scholarly journals Self-boundary dissolution in meditation: A phenomenological investigation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ohad Nave ◽  
Fynn-Mathis Trautwein ◽  
Yochai Ataria ◽  
Yair Dor-Ziderman ◽  
Yoav Schweitzer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Affective Valence ◽  
Phenomenological Inquiry ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Letting Go ◽  
Neurophysiological Data ◽  
Attentional Engagement ◽  
Boundary Dissolution

A fundamental aspect of the sense of self is its pre-reflective dimension specifying the self as a bounded and embodied knower and agent. Being a constant and tacit feature structuring consciousness, it eludes robust empirical exploration. Recently, deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self have been suggested as a promising path for advancing such an investigation. To that end, we conducted a comprehensive phenomenological inquiry into meditative self-boundary alteration. The induced states were systematically characterized by changes in six experiential features including the sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations and affective valence, in addition with employed meditative techniques and overall degrees of dissolution. Quantitative analyses of the relationships between these phenomenological categories highlighted a unitary dimension of boundary dissolution. Notably, passive meditative gestures of “letting go”, which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, emerged as driving the depth of dissolution. These findings are aligned with an enactive approach to the pre-reflective sense of self, linking its generation to sensorimotor activity and attention-demanding processes. Moreover, they set the stage for future phenomenologically informed analyses of neurophysiological data and highlight the utility of combining phenomenology and intense contemplative training for a scientific characterization of processes giving rise to the basic sense of being a bounded self.

scholarly journals Self-Boundary Dissolution in Meditation: A Phenomenological Investigation

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 819
Author(s):  
Ohad Nave ◽  
Fynn-Mathis Trautwein ◽  
Yochai Ataria ◽  
Yair Dor-Ziderman ◽  
Yoav Schweitzer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Affective Valence ◽  
Phenomenological Inquiry ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Letting Go ◽  
Neurophysiological Data ◽  
Attentional Engagement ◽  
Boundary Dissolution

A fundamental aspect of the sense of self is its pre-reflective dimension specifying the self as a bounded and embodied knower and agent. Being a constant and tacit feature structuring consciousness, it eludes robust empirical exploration. Recently, deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self have been suggested as a promising path for advancing such an investigation. To that end, we conducted a comprehensive phenomenological inquiry into meditative self-boundary alteration. The induced states were systematically characterized by changes in six experiential features including the sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence, as well as their interaction with meditative technique and overall degree of dissolution. Quantitative analyses of the relationships between these phenomenological categories highlighted a unitary dimension of boundary dissolution. Notably, passive meditative gestures of “letting go”, which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, emerged as driving the depth of dissolution. These findings are aligned with an enactive approach to the pre-reflective sense of self, linking its generation to sensorimotor activity and attention-demanding processes. Moreover, they set the stage for future phenomenologically informed analyses of neurophysiological data and highlight the utility of combining phenomenology and intense contemplative training for a scientific characterization of processes giving rise to the basic sense of being a bounded self.

scholarly journals The Chief Role of Frontal Operational Module of the Brain Default Mode Network in the Potential Recovery of Consciousness from the Vegetative State: A Preliminary Comparison of Three Case Reports

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Fingelkurts ◽  
Andrew A. Fingelkurts ◽  
Sergio Bagnato ◽  
Cristina Boccagni ◽  
Giuseppe Galardi
Keyword(s):  
Default Mode Network ◽  
Case Reports ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Vegetative State ◽  
Post Injury ◽  
Course Of Disease ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The Brain

