This perspective paper explores the loss of the SA in PTSD and its relevance...

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by distressing, ego-dystonic thoughts (a.k.a., obsessions, O) and repetitive behaviors (a.k.a., compulsions, C) aimed at reducing the anxiety they generate (1). OCD affects 2%−3% of the US population and severely impairs functioning (2). OCD obsessions are characterized by exaggerated doubts disc...

The MindGym, a novel immersive technology utilizing a reflective chamber environment, was developed to create standardized experiential content, including anxiolytic experiences. This study examined whether therapeutic experiences originally created in the MindGym could maintain their efficacy when delivered via 360-degree recordings through virtua...

Meditation is suggested to enhance psychological well-being through sustained cultivation of interoceptive attention and emotion regulation, yet objective neurophysiological markers of meditative depth remain inconsistent and largely CNS-focused, overlooking interoceptive mechanisms. Heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs)—cortical responses to cardiac...

Non-pharmacologically induced altered states of consciousness that promote mental health and wellbeing are a growing focus of clinical and basic research. Previous work has revealed the mood-augmenting, belief-altering, and self-transcendent effects of aesthetic-chills-inducing audiovisual stimulation. The current study investigated how a guided lo...

Background Body awareness (BA) and proprioception, which are essential components of the sense of agency (SA), are often altered in various mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the relationship between BA, proprioception, and SA, as well as the methods to manipulate them, remain unclear. This study explored using...

Increasing access to and understanding of positive altered states is a subject of increasing interest for clinical and basic research, due to their documented effects on mental health and wellbeing. We have previously reported the mood-augmenting, belief-altering, and self-transcendent effects of aesthetic-chills-inducing audiovisual stimulation, a...

Affective empathy, the ability to share and understand others’ emotional states, is a fundamental aspect of social cognition. Recent evidence suggests that interoceptive inference, the brain’s prediction and processing of internal bodily signals, plays a key role in affective empathy. Building on the active inference framework, we propose that emot...

Background Early maladaptive schemas (EMS) significantly impact psychological functioning, yet their prevalence and influence within non-clinical populations are under-researched. This study explores distinct EMS clusters in a non-clinical adult sample and examines their associations with personality traits and emotional experiences.Methods Ninety-...

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a multisensory experience most often associated with feelings of relaxation and altered consciousness, elicited by stimuli which include whispering, repetitive movements, and close personal attention. Since 2015, ASMR research has grown rapidly, spanning disciplines from neuroscience to media studies b...

We are introducing a novel thermodynamic emotion model. In this model, emotions are regarded as deviations from equilibrium, akin to fluctuations in body temperature. This bipolar regulation maintains bodily and psychological homeostasis while spurring mental development. Emotional regulation typically occurs through expanding one's perception of t...

Interoception is often conceptualized as a unitary construct encompassing the perception of various internal bodily signals and its dysfunction in psychopathology. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that different interoceptive modalities, such as cardioception, respiroception, and thermoception, are largely independent of each other and...

Self-transcendence (ST) is a state of consciousness associated with feelings of ego-dissolution, connectedness, and moral elevation, which mediates well-being, meaning-making, and prosociality. Conventional paths to ST, like religious practice, meditation, and psychedelics, pose nontrivial barriers to entry, limiting ST’s study and application. Aes...

Background Virtual reality (VR) and immersive technologies offer benefits in anxiety reduction and mood enhancement. This study examines the effectiveness of rain stimuli and guided breathwork delivered through MindGym, a novel reflective chamber, and a traditional VR headset. Methods Physiological measures, cognitive, and trait and state assessmen...

This paper reviews biophysical models of psychotherapeutic change based on synergetics and the free energy principle. These models suggest that introducing sensory surprise into the patient-therapist system can lead to self-organization and the formation of new attractor states, disrupting entrenched patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours....

UNSTRUCTURED Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a significant public health concern, with only a third of patients recovering within a year of treatment. While PTSD often disrupts the sense of body ownership and sense of agency (SA), attention to the SA in trauma has been lacking. This perspective paper explores the loss of the SA in PTSD and...

Aesthetic chills are a peak emotional response to affectively charged stimuli such as music, films, or speech. This study investigates the impact of repeated exposure on the frequency and intensity of aesthetic chills. Through a longitudinal approach, we quantified changes in chill likelihood, intensity, and pleasure across multiple exposures, focu...

The phenomenon of aesthetic chills—shivers and goosebumps associated with either rewarding or threatening stimuli—offers a unique window into the brain basis of conscious reward because of their universal nature and simultaneous subjective and physical counterparts. Elucidating the neural mechanisms underlying aesthetic chills can reveal fundamenta...

