June 21, 2026
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
preprint
Background: Despite the rapid growth of psychedelic research, limited attention has been given to how psychedelics are used, experienced and integrated within highly conservative religious communities, and in Jewish contexts more broadly. This study addresses this gap by examining ayahuasca use among the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community, a highly religious, conservative, and collectivist...
Mindfulness
February 1, 2026
Liat Ben‐Uriel Maoz, Shiri Lavy, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
Abstract Objectives Based on the literature linking mindfulness with decentering and with better interactions with others, this study aimed to examine the associations of daily mindfulness and decentering with the mother–child relationship and with mothers’ well-being, during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Method The study involved 84 mothers with an average age of 40.25 years ( SD = 6.75), who...
Hum Brain Mapp
2026
Henrik Röhr, Daniel A Atad, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
1 citation
The sense of self is a multidimensional feature of human experience. Different dimensions of self-experience can change drastically during altered states of consciousness induced through meditation or psychedelic drugs, as well as in a variety of mental disorders. Some experienced meditation practitioners are able to modulate their sense of self deliberately, which allows for a direct...
Consciousness and Cognition
2026
Yoav Schweitzer, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
The human brain constructs a boundary between self and world by distinguishing self-generated sensory events from external ones. For events that are self-initiated, the brain attenuates its response, what is known as the sensory suppression effect. This effect is regarded as a proxy of the sense of agency, i.e., our feeling of being subjective agents controlling our actions and ensuing events...
Psychopharmacology
November 10, 2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
These findings provide preliminary evidence that while ayahuasca may alter how humans interact with the theme of death on conceptual and affective levels of cognitive processing, on automatic, perceptual unconscious levels of self-specific processing, death-denial processes appear to remain intact.
October 1, 2025
Daniel Andrew Atad, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
1 citation
preprint
A fundamental aspect of human experience is that of being a bounded and embodied agent. This basic sense of self typically operates implicitly, yet traditional contemplative accounts alongside recent work in philosophy, phenomenology and neuroscience suggests that it can be attenuated or even fully dissolved while retaining awareness. Here we present an extended analysis of data from a...
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
June 12, 2025
Etzel Cardeña, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Katja Valli et al.
11 citations
This article presents a taxonomy of altered states of consciousness, primarily based on their central phenomenological features. Following taxonomic principles and a modified Delphi methodology, a multidisciplinary, international group identified eight distinct phenomenological/behavioral states (some with subcategories): proto and transitional, delirium, minimal to no awareness, experiential...
Psychopharmacology
April 23, 2025
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman
2 citations
The human psyche's interaction with death fundamentally shapes cognition, emotions, and behavior in both individuals and society. Death-related psychological phenomena have been shown to be influenced by psychedelic interventions. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive assessment of death-related processes in non-clinical settings, the mechanisms underlying long-term changes, and...
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Antoine Lutz, Oussama Abdoun, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
18 citations
There is a renewed interest in taking phenomenology seriously in consciousness research, contemporary psychiatry, and neurocomputation. The neurophenomenology research program, pioneered by Varela, rigorously examines subjective experience using first-person methodologies, inspired by phenomenology and contemplative practices. This review explores recent advancements in neurophenomenological...
Front Hum Neurosci
January 6, 2025
Daniel Yochai Panitz, Avi Mendelsohn, Joana Cabral et al.
5 citations
Interest has been growing in the use of mindfulness meditation (MM) as a therapeutic practice, as accumulating evidence highlights its potential to effectively address a range of mental conditions. While many fMRI studies focused on neural activation and functional connectivity during meditation, the impact of long-term MM practice on spontaneous brain activity, and on the expression of resting...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Daniel A Atad, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas et al.
10 citations
Recent years have seen growing interest in the use of metrics inspired by complexity science for the study of consciousness. Work in this field has shown remarkable results in discerning conscious from unconscious states, and in characterizing states of altered conscious experience following psychedelic intake as involving enhanced complexity. Here, we study the relationship between complexity...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
10 citations
Human predictive capacity underlies its adaptive strength but also the potential for existential terror. Grounded in the predictive processing framework of brain function, we recently showed using a magnetoencephalogram visual mismatch-response (vMMR) paradigm that prediction-based self-specific neural mechanisms shield the self from existential threat-at the level of perception-by attributing...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2025
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
correction
1. In the published article, there was an error. The error was regarding the average number of ayahuasca uses in the ayahuasca group in Study 1. A correction has been made to the Results section in lines 387-390. This sentence previously stated:Briefly, on average, our study participants have used ayahuasca (mean = 69.4 ± 98.7), 6.4 times more than psilocybin (mean = 10.7 ± 15.4, U = 1378, p <...
