Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn et al.
207 citations
Long-term mindfulness meditation can alter self-awareness by reducing identification with a static self. A study of 12 experienced meditators used magnetoencephalography and first-person reports to distinguish two types of self-awareness: narrative self-awareness, which involves weaving memories and plans into a coherent identity, and minimal self-awareness, focused on present-moment experience. Attenuating narrative self-awareness corresponded to decreased gamma-band power in frontal and medial prefrontal regions. Attenuating minimal self-awareness involved decreased beta-band power in a network including ventral medial prefrontal, medial posterior, and lateral parietal regions. The experience of selflessness was linked to decreased beta-band activity in the right inferior parietal lobule.
Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2015
Yochai Ataria, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
158 citations
Based on detailed self-reports from a long-term mindfulness practitioner with about 20,000 hours of meditation experience, the sense of boundaries (SB) can shift through three stages: default, dissolving, and disappearing. During these shifts, seven overlapping categories change, including senses of internal versus external, time, location, self, agency, ownership, and the first-person perspective. Two categories—the touching/touched structure and bodily feelings—persist even when the SB disappears entirely. The findings suggest that the sense of boundaries is not a single, fixed experience but a composite of multiple, separable dimensions that can be altered through meditative practice.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
101 citations
Neurophenomenology integrates first-person (subjective) and third-person (objective) approaches to the mind. This practical guide outlines theoretical principles, the importance of phenomenological training, and the utility of cooperating with meditators as skilled participants. First-person accounts range from thick to thin phenomenology, highlighting a tension in naturalizing phenomenology. A typology of bridges creates mutual constraints between approaches. The paper demonstrates a decade of neurophenomenological studies investigating the sense of self, focusing on its embodied and minimal aspects accessed via dissolution of sense-of-boundaries, revealing the multi-dimensionality and flexibility of embodied selfhood.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2016
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yochai Ataria, Stephen Fulder et al.
100 citations
The sense of being a self separate from the world can vary in intensity, is linked to specific brain activity, and can be altered through meditation. A long-term meditation practitioner deliberately produced three mental states with different degrees of self-boundary experience while undergoing magnetoencephalography. The results were partly confirmed in ten other experienced meditators. Right-lateralized beta oscillations in the temporo-parietal junction, which supports the unity of self and body, and in the medial parietal cortex, a key self-representation area, were implicated. The graded, flexible nature of self-specific processes may have clinical relevance for people with disturbed self-boundaries.
Brain Sciences
June 21, 2021
Ohad Nave, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yochai Ataria et al.
91 citations
A fundamental aspect of the sense of self is its pre-reflective dimension, which specifies the self as a bounded and embodied knower and agent. Deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self offer a promising path for investigating this elusive feature. A comprehensive phenomenological inquiry into meditative self-boundary alteration systematically characterized induced states by changes in six experiential features: sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence, along with their interaction with meditative technique and overall degree of dissolution. Quantitative analyses highlighted a unitary dimension of boundary dissolution.
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
Long-term meditators can intentionally reduce the sense of being an embodied self, and this change is linked to decreased high-beta brain activity in the posterior medial cortex. In a study of 46 experienced meditators (19 female, 27 male) who underwent magnetoencephalographic monitoring, those who reported radical disruptions of embodied self-experience—such as loss of agency and a localized first-person perspective—showed the strongest neural reductions. These neural changes correlated with lifetime meditation experience and interview-based reports of experiential shifts, but not with standard self-report questionnaires. The findings suggest that posterior medial cortex oscillations are central to supporting the embodied sense of self.
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Antoine Lutz, Oussama Abdoun, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
18 citations
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, particularly their application to meditation practices and potential clinical translations. It examines innovative multidimensional phenomenological assessment tools designed to capture subtle, dynamic shifts in experiential content and structures of consciousness during meditation, shedding light on mechanisms and trajectories of meditation practice.
April 18, 2021
Ohad Nave, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yochai Ataria et al.