Aesthetic chills are a peak emotion characterized by shivers down the spine and goosebumps in response to salient stimuli such as music, speech, or films. In a previous study exposing a large number of Southern California participants (n=2947) to pre-validated audiovisual stimuli, we observed a strong correlation between the intensity of self-repor...

Early maladaptive schemas linked to depression are dysfunctional patterns of belief and behavior, acquired during hyperplastic critical periods of brain development. As a result they are typically highly resistant to change and require considerable therapeutic work. Recent evidence found that peak emotional experience can mitigate maladaptive schem...

Aesthetic chills are a peak emotional response to affectively charged stimuli such as music, films, or speech. This study investigates the impact of repeated exposure on the frequency and intensity of aesthetic chills. Through a longitudinal approach, we quantified changes in chill likelihood, intensity, and pleasure across multiple exposures, focu...

Background Depression is a major global health challenge, affecting over 300 million people worldwide. Current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions have limited efficacy, underscoring the need for novel approaches. Emerging evidence suggests that peak emotional experiences characterized by awe, transcendence, and meaning hold promise...

We significantly enriched ChillsDB, a dataset of audiovisual stimuli validated to elicit aesthetic chills. A total of 2,937 participants from Southern California were exposed to 40 stimuli, consisting of 20 stimuli (10 from ChillsDB and 10 new) presented either in audiovisual or audio-only formats. Questionnaires were administered assessing demogra...

Aesthetic chills involve pleasurable bodily sensations co-occurring with self-transcendent emotions. In this study, 94 participants were exposed to pre-validated musical stimuli with chills-inducing potential. Participants experiencing chills reported significantly greater psychological insight and emotional awareness compared to non-chills control...

Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) has emerged as a promising posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment by enabling controlled exposure to traumatic cues. However, VRET interfaces decouple users from their physical surroundings, effectively dissociating them from their body and social environment. We review the benefits and disadvantages...

Background Depression is a major global health challenge, affecting over 300 million people worldwide. Current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions have limited efficacy, underscoring the need for novel approaches. Emerging evidence suggests that peak emotional experiences characterized by awe, transcendence, and meaning hold promise...

Self-transcendence (ST) is a positive altered state of consciousness associated with ego-dissolution, connectedness, and moral elevation, which mediates well-being, meaning-making, and prosociality. Conventional paths to ST such as religious practice, meditative practice, and psychedelics pose nontrivial barriers to entry, limiting ST’s study and w...

The emotional diversity emerging from the interplay of demographics, personality, and context, renders their scientific investigation notably difficult. In this study, we disentangle the factors that underlie individual variations in the experience of aesthetic chills, the feeling of cold and shivers down the spine during peak experiences. Leveragi...

The phenomenon of aesthetic chills—shivers and goosebumps associated with either rewarding or threatening stimuli—offers a unique window into the brain basis of conscious reward due to their universal nature and simultaneous subjective and physical counterparts. Elucidating the neural mechanisms underlying aesthetic chills can reveal fundamental in...

Objective: This study aimed to examine the potential of experiencing aesthetic chills to enhance reward learning in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms, specifically anhedonia, by investigating the effect of chills on participants’ ability to modulate behavior as a function of rewards. Methods: A total of 103 participants with elevated de...

We significantly enriched ChillsDB, a dataset of audiovisual stimuli validated to elicit aesthetic chills. A total of 2,937 participants from Southern California were exposed to 40 stimuli, consisting of 20 stimuli (10 from ChillsDB and 10 new) presented either in audiovisual or audio-only formats. Questionnaires were administered assessing demogra...

Background. Major Depression Disorder (MDD) is a pressing public health crisis affecting 121 million individuals globally and contributing to 850,000 annual deaths. Few studies investigate the mechanisms underlying positive emotion dysregulation in depression. This study aims to bridge this gap and provide novel methods for the elicitation of posit...

The human brain builds a hierarchical model of its world, with higher levels representing increasingly abstract concepts. We introduce the notion of existential computation to describe neural operations at the apex of this cognitive hierarchy. Existential computations integrate lower-level representations to form an overarching model of personal me...

Given the accelerating powers of artificial intelligence (AI), we must equip artificial agents and robots with empathy to prevent harmful and irreversible decisions. Current approaches to artificial empathy focus on its cognitive or performative processes, overlooking affect, and thus promote sociopathic behaviors. Artificially vulnerable, fully em...

