Yair Dor-Ziderman

The sense of self is fundamental to experience, yet its neural basis remains unresolved. Contemplative traditions and empirical evidence suggest it can be voluntarily dissolved while retaining awareness, offering a window onto this question. We combined magnetoencephalography with in-depth phenomenology in long-term meditators (N=45, mean 3,832 practice hours) who reliably modulated self-boundaries across rest, self-maintenance and self-dissolution. Meditation broadly increased entropy and information transfer, yet selective reductions characterized self-dissolution. Reduced posterior-medial high-beta entropy and within-cingulate information transfer differentiated dissolution from maintenance. Information transfer reductions from occipital, cingulate, limbic, and subcortical regions, alongside orbitofrontal entropy stabilization, correlated with dissolution phenomenology. Combined with posterior-medial high-beta power reductions, these correlates explained 52% of dissolution depth variance, yet only information transfer predicted held-out participants. We propose selfhood relies on distributed processes that can be reconfigured in meditation through relaxed priors, gated bottom-up evidence, and stabilized evaluative dynamics, distinct from global disruption during psychedelic ego-dissolution.

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 Jewish group. Methods: This study used inductive thematic analysis of interviews with Haredi participants in Israel and the US (N = 23; age range: 21–60; 8 women), supplemented by participant observation and analysis of religious materials. Results: Six themes were identified: (a) settings: Haredi ayahuasca ceremonies were adapted to Jewish contexts; (b) motivations: use was primarily therapeutic; (c) acute ayahuasca experiences: experiences included distinct Jewish and Jewish mystical visionary content; (d) longer term religious effects: ayahuasca was linked to strengthened belief, connection to Judaism, and changes in religious practice; (e) religious tensions: included ayahuasca’s perceived foreignness to Haredi life, concerns about idolatry, mixed gender participation, and competing structures of authority (experience vs. text); and (f) strategies for addressing tensions: included medicalization, “koshering” ayahuasca’s set, setting, and experience (i.e., making them religiously permissible), and framing ceremonies as liminal spaces. Conclusions: This study broadens the scope of psychedelic science by examining ayahuasca use in a highly religious Orthodox context rarely included in the field. The findings show how ayahuasca settings, experiences, and long term effects are translated through Haredi and Jewish structures, involve religious tensions and resolutions, and highlight psychedelics’ contextual flexibility and continued diffusion into understudied populations.

Previous research has demonstrated via a magnetoencephalography visual mismatch response (vMMR) paradigm that prediction-based neurophysiological mechanisms shielded the self from existential threat by attributing death to the other. A failed large-scale replication attempt of the paradigm, which took place in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, serendipitously allowed an exploratory ecological investigation of whether these death-denial brain mechanisms adapted to life situations in which mortality salience critically increased. Additionally, while a link between death processing and environmental concern has been previously hypothesized in the literature, it has not been rigorously demonstrated. Fifty participants underwent the vMMR death-denial task, measures of fear and anxiety of death, measures of death-related thought and behaviors avoidance, and an environmental attitudes survey. Overall, the vMMR results’ pattern supports their interpretation as indicating that the brain’s mortality defenses were impacted by COVID-19, with some evidence further suggesting that these were re-emerging as time passed from the pandemic’s onset. Additionally, a hierarchical regression showed that measures of death avoidance and denial—on the levels of neurophysiology, thought, and behavior—predicted pro-environmental concern, but that fear and anxiety of death did not. These findings highlight the malleability of the brain’s response to existential threat under extreme real-life conditions and demonstrate their possible downstream impact on pro-environmental attitudes.

