Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
1,324 citations
Mindfulness—whether as a state, trait, process, meditation type, or intervention—benefits a range of psychological disorders and reduces stress. However, how it works and how it is defined remain unclear. This paper presents an integrative theoretical framework and neurobiological model called S-ART (self-awareness, self-regulation, self-transcendence). It explains that systematic mental training develops meta-awareness, behavioral self-modulation, and prosocial characteristics that transcend self-focused needs. The model proposes that meditation modulates self-specifying and narrative self-networks via a fronto-parietal control network, supported by processes like attention regulation, emotion regulation, and decentering. The framework aims to guide future research in contemplative sciences and treatments for psychological disorders.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2014
Robin Carhart‐Harris, Robert Leech, Peter J. Hellyer et al.
1,289 citations
Entropy, a measure of uncertainty or disorder, is applied to brain function and consciousness, focusing on the psychedelic state induced by psilocybin. The psychedelic state is considered a primary or primitive state of consciousness, characterized by elevated entropy in brain function, including a greater repertoire of functional connectivity motifs that form and fragment over time. This suggests primary states may exhibit criticality, a transition zone between order and disorder. Normal waking consciousness suppresses entropy, operating just below criticality, which constrains cognition and enables metacognitive functions like reality-testing and self-awareness. Entry into primary states involves collapse of default-mode network activity and decoupling from medial temporal lobes. These hypotheses can be tested by comparing brain activity in REM sleep, early psychosis, normal waking consciousness, and anesthesia.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
807 citations
The brain's default mode network (DMN), typically more active during rest than tasks, is also engaged by certain tasks, particularly social cognition like attributing mental states to others. Evidence from meta-analyses of functional MRI and studies of structural and functional connectivity in the social brain supports a partial overlap between DMN and social brain networks. A DMN also exists in non-human primates. These findings have implications for understanding brain organization and social processing.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 14, 2016
Matthew M. Nour, Lisa Evans, David Nutt et al.
476 citations
A new questionnaire, the Ego-Dissolution Inventory (EDI), reliably measures the experience of ego-dissolution—a temporary loss of the sense of self—during psychedelic drug use. The EDI shows strong psychometric properties, including internal consistency and construct validity, and its scores closely relate to the subjective psychedelic experience. This tool enables researchers to investigate the brain mechanisms underlying ego-dissolution, which may inform psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and improve understanding of psychosis.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2014
Wanqing Li, Xiaoqin Mai, Chao Liu
469 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is involved in understanding others across emotion perception, empathy, theory of mind, and morality. The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays a key role, with its subregions contributing differently: the ventral MPFC in the medial temporal lobe subsystem connects with emotion regions for emotional engagement; the anterior MPFC in cortical midline structures helps distinguish self from others; and the dorsal MPFC subsystem connects with the temporo-parietal junction for understanding others' mental states. As social behaviors become more complex, frontal regions involved are located higher, reflecting a shift from automatic to cognitive processing. Posterior cingulate cortex connectivity also changes. The DMN is indispensable for social understanding.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
445 citations
Eight weeks of mindfulness meditation training reduced right amygdala activation in healthy adults when viewing positive emotional images, even when they were not actively meditating. A compassion-based meditation program showed a trend toward increased right amygdala response to negative images, which correlated with lower depression scores. No changes occurred in a control group. The results suggest meditation training can alter emotional processing in the brain during ordinary, non-meditative states, indicating that such training may produce lasting, process-specific changes in mental function rather than only task-specific effects.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
Wendy Hasenkamp, Lawrence W. Barsalou
377 citations
More meditation experience is associated with lasting changes in functional connectivity within brain attentional networks, even when not meditating. Experienced meditators showed increased connectivity within attentional networks and between attentional regions and medial frontal areas compared to less experienced meditators. These neural changes may underlie improved cognitive skills, such as maintaining attention and disengaging from distraction, that are often reported with meditation practice. Because altered connectivity was observed during rest, this suggests a transfer of cognitive abilities into daily life.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
369 citations
Aesthetic responses to visual art involve at least two distinct brain activity patterns. In sensory regions (occipito-temporal) and the striatum, activity increases linearly with how highly observers rate artworks. Low-rated artworks actually cause striatal activity to fall below baseline. In contrast, a network of frontal regions, including parts of the default mode network linked to self-referential thought, shows a step-like increase only for the most moving artworks, with no differential activity for all others. This suggests aesthetic experience integrates sensory and emotional reactions in a way tied to personal relevance.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Catherine E. Kerr, Matthew D. Sacchet, Sara W. Lazar et al.