Primary states of consciousness are conceived as phylogenetically older states of consciousness as compared to secondary states governed by sociocultural inhibition. The historical development of the concept in psychiatry and neurobiology is reviewed, along with its relationship to theories of consciousness. We suggest that primary states of consci...

We introduce ChillsDB the first validated database of audiovisual stimuli eliciting aesthetic chills (goosebumps, psychogenic shivers) in a US population. To discover chills stimuli “in the wild”, we devised a bottom-up, ecologically-valid method consisting in searching for mentions of the emotion’ somatic markers in user comments throughout social...

Primary states of consciousness are conceived as phylogenetically older states of consciousness as compared to secondary states governed by sociocultural inhibition. The historical development of the concept in psychiatry and neurobiology is reviewed, along with its relationship to theories of consciousness. We suggest that primary states of consci...

The concept of agency, or an individual's sense of control over their actions and external events, is important in the context of peritraumatic dissociation, and its cardinal importance in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This article provides a roadmap for the development of agency-based therapies in the future, along with offering an "enact...

Aesthetic chills are an embodied peak emotional experience induced by stimuli such as music, films, and speeches and characterized by dopaminergic release. The emotional consequences of chills in terms of valence and arousal are still debated and the existing empirical data is conflicting. In this study, we tested the effects of ChillsDB, an open-s...

Aesthetic chills, a strong emotional reaction characterized by a specific bodily response of thermoregulatory mechanisms such as shivers and goosebumps, may hold scientific and clinical potential for reward-related or dopaminergic illnesses. In this first exploratory study, we examined the effects of chills stimulation on subjects clinically diagno...

UNSTRUCTURED It has tremendous potential for both research and clinical applications, but challenges our conception of healthcare by opposing two distinct approaches to medicine: one centered around illness, with the aim of classifying and curing disease, the other centered around patients and their personal suffering and lived experience. In the c...

The term “digital phenotype” refers to the digital footprint left by patient-environment interactions. It has potential for both research and clinical applications but challenges our conception of health care by opposing 2 distinct approaches to medicine: one centered on illness with the aim of classifying and curing disease, and the other centered...

Interoception—the perception of internal bodily signals—has recently emerged as an area of significant interest due to its potential implications in emotion and the prevalence of dysfunctional interoceptive processes across psychopathological conditions. Despite the importance of interoception in cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry, its experimen...

Chills are a peak emotional experience induced by stimuli such as music, films, and speeches. The emotional consequences of chills in terms of valence and arousal are still debated and the existing empirical data is conflicting. In this study, we tested the effects of ChillsDB, an open-source repository of chills-inducing stimuli, on the emotional...

We introduce ChillsDB, the first validated database of audiovisual stimuli eliciting aesthetic chills (goosebumps, psychogenic shivers) in a US population. To discover chills stimuli “in the wild”, we devised a bottom-up, ecologically-valid method consisting in searching for mentions of the emotion's somatic markers in user comments throughout soci...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding into every niche of human life, organizing our activity, expanding our agency and interacting with us to an exponentially increasing extent. At the same time, AI’s efficiency, complexity and refinement are growing at an accelerating speed. An expanding, ubiquitous intelligence that does not have a means to...

In order to interact seamlessly with robots, users must infer the causes of a robot’s behavior–and be confident about that inference (and its predictions). Hence, trust is a necessary condition for human-robot collaboration (HRC). However, and despite its crucial role, it is still largely unknown how trust emerges, develops, and supports human rela...

Multiple studies have shown the importance of movement and physical exercise like dance for human wellbeing and mental health. Yet, factors influencing proprioception and body awareness in the context of exercise remain largely unexplored. This is mostly due to the lack of tools and techniques to record, manipulate and intervene on body awareness d...

To interact seamlessly with robots, users must infer the causes of a robot's behavior and be confident about that inference. Hence, trust is a necessary condition for human-robot collaboration (HRC). Despite its crucial role, it is largely unknown how trust emerges, develops, and supports human interactions with nonhuman artefacts. Here, we review...

Most mental health questionnaires only probe behavior and emotion over one domain (e.g., frequency) by using an adverbial phrase such as 'How often...?'. This single-domain approach to behavior sampling may limit the scope of psychiatric evidence that these instruments can capture. We investigated whether adding domains such as intensity, duration,...

Previous studies on aesthetic chills (i.e., psychogenic shivers) demonstrate their positive effects on stress, pleasure, and social cognition. We tested whether we could artificially enhance this emotion and its downstream effects by intervening on its somatic markers using wearable technology. We built a device generating cold and vibrotactile sen...