IntechOpen eBooks
December 13, 2024
Amir Freimann, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
This paper explores the concept of enlightened joy and love as an aspect of a stable and enduring spiritual “high plateau” state, referred to here as “Living Transcendence,” which contrasts with transient mystical or spiritual “peak” experiences. Drawing from a phenomenological study of 32 “spiritual exemplars” from various traditions, the research identifies key characteristics of this state....
Brain Sciences
November 26, 2024
Yoav Schweitzer, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
7 citations
In the last decade, empirical studies on the beneficial effects of meditation on prosocial capacities have accumulated, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Buddhist sources state that liberating oneself from a fixed view of the self by gaining access to its transitory and malleable nature leads to increased compassion and other prosocial traits. These, however, have not yet been...
November 18, 2024
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
preprint
There is a growing hype regarding the efficacy of psychedelics to fundamentally change how we interact with the theme of death. The underlying evidence consists of anecdotal and self-report data collected in naturalistic and clinical settings suggesting that psychedelics inculcate more acceptance and less fear and anxiety of one’s mortality. However, given hundreds of empirical studies...
Mindfulness
August 1, 2024
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Kirk Warren Brown, Shaun Gallagher et al.
22 citations
Abstract For many centuries, scholars and philosophers from wisdom traditions in different cultures have reported and discussed non-self states of consciousness. These states can be both short-term (state, transitory) and long-term (trait, lasting) conditions. However, in psychology, the importance of a healthy self is usually emphasized, and some theorists have dismissed the idea of “selfless”...
July 28, 2024
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman
2 citations
preprint
Background: How the human psyche interacts with the theme of death is fundamental to individual and societal life, profoundly influencing cognition, affect, and behavior. Death-related psychological phenomena, such as death anxiety and acceptance, have been shown in clinical studies to be influenced by psychedelic (LSD and psilocybin) interventions. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive...
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
June 26, 2024
Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yoav Schweitzer, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
27 citations
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: 46...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
December 19, 2023
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
14 citations
Introduction Despite an emerging understanding regarding the pivotal mechanistic role of subjective experiences that unfold during acute psychedelic states, very little has been done in the direction of better characterizing such experiences and determining their long-term impact. The present paper utilizes two cross-sectional studies for spotlighting – for the first time in the literature –...
PsyArXiv
August 21, 2023
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
3 citations
preprint
Mindfulness meditators’ brains show an acceptance of death which predicts positively-valenced meditative self-dissolution experiences
June 28, 2023
Daniel Andrew Atad, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas et al.
11 citations
preprint
Recent years have seen a growing interest in the use of measures inspired by complexity science for the study of consciousness. The work done in this field has shown remarkable results in discerning conscious from unconscious states, and in characterizing states of altered conscious experience following intake of psychedelic substances as involving enhanced complexity. However, the relationship...
Mindfulness
April 11, 2023
Shaun Gallagher, Antonino Raffone, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana et al.
49 citations
Abstract In this paper, we address core insights from Buddhist psychology about mind-body phenomena and the self, and we relate such insights to the notion of the self-pattern developed in the pattern theory of self. We emphasize the dynamic, temporal and enactive characteristics of the self-pattern, consistent with the core Buddhist notion of non-self. Although there is no one-to-one mapping...
February 13, 2023
Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yoav Schweitzer, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
3 citations
preprint
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:...
International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP
2023
Fabio Giommi, Prisca R. Bauer, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana et al.
70 citations
Clinical and neuroscientific evidence indicates that transdiagnostic processes contribute to the generation and maintenance of psychopathological symptoms and disorders. Rigidity (inflexibility) appears a core feature of most transdiagnostic pathological processes. Decreasing rigidity may prove important to restore and maintain mental health. One of the primary domains in which rigidity and...