16 citations
preprint
The pre-reflective sense of self, a tacit and constant feature of consciousness that frames the self as a bounded and embodied agent, is difficult to study empirically. Deep meditative states that dissolve this sense of self offer a path for investigation. In a phenomenological study, meditative self-boundary alteration was characterized by changes in six experiential features: sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence. Quantitative analyses revealed a unitary dimension of boundary dissolution. Passive meditative gestures of “letting go,” which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, drove the depth of dissolution. These findings support an enactive approach linking the pre-reflective self to sensorimotor activity and attention-demanding processes.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
December 19, 2023
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
14 citations
More than half of people who participate in ayahuasca ceremonies report having a subjective sense of death during the experience, termed Ayahuasca-induced Personal Death (APD). These experiences are typically strong and transformative, associated with an increased sense of transcending death and greater certainty that consciousness continues after death. APDs are not linked to demographics, personality, or psychopathology, but are associated with greater environmental concern, improved ability to cope with life problems, and a heightened sense of life fulfillment. The findings suggest these death experiences may be a mechanism for psychedelics' long-term positive effects.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
10 citations
Meditators' brains show acceptance rather than denial when processing death-related stimuli linked to the self, as measured by a magnetoencephalogram visual mismatch-response (vMMR) paradigm. This neural shift corresponds with increased self-reported well-being and is associated with positively valenced experiences of self-dissolution during meditation. The findings suggest that the brain's defensive response to mortality is not fixed but can be reduced through insight meditation grounded in mindful awareness, which trains acceptance of impermanence. The results also indicate that addressing mortality concerns is important when interventions may disrupt self-consciousness.
Brain Sciences
November 26, 2024
Yoav Schweitzer, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
7 citations
Long-term meditators show enhanced low-level prosocial capacities, including better emotion recognition and reduced outgroup bias, compared to non-meditators. A neural index of self-boundary flexibility, measured via high beta deactivation, remained stable over a year and negatively correlated with recognizing negative emotions, suggesting a link to reduced social threat perception. The study involved 44 long-term meditators and 53 controls. These findings connect the neural correlates of self-boundary flexibility to prosociality, supporting the idea that flexing self-boundaries through meditation may enhance prosocial traits.
PsyArXiv
June 11, 2024
Antoine Lutz, Oussama Abdoun, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
4 citations
preprint
A review of recent advances in neurophenomenology, a research program that rigorously examines subjective experience using first-person methods inspired by phenomenology and contemplative practices. The review covers three areas: new multidimensional tools for capturing dynamic changes in consciousness during meditation; empirical studies using experienced meditators to deconstruct aversive and self-related processes, revealing markers for pain regulation, self-dissolution, and acceptance of mortality; and a deep computational neurophenomenology framework that uses deep parametric active inference to naturalize phenomenology. These innovations suggest that mutual constraints among phenomenological, computational, and neurophysiological domains can contribute to an integrated understanding of mental illness and its treatment.
PsyArXiv
August 21, 2023
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
3 citations
preprint
The brains of mindfulness meditators exhibit an acceptance of death that predicts positively-valenced meditative self-dissolution experiences.
February 13, 2023
Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yoav Schweitzer, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
3 citations
preprint
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.
Psychopharmacology
April 23, 2025
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman
2 citations
People who regularly use ayahuasca show lower death anxiety, less fear of death, less avoidant behavior around death, and greater acceptance of death compared to non-users. A cross-sectional study of 54 ayahuasca veterans and 53 non-users measured these differences using questionnaires and behavioral tasks. The differences were not explained by demographics, personality, mindfulness, beliefs about the afterlife, or awareness of impermanence. Instead, acceptance of impermanence—the willingness to embrace life's transience—was the key mechanism. Among ayahuasca users, the intensity of lifetime ego-dissolution experiences predicted how much they accepted impermanence. This suggests that acute psychedelic experiences can foster lasting changes in how people process mortality, and that promoting impermanence acceptance may help manage existential fear.
July 28, 2024
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman
2 citations
preprint
People who have used ayahuasca multiple times show less fear of death, less avoidant behavior around death, and greater acceptance of death compared to non-users. A cross-sectional study of 54 ayahuasca veterans and 53 non-users found that these differences were explained not by personality, mindfulness, or beliefs about an afterlife, but by acceptance of impermanence—the recognition that all things change and pass away. Within the ayahuasca group, the degree of ego dissolution experienced during past ayahuasca sessions predicted how much they accepted impermanence, while how often they drank ayahuasca did not. The findings suggest that directly cultivating acceptance of impermanence could help manage existential anxiety.
