Suspending the embodied self in meditation attenuates beta oscillations in posterior medial cortex

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Human experience is imbued by the sense of being an embodied agent. The investigation of such basic self-consciousness has been hampered by the difficulty of comprehensively modulating it in the laboratory while reliably capturing ensuing subjective changes. The present preregistered study fills this gap by combining advanced meditative states with principled phenomenological interviews: Forty-six long-term meditators (19 female, 27 male) were instructed to modulate and attenuate their embodied self-experience during magnetoencephalographic monitoring. Results showed frequency specific (high beta band) activity reductions in frontoparietal and posterior medial cortices (PMC). Importantly, PMC reductions were driven by a subgroup describing radical embodied self disruptions, including suspension of agency and dissolution of a localised first-person perspective. Neural changes were correlated with lifetime meditation and interview-derived experiential changes, but not with classical self-reports. The results demonstrate the potential of integrating in-depth first-person methods into neuroscientific experiments. Furthermore, they highlight neural oscillations in the PMC as a central process supporting the embodied sense of self.