329 citations
Standardized mindfulness practices that focus attention on breath and body sensations may work by training the brain to better regulate alpha rhythms (7-14 Hz) in the primary somatosensory cortex. These alpha rhythms filter sensory information entering the neocortex. The framework suggests that in chronic pain, somatic attention in mindfulness reduces pain-focused attentional resources by altering alpha activity. In depression relapse prevention, somatic attention competes with rumination, as internal cognitive processes rely on alpha filtering. A computational model predicts enhanced top-down modulation of alpha through precise timing changes in thalamocortical inputs. The theory aligns with Buddhist teachings that mindfulness begins with mindfulness of the body, proposing that enhanced alpha regulation improves detection and regulation of mind-wandering.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
October 9, 2018
Roderik J S Gerritsen, G. Band
327 citations
Contemplative practices like meditation and yoga are linked to benefits for physical health, mental health, and cognitive performance, but the mechanisms behind these effects are not well understood. This theoretical review argues that many such practices share a common element: regulated or attentively guided breathing. This respiratory discipline may explain the benefits through changes in autonomic balance, specifically by stimulating the vagal nerve. The authors propose a model called respiratory vagal nerve stimulation (rVNS), which suggests that specific breathing styles phasically and tonically activate the vagus nerve, a key part of the parasympathetic nervous system. The model's implications and limitations are discussed.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
323 citations
Regular, brief mindfulness training improves attentional control and alters brain activity. In a randomized controlled EEG study, 40 meditation-naïve adults were assigned to either a wait-list or a meditation group that received three hours of training and practiced 10 minutes daily for 16 weeks. Stroop task performance and brain recordings at baseline, 8, and 16 weeks showed two distinct neural changes in meditators: an early effect (160–240 ms) at posterior sites indicating improved focusing of attention, and a later effect (310–380 ms) at central posterior sites reflecting reduced cognitive resource use during object recognition, especially for conflicting stimuli. Source analyses linked these changes to occipitotemporal and inferior temporal areas. The findings suggest mindfulness meditation enhances the efficiency of attentional resource allocation.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 27, 2014
Leor Roseman, Robert Leech, Amanda Feilding et al.
293 citations
Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA perturb consciousness in distinct ways, offering a tool to study brain mechanisms underlying conscious states. In placebo-controlled studies, psilocybin increased resting-state functional connectivity between brain networks, making them less differentiated, while decreasing connectivity between visual and sensorimotor networks. MDMA produced less marked changes in between-network connectivity, suggesting that the extensive network alterations under psilocybin may be unique to classic psychedelics and relate to their profound effects on consciousness. This analytical approach could help characterize other altered conscious states.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Judson A. Brewer, Kathleen A. Garrison, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
264 citations
The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) is consistently activated during self-referential tasks like judging personality traits or mind-wandering, and deactivated during present-centered tasks such as working memory or meditation. Despite this pattern, the PCC's exact role in self-related processes remains unclear. Recent real-time fMRI neurofeedback studies suggest PCC activity may reflect a sub-component of self-reference: 'getting caught up in' one's experience, such as a craving or viewpoint. This review synthesizes converging evidence across cognitive neuroscience domains, including neurophenomenological studies, to support this interpretation.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Kathleen A. Garrison, Juan F. Santoyo, Jake H. Davis et al.