This paper explores the conceptualisation of “self” from the perspective of the active inference framework (AIF), advanced meditation and Buddhist literature. We argue that AIF accounts generally emphasise the organismic self—inference supporting agentic adaptive control—while overlooking a distinct aspect: the identified-with self—unperceived subject-creating elements of experience. On the AIF received view of the self, the persistent absence of a self entails dysfunction, in contrast with insight practices, in the context of the meditative endpoint in Buddhism called awakening or nibbana, which seek the permanent elimination of identification while leaving functional agency intact.We propose a two-dimensional articulation of the self that distinguishes between the organismic and identified-with self, and differentiates between reported temporary and persistent trait-like alterations. We examine how meditative deconstruction can temporarily attenuate hierarchically deep inference, disrupting organismic selfing, while long-term meditative development may persistently reduce or even eliminate the identified-with self, yielding a specific kind of selfless experience during ordinary perception, action and cognition–without functional disadvantage. We then take initial steps toward a synthesised AIF account of selfing, proposing that reductions in identified-with selfing unmask lower-level percepts, shorten engagement in higher-level inference, and establish upper limits on the certainty of beliefs.

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 comparison between an active and suspended sense of self. Meditation therefore has the potential to serve as a model‐system for alterations in the sense of self. The current study aims to identify a neural marker of such meditation‐induced alterations in the sense of self based on magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of meditation practitioners ( N = 41). Participants alternated between a state of reduced sense of self, termed self‐boundary dissolution, a resting state and a control meditation state of maintaining their sense of self. Machine learning methods were used to find multivariate patterns of brain activity which distinguish these states on a single‐trial basis. Source band power and Lempel‐Ziv complexity features allowed to predict the mental state from MEG recordings with significantly above‐chance accuracy (> 0.5). The highest performance was obtained for the self‐boundary dissolution versus rest classification based on Lempel‐Ziv complexity, which showed an average accuracy of ~0.64 when training and testing were performed on data from the same individual (within‐participant prediction) and ~0.57 when models trained on one group of individuals were tested on different participants (across‐participant prediction). Potential applications include decoded neurofeedback, for example, for clinical treatments of disorders of the sense of self, or for assistance in meditation training.

Rationale: There is growing enthusiasm around the potential of psychedelics to transform how individuals engage with the theme of death, with self-report evidence suggesting these substances foster acceptance and reduce fear-of-death. Yet, given extensive evidence linking unconscious processes to mortality avoidance, current research efforts remain limited and call for implicit and neurobiology-based measures. Objectives & methods: To this end, we applied a validated no-report magnetoencephalogram (MEG) visual MisMatch Response (vMMR) paradigm to assess whether long-term ayahuasca users ( N = 50), compared to previously published data from healthy controls and experienced meditators, show self-specific neurophysiological markers of death-denial/acceptance. Self-report and behavioral measures of fear-of-death were also collected. Results: Cluster-based permutation analyses on the vMMR data showed that ayahuasca users’ brains responded to the coupling of death and self-stimuli in a manner indicating denial rather than acceptance. At the same time, 1-way ANOVAs and post hoc t -tests analyses indicated that the ayahuasca group evidenced less implicit fear-of-death than the general population, and less explicit fear-of-death than both the general and meditator samples. Further correlation analyses on the neurophysiological ayahuasca sample death-denial marker supported its construct validity by associating it with less self-reported death acceptance and reduced accessibility to death-related thoughts. Finally, death-denial was linked to greater life satisfaction, supporting its adaptive role. Conclusions: 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.

Rationale: 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 particularly the effects of ayahuasca on these dimensions. Objectives: This cross-sectional study investigates death processing, potential mechanisms of change, and their predictors in ayahuasca veterans (N = 54) compared to non-users (N = 53). Methods: A battery of questionnaires and behavioral assessments were used to evaluate different aspects of death processing in both ayahuasca veterans and non-users. These assessments measured death fear and anxiety, death-acceptance, death-avoidant behaviors, and the accessibility of death-related thoughts. Mediators tested included personality traits, beliefs about the afterlife, trait mindfulness, and the concept of impermanence. Results: The findings demonstrated lower levels of death anxiety, avoidant behavior, and fear of death, as well as greater death acceptance in ayahuasca veterans. Mediation analyses revealed that group differences were not due to demographics, personality, trait mindfulness, ontological beliefs, or impermanence awareness, but rather to impermanence acceptance. Finally, within the ayahuasca group, lifetime ego dissolution experiences predicted the degree of impermanence acceptance. Conclusions: These findings reveal significant, multi-dimensional differences in death processing between ayahuasca and non-psychedelic users. Impermanence acceptance emerged as the key mechanism of change. Additionally, the results highlight the role of acute ayahuasca experiences in producing lasting effects. Future interventions may focus on promoting impermanence acceptance as a strategy for managing existential fear.

