The Social Brain Revolution: How Expanded States Rewire Us for Collective Healing

By Fleet Maull, PhD

What if the most profound healing happening in expanded states of consciousness isn't just personal transformation, but the rewiring of our capacity to heal each other?

For decades, we've understood these experiences primarily through an individual lens, with the ego dissolving, personal trauma releasing, and spiritual insights emerging. While these remain profound and invaluable, cutting-edge neuroscience is revealing something even more revolutionary. Expanded states of consciousness fundamentally enhance our social brain networks, transforming how we see ourselves and how we attune to, co-regulate with, and collectively heal alongside others. This measurable science offers urgent implications for our interconnected world.

Your Social Brain: More Connected Than You Know Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience have shattered the myth of the isolated brain. We now know that roughly 65% of our neural real estate is dedicated to social processing: reading facial expressions, tracking vocal tones, sensing others' internal states, and constantly adjusting our own nervous systems in response to those around us.

This social brain operates through sophisticated networks that most of us aren't even consciously aware of. Mirror neuron systems fire both when we perform an action and when we observe others performing that same action, creating a neurological foundation for empathy. The anterior cingulate cortex processes not just our own pain, but lights up when we witness others suffering. Our interoceptive networks—the ones that sense our internal bodily states—are intimately connected to our ability to read and respond to others' emotional states.

Perhaps most remarkably, recent research on "predictive processing" reveals that our brains are constantly generating models of not just our own internal states, but the internal states of everyone around us. We're literally walking around with neural simulations of other people's minds running in our heads, updating moment by moment based on micro-expressions, posture, and countless other social cues.

This is the biological foundation of what spiritual traditions have long referred to as "interdependence" or "interbeing": the recognition that our individual consciousness is inextricably woven into the fabric of collective awareness.

How Expanded States Supercharge Social Brain Networks Here's where the research gets truly fascinating. When we enter expanded states of consciousness, whether through meditation, breathwork, microdosing protocols, or deeper psychedelic experiences, something remarkable happens to these social brain networks. They don't shut down; they become dramatically more integrated and sensitive.

Studies using fMRI and EEG during psychedelic experiences show increased communication between the brain's empathy networks and its cognitive control centers. The default mode network, which typically maintains our sense of separate self, reduces its activity while simultaneously increasing its connectivity to social processing regions. It's as if the walls between "self" and "other" become more porous, allowing for unprecedented levels of attunement and resonance.

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris's research on psilocybin has documented increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (the region associated with processing others' emotional states) during peak experiences. Participants consistently report not just personal insights, but profound experiences of empathic connection and understanding of others' perspectives. The brain quite literally becomes more socially attuned.

Even more intriguingly, this enhanced social sensitivity doesn't fade when the immediate experience ends. Longitudinal studies show lasting increases in measures of empathy, emotional intelligence, and prosocial behavior months after psychedelic experiences. The social brain appears to be "trained" toward greater sensitivity and connection.

The Ripple Effect: Individual Transformation as Collective Medicine This is where individual healing becomes collective healing in ways we're only beginning to understand. When someone develops enhanced empathic attunement through expanded state experiences, they feel more connected, and they literally become more attuned to the nervous system states of those around them, creating cascading effects of co-regulation and healing.

Recent research in polyvagal theory shows us that our autonomic nervous systems are constantly influencing each other through micro-signals we barely perceive consciously. When one person in a group has a well-regulated, coherent nervous system, it literally helps regulate the nervous systems of others through what Dr. Stephen Porges calls "neuroception": our unconscious detection of safety or threat in our environment.

Now imagine someone who has spent time in expanded states, developing not just personal insights but enhanced interoceptive awareness and social sensitivity. They become what I call "nervous system ambassadors": individuals whose presence naturally promotes co-regulation and collective coherence. Their expanded awareness becomes a healing field that others can entrain to.

And we can measure it physiologically! Heart Rate Variability research shows that coherent heart rhythms in one person can synchronize the heart rhythms of others in close proximity. Brainwave entrainment studies demonstrate that meditative states can become contagious in group settings. The enhanced social brain networks developed through expanded state work appear to amplify these already-existing biological processes of mutual regulation.

Training the Social Brain: Protocols for Collective Healing The question becomes: how do we deliberately cultivate these capacities? How do we train our social brains to become more sensitive, attuned, and healing in their influence on others?

