Case Study of Ecstatic Meditation: fMRI and EEG Evidence of Self-Stimulating a Reward System
Neural Plasticity May 22, 2013 Michael R. Hagerty, Julian Isaacs, Leigh Brasington et al.
We report the first neural recording during ecstatic meditations called jhanas and test whether a brain reward system plays a role in the joy reported. Jhanas are Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) that imply major brain changes based on subjective reports: (1) external awareness dims, (2) internal verbalizations fade, (3) the sense of personal boundaries is altered, (4) attention is highly...