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 < 0.01, rp = 1), 5.7 times more than mescaline (mean = 12 ± 14.9, U = 351, p < 0.01, rp = 1), and 7.07 times more than LSD (mean = 9.9 ± 16.6, U = 976, p < 0.01, rp = 1).The corrected sentence appears below: Briefly, on average, our study participants have used ayahuasca (55.7 ± 82.1), 5.2 times more than psilocybin (mean = 10.7 ± 15.4, U = 1378, p < 0.01, rp = 1), 4.6 times more than mescaline (mean = 12 ± 14.9, U = 351, p < 0.01, rp = 1), and 5.6 times more than LSD (mean = 9.9 ± 16.6, U = 976, p < 0.01, rp = 1).The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way.PAGE \* Arabic \* MERGEFORMAT 3 Error in Figure/Table 2.In the published article, there was an error in Figure 2 Corrected Figure 1:

Background: 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 death to the ‘other’ (nonself). Here we test the preregistered hypothesis that insight meditation grounded on mindful awareness is associated with a reduction in the brain’s defensiveness toward mortality. In addition, we examine whether these neurophysiological markers of death-denial are associated with the phenomenology of meditative self-dissolution (embodied training in impermanence). Methods: Thirty-eight meditators pooled from a previous project investigating self-dissolution neurophenomenology underwent the vMMR task, as well as self-report measures of mental health, and afterlife beliefs. Results were associated with the previously-reported phenomenological dimensions of self-dissolution. Results: Meditators’ brains responded to the coupling of death and self-stimuli in a manner indicating acceptance rather than denial, corresponding to increased self-reported well-being. Additionally, degree of death acceptance predicted positively valenced meditation-induced self-dissolution experiences, thus shedding light on possible mechanisms underlying wholesome vs. pathological disruptions to self-consciousness. Conclusions: The findings provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the neural mechanisms underlying the human tendency to avoid death are not hard-wired but are amenable to mental training, one which is linked with meditating on the experience of the embodied self’s impermanence. The results also highlight the importance of assessing and addressing mortality concerns when implementing psychopharmacological or contemplative interventions with the potential of inducing radical disruptions to self-consciousness.

Background: 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 empirically tested. Methods: The current study aims at filling this gap by first examining whether 44 long term meditators differ from 53 controls in prosocial capacities on different levels of the socio-cognitive hierarchy, and second by examining whether these are associated with meditation-induced ‘selfless’ states, operationalized here as the sense of boundary (SB) flexibility. We capitalize on our previous work on the neurophenomenology of mindfulness-induced SB dissolution, which yielded a neural index of SB-flexibility, solely for the meditators, and examine its correlations with a battery of validated behavioral prosociality tasks. Results: Our findings reveal enhanced low-level prosocial processes in meditators, including enhanced emotion recognition and reduced outgroup bias. We show the stability of SB flexibility over a year, demonstrating consistent high beta deactivation. The neural index of SB flexibility negatively correlates with recognizing negative emotions, suggesting a link to reduced social threat perception. Conclusions: These results connect the neural correlates of SB flexibility to prosociality, supported by stable high beta deactivations. We expect the results to raise awareness regarding the prosocial potential of flexing one’s self-boundaries through meditation.