226 citations
Meditators' subjective experiences during a real-time fMRI neurofeedback study align with activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a core region of the default mode network. Reports of undistracted awareness—such as concentration, observing sensory experience, and effortless doing (including not efforting and contentment)—correspond with decreased PCC activity. In contrast, experiences of distracted awareness (distraction, interpreting) and controlling (efforting, discontentment) correspond with increased PCC activity. The findings also generated novel hypotheses, including a distinction between meditating and trying to meditate, offering insights into how meditation relates to mind wandering and self-related thinking.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, Lucina Q. Uddin
221 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is not a single, uniform system but contains functionally distinct subdivisions with unique connectivity patterns. Recent advances in resting-state functional connectivity reveal complex organization within key DMN nodes—medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex—and between these nodes and other brain systems. This review examines how DMN subdivisions relate to self-referential and social-cognitive processing. The authors propose that embodied simulation and mentalizing work together to provide coherent representations of self and others: embodiment engages the same neural systems for self- and other-understanding through simulation, while mentalizing uses high-level conceptual information to infer mental states. DMN nodes selectively interact with brain systems for embodiment and mentalizing, including the mirror neuron system, to support social-cognitive demands.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 23, 2017
Raphaël Millière
216 citations
High doses of hallucinogenic drugs can produce a profound alteration of self-experience known as drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED), where the sense of self dissolves and boundaries between self and world disappear. Three classes of drugs induce this: classical psychedelics, dissociative anesthetics, and kappa opioid receptor agonists. Neuroimaging of DIED may reveal neural correlates of the self, but results must be interpreted cautiously—they may show necessary but not sufficient conditions for selfhood. The phenomenon likely disrupts the minimal or embodied self, a basic sense of self rooted in multimodal sensory integration, consistent with Bayesian models of phenomenal selfhood. DIED challenges philosophical views that consciousness always involves self-awareness and suggests ordinary experience includes a minimal self-awareness that fades during ego dissolution.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 7, 2021
Julia C. Basso, Medha K. Satyal, Rachel Rugh
130 citations
Dance enhances both intra- and inter-brain synchrony, according to The Synchronicity Hypothesis of Dance. This hypothesis integrates findings from anthropology, sociology, psychology, dance pedagogy, and neuroscience. Dance involves seven neurobehavioral processes: sensory, motor, cognitive, social, emotional, rhythmic, and creative. The hypothesis proposes that humans dance for intrinsic reward, which, through increased neural synchrony, improves interpersonal coordination. Evidence from evolutionary theories, developmental movement patterns, and neuroimaging supports this idea. The hypothesis suggests dance may help repattern oscillatory activity, offering clinical benefits for autism spectrum disorder and other disorders with oscillatory impairments. Consciousness may be redefined as a shared experience enhanced by dancing together.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 27, 2014
116 citations
Near death experiences (NDEs) reported after a non-life-threatening event (NDE-like) are similar in intensity and content to those occurring after a pathological coma (real NDE). In a retrospective analysis of 190 reports meeting the Greyson NDE scale threshold (score >7/32), the most common feature was peacefulness (89-93%), and only 1% recounted a negative experience. The intensity and features did not differ between NDE-like and real NDE groups, nor among coma causes (anoxic, traumatic, other). However, the core features were more frequently reported in this retrospective anoxic cohort compared to historical prospective data, suggesting that retrospective recall may shape the experience's content.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
87 citations
Science aims to challenge dogmas, but undemonstrated scientific axioms can themselves become dogmatic when they lead to the rejection of facts that contradict them. Psychobiological explanations of near-death experiences (NDEs) often claim these are mere brain dysfunctions, yet they neglect facts incompatible with a physicalist stance. The transcendent features of NDEs demand a neutral position that distinguishes facts from speculation. Most current psychobiological interpretations remain unproven, and the delirium from brain disorders or drugs differs phenomenologically from NDEs. Facts cannot be dismissed a priori as paranormal, even if implausible; doing so risks turning knowledge into dogma and the scientific paradigm into theology.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 13, 2017
85 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) often follow a common sequence: an out-of-body experience, moving through a tunnel, seeing a bright light, then feeling peace. However, this sequence occurred in only a small number of experiencers, suggesting that the order of NDE features varies widely among individuals. The study analyzed 154 written NDE narratives from French speakers, using text analysis to infer the timing and frequency of core features. The findings indicate that while a typical pattern exists, it is not universal, and understanding the relationships between features may improve scientific definitions of NDEs.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
December 22, 2016
Philipp Sterzer, Aaron Mishara, Martin Voss et al.
