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.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2014
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn
72 citations
A theoretical model called the consciousness state space (CSS) proposes that all experiences can be mapped along three dimensions: time, awareness, and emotion. These dimensions each have two layers: a core layer tied to the present moment and minimal selfhood, and an extended layer supporting narrative selfhood, memory, and personal identity. The model suggests that normal waking consciousness involves two simultaneous, typically antagonistic trajectories within core and extended consciousness. Altered self-states, such as flow and meditation, change this dynamic. The CSS framework integrates diverse phenomenological and neuroscientific findings, offering testable predictions for the science of consciousness.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2015
Tal D Ben-Soussan, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Claudia Piervincenzi et al.
48 citations
Four weeks of daily Quadrato Motor Training (QMT), a whole-body movement contemplative practice, increased cognitive flexibility and ideational fluency more than verbal or simple motor training alone. In a pilot longitudinal MRI study, gray matter volume and fractional anisotropy changes in several brain regions, including the cerebellum, correlated positively with cognitive flexibility scores. These preliminary results support a connection between motor practice and creativity, consistent with models integrating cognitive flexibility, embodiment, and the motor system.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
October 6, 2017
Joseph Glicksohn, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Federica Mauro et al.
38 citations
Exposure to a monotonous sensory environment can alter time perception and subjective experience. Participants spent 20 minutes in a whole-body altered sensory chamber with white and colored light, relaxing with eyes closed. Before entering, they completed a time-production task; one group repeated it inside the chamber, another after exiting. The main effect of the sensory environment was a change in the intercept of the psychophysical function when produced time was plotted against target duration on a log-log scale. For participants reporting a marked change in time experience, such as the sensation of time disappearing, their time-production data could not be linearized on a log-log plot, suggesting a possible break in the psychophysical function.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Joseph Glicksohn, Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan
19 citations
A female participant who scored the maximum on the Absorption Scale reported a spiritual experience—feeling she was meeting God—while immersed in a whole-body perceptual deprivation tank. Her experience included imagery of a spaceship, corridors, a man in white, speaking to God, the sun, supernova, concentric images, and an out-of-body experience. Her EEG showed frontal and parietal left-greater-than-right alpha asymmetry at baseline, and during the tank condition, a global increase in alpha power with a sharp increase in right-frontal alpha power. Comparing her data with another high-absorption participant and two low-absorption participants suggests that verbalizable spiritual experiences may be linked to increased right-frontal alpha power, whereas ineffable mystical experiences might involve increased left-frontal alpha power.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Andrea Pintimalli, Tania Di Giuseppe, Grazia Serantoni et al.
15 citations
The Sphere Model of Consciousness (SMC) describes subjective experiences using geometric coordinates, with a central 'Place of Pre-Existence' (PPE) representing an experience of overcoming habitual self and memory conditioning, causally linked to self-determination. Silence may act as an intentional inner environment that focuses self-perception on the present moment, improving body awareness. In a preliminary study, 481 volunteer PPE technique practitioners completed questionnaires before and after a 3-day meditative training. Results showed a shift from mental to spatial dimensions dominating experience after training. Silence was reported more often after training and was mainly associated with mental and emotional experiences.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan, Fabio Marson, Claudia Piervincenzi et al.
12 citations
Silence-related experiences during meditation are linked to changes in brain structure and reduced attentional effort. In a study of Quadrato Motor Training (QMT), participants who reported increased silence-related experiences after six weeks of practice also showed decreased attentional effort and increased fractional anisotropy in the left uncinate fasciculus, a white-matter tract. The findings suggest that silence in meditation involves specific neuroanatomical changes and may reduce the cognitive effort required to maintain attention.
Front Psychol
April 13, 2021
Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan, Narayanan Srinivasan, Joseph Glicksohn et al.
8 citations
This editorial introduces a collection of research exploring the neurophysiology of silence from multiple perspectives, including neuroscience, psychology, education, and contemplative traditions. It argues that silence is not merely the absence of sound but an active state that can influence brain function, cognitive processes, and well-being. The editorial highlights how silence may promote mental clarity, stress reduction, and restorative states, with potential applications in learning and education. It sets the stage for examining how silence affects brain activity, cognitive benefits, and psychological health, suggesting that understanding these mechanisms could inform practices for enhancing mental clarity and knowledge acquisition.
Journal for person-oriented research
January 1, 2019
Joseph Glicksohn
7 citations
People experience four unusual states of consciousness—the hypnagogic state (falling asleep), hypnopompic state (waking up), lucid dreaming (knowing one is dreaming), and out-of-the-body experiences (sensing the world from outside the body)—in different patterns. A cross-sectional study of 251 participants examined how trait Absorption relates to these patterns. Two opposing predictions were tested: that higher Absorption increases differentiation among these states, or that it decreases differentiation. Both predictions were supported: moving from slightly below to slightly above the median on Absorption increased differentiation, but very high Absorption compared to very low Absorption decreased differentiation.
Progress in brain research
January 1, 2023
Michele Pellegrino, Joseph Glicksohn, Fabio Marson et al.
3 citations
Immersion in the OVO Whole-Body Perceptual Deprivation chamber, a homogeneous sensory environment, consistently produces positively connotated, bodily-oriented, and cognitively dedifferentiated subjective states in most people. Semi-structured interviews with 32 participants, analyzed by three independent evaluators, showed significant consensus on experiences such as softened boundaries across time and sensory modalities. These subjective findings align with prior electrophysiological results that reported increased delta and beta activity in the left inferior frontal cortex and left insula during immersion.
Consciousness and cognition
May 1, 2026
Joseph Glicksohn
Converging operations aim to triangulate a construct such as altered states of consciousness or impulsivity, but measures sometimes diverge rather than converge. Three examples are examined: trait and state impulsivity may not correlate; state absorption may not correlate with trait absorption; and trait mindfulness may fail to correlate negatively with trait impulsivity due to ambiguous questionnaire wording. The author argues that the defining measure for impulsivity should be self-reported trait impulsivity, and for an altered state of consciousness it should be the subjective experience report. Three future research directions are proposed: determining which measure defines a construct, clarifying mismatches between measures, and considering demand characteristics that may cloud interpretation.