Suspending the Embodied Self in Meditation Attenuates Beta Oscillations in the Posterior Medial Cortex

Fynn Mathis Trautwein, Yoav Schweitzer, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Ohad Nave, Yochai Ataria, Stephen Fulder, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Human experience is imbued by the sense of being an embodied agent. The investigation of such basic self-consciousness has been hampered by the difficulty of comprehensively modulating it in the laboratory while reliably capturing ensuing subjective changes. The present preregistered study fills this gap by combining advanced meditative states with principled phenomenological interviews: 46 long-term meditators (19 female, 27 male) were instructed to modulate and attenuate their embodied self-experience during magnetoencephalographic monitoring. Results showed frequency-specific (high-beta band) activity reductions in frontoparietal and posterior medial cortices (PMC). Importantly, PMC reductions were driven by a subgroup describing radical embodied self-disruptions, including suspension of agency and dissolution of a localized first-person perspective. Neural changes were correlated with lifetime meditation and interview-derived experiential changes, but not with classical self-reports. The results demonstrate the potential of integrating in-depth first–person methods into neuroscientific experiments. Furthermore, they highlight neural oscillations in the PMC as a central process supporting the embodied sense of self.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1182232024
JournalJournal of Neuroscience
Volume44
Issue number26
DOIs
StatePublished - 26 Jun 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 the authors.

Keywords

  • MEG
  • mindfulness
  • neurophenomenology
  • posterior cingulate
  • self

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Neuroscience

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