78 citations
Thought insertion in schizophrenia may arise from altered Bayesian inference within the predictive coding framework. Early 20th-century phenomenological accounts by the Heidelberg School described thought insertion as a self-disturbance involving disrupted inner connectedness of thoughts, which become sensory and feel inserted. Mescaline was used as a model psychosis to explore these mechanisms. The authors propose that reduced precision of context-dependent predictions, relative to sensory precision, increases prediction-error signals for internal events like thoughts. This aberrant salience, analogous to that proposed for external events, leads individuals to interpret thoughts as inserted by an alien agent, similar to delusion formation from aberrant sensory salience.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
March 22, 2021
Filippo Cieri, Xiaowei Zhuang, Jessica Caldwell et al.
62 citations
Spontaneous neural activity becomes less complex and less entropic during states of reduced consciousness, such as those induced by psychedelics, a pattern termed the 'entropic brain hypothesis.' This review extends that hypothesis to physiological and pathological aging, where brain entropy is also reduced. The authors treat the mind-brain as a complex nonlinear dynamic adaptive system governed by the free energy principle, aiming to maintain a balance between order and chaos in neural dynamics and functional connectivity. They review studies showing increased entropy in acute psychedelic states and chronic psychotic states like schizophrenia, then contrast these with aging, where entropy decreases. They propose a general trend of brain entropy across primary states and cognitive aging.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
October 4, 2018
Andrea Scalabrini, Clara Mucci, Georg Northoff
58 citations
A multilayered model of the self links four layers—relational alignment, self-constitution, self-manifestation, and self-expansion—to distinct neural correlates and levels of personality organization. The model proposes that psychotic, borderline, and neurotic personality organizations correspond respectively to disruptions in self-constitution, self-manifestation, and self-expansion. Grounded in empirical data on neural correlates of the self, early attachment experiences, and resting-state brain activity (rest-self overlap/containment), the model integrates psychodynamic and neuroscientific perspectives. The spontaneous activity of the brain, intrinsically related to the self, may be key to understanding how the default state navigates internal and external reality.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 12, 2015
Andrew R. Gallimore
52 citations
Classic psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin produce a fascinating but poorly understood state of consciousness. Modern functional neuroimaging has revealed some of their neural effects, but many phenomenological features remain unexplained. Integrated information theory (IIT), a leading mathematical theory of consciousness, can account for both the quantity and quality of conscious experience. Applying IIT to neuroimaging data on the psychedelic state yields a model that explains unconstrained cognition, altered concept structure and meaning, and expanded awareness. The model suggests that while cognitive flexibility, creativity, and imagination increase, this comes at the cost of cause-effect information and the brain's ability to organize, categorize, and differentiate conscious experience. It generates testable predictions using functional imaging, similar to studies of anesthesia and brain injury.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
March 18, 2021
Emma R. Huels, Hyoungkyu Kim, UnCheol Lee et al.
51 citations
Shamanic practitioners in trance show brain changes that overlap with but are distinct from those caused by psychedelic drugs. In 24 practitioners and 24 controls, EEG recordings during shamanic drumming revealed increased gamma power linked to visual changes, decreased low alpha and increased low beta connectivity, reduced gamma-band signal diversity tied to insightfulness, and increased criticality in beta and gamma bands correlating with complex imagery. Practitioners' altered-state scores matched or exceeded those of people on psychedelics. The findings indicate that shamanic trance and psychedelic states share some phenomenal features but produce unique neural signatures.