Action without agent, but with awareness? meditation and the modulation of agency induced sensory suppression.

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

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 in the world. In deep meditative states, where the self-world boundary blurs, phenomenological reports indicate a reduced or absent sense of agency, accompanied by neural oscillatory changes. However, definitive neural markers of agency have not been identified in these states. In our preregistered study, we engaged 46 experienced meditators in a button-pressing task during Magnetoencephalography (MEG) monitoring to assess how meditation-induced self-boundary dissolution affects sensory suppression. Participants' self-reports indicated partial attainment of deep meditative states during the task. At the overall group level, dissolution states did not significantly modulate sensory suppression. However, individual variations showed a positive correlation between the depth of meditation and sensory suppression magnitude. This suggests that variation in the induced states might have obscured group-level effects. Our findings highlight the complex interplay between meditation depth, agency suspension, intention awareness, and sensory suppression.