It has been argued that complex subjective sense of self is linked to the brain default-mode network (DMN). Recent discovery of heterogeneity between distinct subnets (or operational modules - OMs) of the DMN leads to a reconceptualization of its role for the experiential sense of self. Considering the recent proposition that the frontal DMN OM is responsible for the first-person perspective and the sense of agency, while the posterior DMN OMs are linked to the continuity of ‘I’ experience (including autobiographical memories) through embodiment and localization within bodily space, we have tested in this study the hypothesis that heterogeneity in the operational synchrony strength within the frontal DMN OM among patients who are in a vegetative state (VS) could inform about a stable self-consciousness recovery later in the course of disease (up to six years post-injury). Using EEG operational synchrony analysis we have demonstrated that among the three OMs of the DMN only the frontal OM showed important heterogeneity in VS patients as a function of later stable clinical outcome. We also found that the frontal DMN OM was characterized by the process of active uncoupling (stronger in persistent VS) of operations performed by the involved neuronal assemblies.

scholarly journals The projective theory of consciousness: from neuroscience to philosophical psychology

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (spe) ◽  
pp. 199-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Pereira Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Bipolar Structure ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Phenomenal Field

Abstract: The development of the interdisciplinary areas of cognitive, affective and action neurosciences contributes to the identification of neurobiological bases of conscious experience. The structure of consciousness was philosophically conceived a century ago (HUSSERL, 1913) as consisting of a subjective pole, the bearer of experiences, and an objective pole composed of experienced contents. In more recent formulations, Nagel (1974) refers to a “point of view”, in which qualitative experiences are anchored, while Velmans (1990, 1993, 2009, 2017) understands that phenomenal content is composed of mental representations “projected” to the space external to the brains that construct them. In Freudian psychology, the conscious mind contains a tension between the Id and the Ego (FREUD, 1913). How to relate this bipolar structure with the results of neuroscience? I propose the notion of projection [also used by Williford et al. (2012)] as a bridge principle connecting the neurobiological systems of knowing, feeling and acting with the bipolar structure. The projective process is considered responsible for the generation of the sense of self and the sense of the world, composing an informational phenomenal field generated by the nervous system and experienced in the first-person perspective. After presenting the projective hypothesis, I discuss its philosophical status, relating it to the phenomenal (BLOCK, 1995, 2008, 2011) and high-order thought (ROSENTHAL, 2006; BROWN, 2014) approaches, and a mathematical model of projection (RUDRAUF et al., 2017). Eight ways of testing the status of the projective hypothesis are briefly mentioned.

scholarly journals A Neurotheological Approach to Spiritual Awakening

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Spiritual Awakening ◽  
Neurophysiological Data ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Combining Information

A neurotheological approach suggests an analysis of spiritual awakening experiences by combining phenomenological data with neuroscience. This paper presents a synthesis combining information on the thoughts, feelings, and experiences associated with spiritual awakening experiences and neurophysiological data, primarily from neuroimaging studies, to help assess which brain structures might be associated with these experiences. Brain structures involved with emotions correlate with emotional responses while areas of the brain associated with the sense of self appear to correlate with the key feature of these experiences in which an individual loses the sense of self and feels intimately connected with God, universal consciousness, or the universe. This paper also seeks to address the assumption whether awakened states as described in popular spirituality are similar or different compared to spiritual enlightenment as described in Eastern spiritual traditions. Thus, the implications of such a neurotheological analysis are also considered.

Meaning and the Specification of Motion in Music

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Music Theory ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Real Motion ◽  
Self Motion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Implications

The relationship between music and motion has attracted interest over a broad sweep of history and across a variety of disciplines including aesthetics, psychology, music theory and neuroscience, and the relationship itself has been regarded variously as metaphorical, semiotic, and physiological. This paper argues that the relationship between music and motion: 1) is a fundamental aspect of music's impact and meaning; 2) is significantly, but not only, concerned with self-motion (as argued by Todd); 3) should be regarded as a truly perceptual relationship – even though the motion that is perceived may be illusory (in the sense of being virtual rather than real). The aim of the paper is to clarify the nature and status of the relationship between music and motion, rejecting both the physiological reductionism of regarding it as “hardwired” and the potentially dismissive view of it as merely metaphorical. In place of these, the paper will argue for motion as being perceptually specified by the acoustical information in music. The theory proposed here has specific empirical implications – most obviously an investigation of the various kinds of information in music that specify motion, and a consideration of whether these function in anything like the same manner as for real motion. It also has implications for theories of musical meaning, since it allows for the integration of the sense of (self-) motion with the other kinds of events (physical, structural, cultural) as they are specified in music.

