Dataset Information

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

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.

SUBMITTER: Dor-Ziderman Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6210398 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Dor-Ziderman Yair Y Ataria Yochai Y Fulder Stephen S Goldstein Abraham A Berkovich-Ohana Aviva A

Neuroscience of consciousness 20160101 1

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 fu ...[more]

PMID: 30397512

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Dataset Information

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

Publications

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

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