Self-specific processing in the meditating brain: a MEG neurophenomenology study

  • Dor-Ziderman Y
  • Ataria Y
  • Fulder S
  • et al.
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Abstract

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 issues are approached through a neurophenomenological exploration of the sense-of-boundaries (SB), the fundamental experience of being an 'I' (self) separated from the 'world' (nonself). The SB experience was explored in collaboration with a uniquely qualified meditation practitioner, who volitionally produced, while being scanned by magnetoencephalogram (MEG), three mental states characterized by a graded SB experience. The results were then partly validated in an independent group of 10 long-term meditators. Implicated neural mechanisms include right-lateralized beta oscillations in the temporo-parietal junction, a region known to mediate the experiential unity of self and body; and in the medial parietal cortex, a central node of the self's representational system. The graded nature as well as the trainable flexibility and neural plasticity of SSPs may hold clinical implications for populations with a disturbed SB.

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Dor-Ziderman, Y., Ataria, Y., Fulder, S., Goldstein, A., & Berkovich-Ohana, A. (2016). Self-specific processing in the meditating brain: a MEG neurophenomenology study. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2016(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niw019

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