Short mindfulness-based interventions improve well-being, cognition, and clinical symptoms, but they are considered early steps on a longer transformative path that may produce lasting trait changes. Little is known about the brain correlates of these meditation traits.
Nondual meditation, specifically Open Presence (OP) practice, is associated with reduced bodily self susceptibility and increased large-scale integration of functional brain networks. Expert meditators with over 10,000 hours of practice showed lower global network eccentricity during OP compared to novices, particularly in dorsal attention, ventral attention, and frontoparietal networks, indicating greater integration. These neural patterns correlated positively with measures of bodily self illusion and negatively with cognitive defusion, a construct reflecting reduced self-grasping toward thoughts. The findings suggest that nondual awareness involves alterations in self-representation and large-scale functional brain integration.