November 22, 2023
Félix Schoeller, Abhinandan Jain, Leonardo Christov‐moore et al.
6 citations
preprint
Aesthetic chills—pleasurable bodily sensations paired with self-transcendent emotions—are linked to greater psychological insight and emotional awareness. In 94 participants exposed to music designed to induce chills, those who experienced chills reported significantly higher insight and emotional awareness than those who did not. The intensity of chills correlated positively with these cognitive-emotional measures. The findings suggest that bodily signals may trigger shifts in cognitive and emotional processing, pointing to the potential role of interoception in such experiences.
October 19, 2023
Leonardo Christov‐moore, Félix Schoeller, Caite Lynch et al.
6 citations
preprint
Aesthetic chills—the pleasurable, cold sensation often experienced during music or film—are robustly linked to self-transcendence, a positive altered state involving ego-dissolution, connectedness, and moral elevation. In 2,937 participants exposed to chills-eliciting stimuli, chills occurrence and intensity formed a tightly interrelated construct with measures of self-transcendence, even after controlling for prior state and trait differences. The findings suggest that self-transcendence experiences can be reliably evoked through exposure to audiovisual media that elicit chills, offering a more accessible path to study and apply self-transcendence for well-being and prosociality compared to conventional methods like meditation or psychedelics.
Communications Biology
November 6, 2025
Alex Jinich‐diamant, Sierra Simpson, Juan Pablo Zuniga-Hertz et al.
4 citations
A 7-day retreat combining meditation, reconceptualization, and open-label placebo healing rituals produced broad short-term neural and molecular changes in 20 healthy participants. Meditation reduced functional integration in the default mode and salience networks and decreased whole-brain modularity. Post-intervention plasma increased neurite outgrowth, enhanced glycolytic metabolism, and induced upregulation of BDNF, inflammatory, anti-inflammatory, and endogenous opioid pathways, while modulating tryptophan metabolism and neurotransmission-associated exosome miRNA transcripts. These changes suggest enhanced neuroplasticity, metabolic reprogramming, and modulation of functional cell signaling pathways, highlighting the potential of mind-body techniques to affect neural circuits and pathways important to health and well-being.