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...
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...
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...
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 <...
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...
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
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:...
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 specifying the self as a bounded and embodied knower and agent. Being a constant and tacit feature structuring consciousness, it eludes robust empirical exploration. Recently, deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self have been suggested as a promising path for advancing such an...
Frontiers in Psychology
2020
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein et al.
101 citations
This paper is a practical guide to neurophenomenology. Varela's neurophenomenological research program (NRP) aspires to bridge the gap between, and integrate, first-person (1P) and third-person (3P) approaches to understanding the mind. It does so by suggesting a methodological framework allowing these two irreducible phenomenal domains to relate and reciprocally support the investigation of...
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.
One of the most challenging questions regarding the nature and neural basis of consciousness is the embodied dimension of the phenomenon, that is, feeling located within the body and viewing the world from that spatial perspective. Current theories in neurophysiology highlight the active role of multisensory and sensorimotor integration in supporting self-location and self-perspective, and...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2016
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yochai Ataria, Stephen Fulder et al.
100 citations
Self-specific processes (SSPs) specify the self as an embodied subject and agent, implementing a functional self/nonself distinction in perception, cognition, and action. Despite recent interest, it is still undetermined whether SSPs are all-or-nothing or graded phenomena; whether they can be identified in neuroimaging data; and whether they can be altered through attentional training. These...
Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2015
Yochai Ataria, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
158 citations
This paper discusses the phenomenological nature of the sense of boundaries (SB), based on the case of S, who has practiced mindfulness in the Satipathana and Theravada Vipassana traditions for about 40years and accumulated around 20,000h of meditative practice. S's unique abilities enable him to describe his inner lived experience with great precision and clarity. S was asked to shift between...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn et al.
207 citations
Contemporary philosophical and neurocognitive studies of the self have dissociated two distinct types of self-awareness: a "narrative" self-awareness (NS) weaving together episodic memory, future planning and self-evaluation into a coherent self-narrative and identity, and a "minimal" self-awareness (MS) focused on present momentary experience and closely tied to the sense of agency and...