This article extends recent advances in mathematics, physics, and biochemistry suggesting that chirality (chiral synthesis) may allow the emergence of new hierarchical layers in complex structures. We are only beginning to uncover the splendid ability of brains to self-organize and anticipate future events over a wider spatio-temporal range than im...

Recent research in psychology distinguishes levels of consciousness into a tripartite model-conscious, unconscious and metaconscious. HCI technologies largely focus on the conscious pathway for computer-to-human interaction, requiring explicit user attention and action. In contrast, the other two pathways provide opportunities to create new interfa...

In recent years, both fields of physics and psychology have made important scientific advances. The emergence of new instruments gave rise to a data-driven neuroscience allowing us to learn about the state of the brain supporting known mental functions and conversely. In parallel, the appearance of new mathematics allowed the development of computa...

Brain and behavioral data have provided ample evidence that the largest part of emotion processes occur below the threshold of conscious awareness. In this article, we present computational models of the relation between emotion and cognition describing emotions as homeostatic signals critical to need regulation. These models suggest that an innate...

Historically, multiple theories have posited an active, causal role for perceived bodily states in the creation of human emotion. Recent evidence for embodied cognition, i.e. the role of the entire body in cognition, and support for models positing a key role of bodily homeostasis in the creation of consciousness, i.e. active inference, call for th...

We are witnessing a dramatic transformation in the way we do science. In recent years, significant flaws with existing scientific methods have come to light, including lack of transparency, insufficient involvement of stakeholders, disconnection from the public, and limited reproducibility of research findings. These concerns have sparked a global...

We examine the mechanisms of cooperation and community structuring human decisions and behaviour, with the goal of outlining new models taking into account the importance of social emotions underlying human behaviour. We introduce formal definitions for the terms discussed, emphasizing the role of social emotions in human evolution. Following on fr...

Recent technological advances coupled with progress in brain and psychological sciences allow the controlled induction and regulation of human psychophysiological states. These progresses often aim toward the goal of developing human-machine interfaces to improve human factors such as mental health, human relations, well-being and empathy. In this...

This article investigates emotions related to early numerical cognition. We review available data on the number sense in human children and show that natural curiosity is constantly used to study foundational mathematics in infancy. We conclude this article by outlining recommendations for improving the number sense at an early age and underline fu...

The presence of shivering and psychogenic shivering in mental health was measured using a compiled database including the DSM-5 and a large body of existing assessment tools and technology. We found results for chills, tremors, and temperature. None of the other shiver-related terms (N=9) yielded any results, which suggests that the role of psychog...

What is common among Newtonian mechanics, statistical physics, thermodynamics, quantum physics, the theory of relativity, astrophysics and the theory of superstrings? All these areas of physics have in common a methodology, which is discussed in the first few lines of the review. Is a physics of the mind possible? Is it possible to describe how a m...

Résumé Cette étude porte sur le problème des émotions esthétiques et celui des frissons esthétiques en particulier. Nous avons demandé à 30 sujets de décrire une structure narrative (film, théâtre, roman) élicitant des frissons, ainsi que la phénoménologie de l’expérience esthétique. Un certain nombre de redondances non aléatoires sont observables....

We successfully replicated a study about aesthetic emotions in a different socio-cultural environment. The present results suggest that incoherence is a strong inhibitor for aesthetic chills and verify a positive correlation between pleasure and meaning. These results allow for a scientific study of aesthetic emotions as it is now possible for the...

This article addresses the relation between aesthetic emotions, knowledge-acquisition, and meaning-making. We briefly review theoretical foundations and present experimental data related to aesthetic chills. These results suggest that aesthetic chills are inhibited by exposing the subject to an incoherent prime prior to the chill-eliciting stimulat...

At the core of this essay is the idea that cognition is best described as a highly developed homeostatic device aiming to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between internal representations and changes in environmental conditions. The author emphasizes the fundamental role played by aesthetics in facilitating an accurate description of the human mind a...

Aesthetic chills occur in artistic, scientific and religious context. We introduce a theoretical framework relating them to humans’ vital need for cognition. We discuss the implications of such a framework and the plausibility of our hypothesis. Numerous references to chills are introduced (quotes from, inter alios, artists, physicists and mathemat...

We clarify the relation between the perception of narratives and aesthetic emotions by relating them to mechanisms of knowledge-acquisition. Stories elicit emotions by diverging from expectations one may formulate on the basis of their properties. The greater the divergence, the stronger the emotion. Models of emotions, expectations, and knowledge-...