• Micro-dosing for Social Sensitivity: One of the most promising developments is the use of micro-dosing protocols specifically designed to enhance social connection and empathic accuracy. Rather than seeking profound altered states, micro-dosing appears to gently increase the sensitivity of social brain networks while maintaining full functionality. Participants in micro-dosing studies consistently report enhanced emotional intelligence, better conflict resolution skills, and increased capacity for perspective-taking.

A typical protocol might involve micro-dosing psilocybin or LSD once every three days, combined with specific social awareness practices: spending time in nature with others, practicing authentic communication, or engaging in collaborative creative activities. The combination appears to gradually enhance baseline social sensitivity in ways that persist beyond the dosing period.

• Psychedelic Retreat Integration: For those pursuing deeper psychedelic experiences, the integration phase becomes crucial for developing collective healing capacities. Rather than focusing solely on personal insights, integration can specifically address the enhanced empathic and social capacities that often emerge. This might involve practicing what I call "expanded empathy exercises"—deliberately tuning into others' internal states using the heightened sensitivity gained from psychedelic work. It could include group integration circles where participants practice authentic vulnerable sharing while maintaining the open-hearted awareness cultivated in their expanded state experiences.

• Contemplative Practices for Social Brain Development: Traditional meditation practices can be specifically adapted to develop social brain networks. Loving-kindness meditation, for instance, appears to strengthen the neural circuits associated with empathy and social connection. Tonglen practice, a Buddhist meditation in which we breathe in suffering and breathe out relief, literally trains our capacity to co-regulate with others' difficult emotional states.

Body-based practices become particularly powerful when oriented toward social healing. Partner breathwork, where two people synchronize their breathing patterns, creates shared nervous system regulation. Movement practices that involve attunement to others, from partner yoga to conscious dance, strengthen the neural pathways of social sensitivity and co-regulation.

Why This Matters Now: Collective Healing for Collective Challenges

We live in a time of unprecedented global interconnection alongside profound fragmentation and polarization. Climate change, social inequality, political division, and collective trauma demand responses that go beyond individual healing or traditional therapeutic approaches. They require our capacity to heal together, to co-regulate at scale, to develop collective wisdom and resilience.

Social brain research reveals that individual expanded-state work, when properly oriented, isn't just personal development. It's collective medicine. Each person who develops enhanced empathic capacity, improved emotional regulation, and increased social sensitivity becomes a node of healing in the larger social fabric.

Consider what happens when healthcare providers, teachers, parents, or community leaders engage in practices that enhance their social brain networks. Their increased capacity for attunement and co-regulation ripples out through every interaction, creating what researchers call "positive emotional contagion." Their nervous system coherence becomes a resource that others can draw upon, often unconsciously.

This creates what I envision as "healing webs": networks of individuals whose expanded state work has enhanced their capacity to serve as nervous system stabilizers and emotional regulators for their communities. Rather than isolated islands of awakening, we begin to see interconnected systems of mutual support and collective resilience.

A New Understanding of Awakening

This research is reshaping our understanding of what awakening actually means. Rather than individual enlightenment or personal spiritual achievement, we're beginning to recognize awakening as fundamentally relational: the development of our capacity to participate more consciously and helpfully in the collective field of human consciousness.

The expanded states that once seemed primarily about personal insight are revealing themselves as training grounds for collective healing capacity. The ego dissolution that many experience in these states isn't just the release of personal limitations, but the development of nervous system flexibility that allows for deeper attunement to others' needs and states.

The unity consciousness that emerges in profound expanded state experiences appears to correlate with measurable increases in social brain network integration. What feels like spiritual realization turns out to have concrete neurological substrates that enhance our capacity to serve as healing agents in our communities.

An Invitation to Collective Evolution

We stand at a unique moment in human history. We have both the scientific understanding and the contemplative technologies to consciously evolve our collective capacity for healing. The research on social brain networks provides a biological foundation for what spiritual traditions have long intuited—that individual awakening and collective healing are inseparably interconnected.

The question is whether we'll pursue expanded states primarily for personal benefit or embrace them as training for collective service. Will we use these powerful tools to enhance our individual lives, or will we recognize them as technologies for developing our capacity to heal together?

The choice we make may well determine whether we can rise to meet the collective challenges of our time. The social brain revolution suggests that the healing our world desperately needs doesn't require waiting for external solutions or systemic changes. It can begin with each of us developing our innate capacity to serve as nervous system stabilizers, empathy ambassadors, and healing presences in our everyday interactions.

The awakening of individual consciousness has always been a gift to the collective. Now, neuroscience is showing us that this gift is delivered through the enhanced social brain networks that allow us to participate more consciously in the web of mutual influence and support that is the human community.