Clinical Neurophysiology
September 21, 2011
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn, Abraham Goldstein
309 citations
Mindfulness meditation practitioners show lower frontal gamma brain activity, indicating reduced default mode network (DMN) engagement and less self-referential thinking, both as a lasting trait and during a time production task. They also produce longer time estimates, which correlate with lower frontal gamma. Additionally, they exhibit increased posterior gamma power, suggesting heightened attention and sensory awareness. These effects appear regardless of meditation proficiency, suggesting neuroplastic changes in self-referential and attentional networks from early practice stages. The findings demonstrate that EEG can non-invasively measure DMN activity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
October 1, 2014
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn, Abraham Goldstein
The default mode network (DMN), typically studied with brain imaging, was investigated using electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity (FC) during mindfulness meditation (MM). Three groups of meditators were compared with controls. DMN activity appeared as reduced overall inter-hemispheric gamma mean phase coherence (MPC) when transitioning from rest to a time production task. MM produced a state increase in alpha MPC and a trait decrease in EEG-FC, regardless of expertise or band. Specifically, reductions occurred in right theta MPC and left alpha and gamma MPC. Left gamma MPC negatively correlated with MM expertise, possibly reflecting lower internal verbalization. The lower gamma MPC supports the idea that MM reduces DMN activity related to self-reference and mind-wandering.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2014
Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn et al.
Quadrato Motor Training (QMT), a structured walking meditation, improves spatial performance on the Hidden Figures Test (HFT) and affects brain connectivity differently in males and females. In a first study with 24 females, QMT led to greater improvement in HFT performance than verbal or simple motor training. A second study with 37 participants (20 males) found that after QMT, HFT performance improved in both genders, but EEG coherence changed in opposite directions: theta and alpha intra-hemispheric coherence increased in females and decreased in males. The findings suggest gender-dependent electrophysiological effects of QMT and highlight the need to study gender differences in contemplative neuroscience.