April 18, 2021
Ohad Nave, Fynn‐mathis Trautwein, Yochai Ataria et al.
16 citations
preprint
The pre-reflective sense of self, a tacit and constant feature of consciousness that frames the self as a bounded and embodied agent, is difficult to study empirically. Deep meditative states that dissolve this sense of self offer a path for investigation. In a phenomenological study, meditative self-boundary alteration was characterized by changes in six experiential features: sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence. Quantitative analyses revealed a unitary dimension of boundary dissolution. Passive meditative gestures of “letting go,” which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, drove the depth of dissolution. These findings support an enactive approach linking the pre-reflective self to sensorimotor activity and attention-demanding processes.
February 13, 2023
Fynn‐mathis Trautwein, Yoav Schweitzer, Yair Dor‐ziderman et al.
3 citations
preprint
Long-term meditators can intentionally reduce their sense of being an embodied agent, and this change corresponds to specific brain activity reductions. In a preregistered study, 46 experienced meditators (19 female, 27 male) used advanced meditation techniques to attenuate their embodied self-experience while undergoing magnetoencephalography. Those who reported radical disruptions—such as losing a sense of agency or a localized first-person perspective—showed reduced high-beta-band oscillations in the posterior medial cortices (PMC). These neural changes correlated with lifetime meditation experience and interview-based reports, but not with standard self-report questionnaires. The findings show that combining first-person methods with neuroscience can reveal how the brain supports the embodied sense of self.
July 28, 2024
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Yair Dor‐ziderman
2 citations
preprint
People who have used ayahuasca multiple times show less fear of death, less avoidant behavior around death, and greater acceptance of death compared to non-users. A cross-sectional study of 54 ayahuasca veterans and 53 non-users found that these differences were explained not by personality, mindfulness, or beliefs about an afterlife, but by acceptance of impermanence—the recognition that all things change and pass away. Within the ayahuasca group, the degree of ego dissolution experienced during past ayahuasca sessions predicted how much they accepted impermanence, while how often they drank ayahuasca did not. The findings suggest that directly cultivating acceptance of impermanence could help manage existential anxiety.
October 1, 2025
Daniel Andrew Atad, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fynn‐mathis Trautwein et al.
1 citation
preprint
The sense of being a bounded self can be attenuated or dissolved while awareness remains. Analyzing magnetoencephalography data from 46 long-term meditators, the study found that both meditation conditions (self-boundary dissolution and maintenance) increased broadband entropy rate and directed information transfer compared to rest, driven mainly by high-frequency activity. Localized reductions in information transfer from the anterior cingulate to posterior cingulate and in high-beta entropy rate in sensorimotor and posterior-medial cortices differentiated the two meditation conditions. Reduced orbitofrontal cortex entropy rate and reduced information transfer from occipital, cingulate, limbic, and subcortical areas correlated strongly with self-boundary dissolution phenomenology. Together with a previously reported neural correlate of reduced high-beta power in the posterior-medial cortex, these two neural correlates explained over half the variance in phenomenological dissolution scores (R² = 0.52).
June 21, 2026
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Yair Dor‐ziderman et al.
preprint
Ayahuasca use among ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews is adapted to Jewish contexts, with ceremonies modified to fit religious norms. Motivations for use are primarily therapeutic. Acute experiences include Jewish and Jewish mystical visionary content. Longer-term effects include strengthened belief, connection to Judaism, and changes in religious practice. Religious tensions arise from ayahuasca's perceived foreignness, concerns about idolatry, mixed-gender participation, and competing authority structures. Strategies to address these tensions include medicalization, making the set, setting, and experience religiously permissible ("koshering"), and framing ceremonies as liminal spaces. The findings highlight psychedelics' contextual flexibility and diffusion into understudied populations.
Psychopharmacology
November 10, 2025
Yair Dor‐ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana
Preliminary evidence suggests that ayahuasca can change how people think about and feel toward death at conscious levels, but automatic, unconscious perceptual processes that deny death remain unaffected.
November 18, 2024
Yair Dor‐ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana
preprint
Ayahuasca veterans' brains show automatic, unconscious denial of death when processing self-related death stimuli, measured via magnetoencephalogram (MEG), while their conscious self-reports indicate less fear of death than the general population and experienced meditators. The neurophysiological marker of death denial correlated with lower self-reported death acceptance, reduced accessibility to death-related thoughts, and greater life satisfaction, suggesting an adaptive role. Despite psychedelic-induced changes in conscious attitudes toward mortality, unconscious cognitive processes underlying mortality avoidance remain intact, limiting the transformative efficacy of psychedelics on deep-seated death denial.