Clinical Neurophysiology
September 21, 2011
Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Joseph Glicksohn, Abraham Goldstein
309 citations
Mindfulness meditation practitioners show lower frontal gamma brain activity, indicating reduced default mode network (DMN) engagement and less self-referential thinking, both as a lasting trait and during a time production task. They also produce longer time estimates, which correlate with lower frontal gamma. Additionally, they exhibit increased posterior gamma power, suggesting heightened attention and sensory awareness. These effects appear regardless of meditation proficiency, suggesting neuroplastic changes in self-referential and attentional networks from early practice stages. The findings demonstrate that EEG can non-invasively measure DMN activity.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn et al.
207 citations
Long-term mindfulness meditation can alter self-awareness by reducing identification with a static self. A study of 12 experienced meditators used magnetoencephalography and first-person reports to distinguish two types of self-awareness: narrative self-awareness, which involves weaving memories and plans into a coherent identity, and minimal self-awareness, focused on present-moment experience. Attenuating narrative self-awareness corresponded to decreased gamma-band power in frontal and medial prefrontal regions. Attenuating minimal self-awareness involved decreased beta-band power in a network including ventral medial prefrontal, medial posterior, and lateral parietal regions. The experience of selflessness was linked to decreased beta-band activity in the right inferior parietal lobule.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2016
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yochai Ataria, Stephen Fulder et al.
100 citations
The sense of being a self separate from the world can vary in intensity, is linked to specific brain activity, and can be altered through meditation. A long-term meditation practitioner deliberately produced three mental states with different degrees of self-boundary experience while undergoing magnetoencephalography. The results were partly confirmed in ten other experienced meditators. Right-lateralized beta oscillations in the temporo-parietal junction, which supports the unity of self and body, and in the medial parietal cortex, a key self-representation area, were implicated. The graded, flexible nature of self-specific processes may have clinical relevance for people with disturbed self-boundaries.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
10 citations
Meditators' brains show acceptance rather than denial when processing death-related stimuli linked to the self, as measured by a magnetoencephalogram visual mismatch-response (vMMR) paradigm. This neural shift corresponds with increased self-reported well-being and is associated with positively valenced experiences of self-dissolution during meditation. The findings suggest that the brain's defensive response to mortality is not fixed but can be reduced through insight meditation grounded in mindful awareness, which trains acceptance of impermanence. The results also indicate that addressing mortality concerns is important when interventions may disrupt self-consciousness.
PsyArXiv
August 21, 2023
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
3 citations
preprint
The brains of mindfulness meditators exhibit an acceptance of death that predicts positively-valenced meditative self-dissolution experiences.