Hum Brain Mapp
January 1, 2026
Henrik Röhr, Daniel A Atad, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
1 citation
Meditation can deliberately alter the sense of self, allowing comparison between an active and suspended self. In 41 experienced meditators, magnetoencephalography recordings distinguished a state of reduced sense of self (self-boundary dissolution) from rest and a control meditation state. Machine learning using source band power and Lempel-Ziv complexity features predicted mental states with above-chance accuracy. The best performance, classifying self-boundary dissolution versus rest using Lempel-Ziv complexity, achieved average accuracy of about 0.64 for within-participant prediction and about 0.57 for across-participant prediction. This neural marker could support decoded neurofeedback for clinical treatments of self disorders or meditation training.
October 1, 2025
Daniel Andrew Atad, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
1 citation
preprint
The sense of being a bounded self can be attenuated or dissolved while awareness remains. Analyzing magnetoencephalography data from 46 long-term meditators, the study found that both meditation conditions (self-boundary dissolution and maintenance) increased broadband entropy rate and directed information transfer compared to rest, driven mainly by high-frequency activity. Localized reductions in information transfer from the anterior cingulate to posterior cingulate and in high-beta entropy rate in sensorimotor and posterior-medial cortices differentiated the two meditation conditions. Reduced orbitofrontal cortex entropy rate and reduced information transfer from occipital, cingulate, limbic, and subcortical areas correlated strongly with self-boundary dissolution phenomenology. Together with a previously reported neural correlate of reduced high-beta power in the posterior-medial cortex, these two neural correlates explained over half the variance in phenomenological dissolution scores (R² = 0.52).
June 21, 2026
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
preprint
Ayahuasca use among ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews is adapted to Jewish contexts, with ceremonies modified to fit religious norms. Motivations for use are primarily therapeutic. Acute experiences include Jewish and Jewish mystical visionary content. Longer-term effects include strengthened belief, connection to Judaism, and changes in religious practice. Religious tensions arise from ayahuasca's perceived foreignness, concerns about idolatry, mixed-gender participation, and competing authority structures. Strategies to address these tensions include medicalization, making the set, setting, and experience religiously permissible ("koshering"), and framing ceremonies as liminal spaces. The findings highlight psychedelics' contextual flexibility and diffusion into understudied populations.
Psychopharmacology
November 10, 2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
Preliminary evidence suggests that ayahuasca can change how people think about and feel toward death at conscious levels, but automatic, unconscious perceptual processes that deny death remain unaffected.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
correction
A correction was issued for a published article: the average number of ayahuasca uses in the ayahuasca group was revised from 69.4 to 55.7 (standard deviation 82.1). Participants had used ayahuasca 5.2 times more than psilocybin, 4.6 times more than mescaline, and 5.6 times more than LSD. The authors state the error does not alter the scientific conclusions.
November 18, 2024
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
preprint
Ayahuasca veterans' brains show automatic, unconscious denial of death when processing self-related death stimuli, measured via magnetoencephalogram (MEG), while their conscious self-reports indicate less fear of death than the general population and experienced meditators. The neurophysiological marker of death denial correlated with lower self-reported death acceptance, reduced accessibility to death-related thoughts, and greater life satisfaction, suggesting an adaptive role. Despite psychedelic-induced changes in conscious attitudes toward mortality, unconscious cognitive processes underlying mortality avoidance remain intact, limiting the transformative efficacy of psychedelics on deep-seated death denial.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2026
Yoav Schweitzer, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
During deep meditation, the usual boundary between self and world blurs, and people report a reduced sense of controlling their actions. The brain normally dampens its response to self-initiated sensations, a marker of agency called sensory suppression. In a preregistered study, 46 experienced meditators performed a button-pressing task during MEG scanning. Self-reports showed partial attainment of deep meditative states. At the group level, dissolution states did not significantly alter sensory suppression, but individuals who reported deeper meditation showed stronger sensory suppression. This suggests that variation in meditation depth may obscure group-level effects, highlighting a complex relationship between meditation depth, sense of agency, and sensory processing.
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
November 1, 2017
Maor Zeev-Wolf, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Abraham Goldstein et al.
Feeling located within one's body and viewing the world from that perspective is a key aspect of consciousness. Current theories emphasize multisensory integration and the right temporal-parietal junction (rTPJ) in supporting self-location, based on bottom-up sensory manipulations or direct brain disruption. This study used hypnotic suggestion, a non-invasive top-down technique, to manipulate self-location in 18 participants while recording brain activity with MEG. Spectral analyses of spontaneous data before and during an induced out-of-body experience revealed high correlations between alpha and high-gamma power and the degree of perceived change in self-location. Correlated regions included temporal-occipital areas, rTPJ, and frontal and midline regions, supporting an oscillatory-based predictive coding framework.