The Art of Reception: J.W. Waterhouse and the Painting of Desire in Victorian Britain

Ramus ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-186
Author(s):  
Simon Goldhill
Keyword(s):  
Royal Academy ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The Press ◽  
Victorian Art ◽  
The 19Th Century

Victorian art, particularly in the latter decades of the 19th century, turned to classical subjects obsessively. Alma-Tadema, Poynter, Leighton, Watts, and a host of less celebrated figures, produced a string of canvasses especially for the Royal Academy but also for other galleries in London and for exhibition around the country, which drew on the passion for the classical world so much in evidence in the broader cultural milieu of nineteenth-century Europe. Classics was an integral part of the furniture of the Victorian mind, through the education system, through popular culture, through architecture, through opera, through literature. The high art of the Royal Academy, viewed by thousands and extensively discussed in the press, is a fundamental aspect of this classicising discourse. This era was self-consciously a great age of progress, but it is striking to what degree the rapidly changing culture of Britain expressed its concerns, projected its ideals and explored its sense of self through images of the past—medieval, and early Christian, as much as classical. In this article, I want to look at one artist, J.W. Waterhouse, who was at the centre of this artistic moment—a discussion which will also involve us in investigating the Victorian perception of less familiar classical authors such as Josephus and Prudentius (as well as Homer and Ovid), and less familiar classical figures—St Eulalia, Mariamne—as well as the most recognisable classical icons such as the Sirens and Circe. My first aim is to show how sophisticated and interesting the art of Waterhouse is, a figure who has suffered markedly from the shifts of taste in the twentieth century. His classical pictures in particular show a fascinating engagement with the position of the male subject of desire, which has been largely ignored in the scant discussions of his work, and is strikingly absent from the most influential attempts to see Waterhouse's art in its Victorian context. Waterhouse's visualisation of classical subjects goes to the heart of Victorian anxieties about sexuality.

scholarly journals Duplication of the bodily self: a perceptual illusion of dual full-body ownership and dual self-location

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 201911
Author(s):  
Arvid Guterstam ◽  
Dennis E. O. Larsson ◽  
Joanna Szczotka ◽  
H. Henrik Ehrsson
Keyword(s):  
Tactile Stimulation ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Perceptual Illusion ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Stimulation Of ◽  
Full Body

Previous research has shown that it is possible to use multisensory stimulation to induce the perceptual illusion of owning supernumerary limbs, such as two right arms. However, it remains unclear whether the coherent feeling of owning a full-body may be duplicated in the same manner and whether such a dual full-body illusion could be used to split the unitary sense of self-location into two. Here, we examined whether healthy human participants can experience simultaneous ownership of two full-bodies, located either close in parallel or in two separate spatial locations. A previously described full-body illusion, based on visuo-tactile stimulation of an artificial body viewed from the first-person perspective (1PP) via head-mounted displays, was adapted to a dual-body setting and quantified in five experiments using questionnaires, a behavioural self-location task and threat-evoked skin conductance responses. The results of experiments 1–3 showed that synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation of two bodies viewed from the 1PP lying in parallel next to each other induced a significant illusion of dual full-body ownership. In experiment 4, we failed to find support for our working hypothesis that splitting the visual scene into two, so that each of the two illusory bodies was placed in distinct spatial environments, would lead to dual self-location. In a final exploratory experiment (no. 5), we found preliminary support for an illusion of dual self-location and dual body ownership by using dynamic changes between the 1PPs of two artificial bodies and/or a common third-person perspective in the ceiling of the testing room. These findings suggest that healthy people, under certain conditions of multisensory perceptual ambiguity, may experience dual body ownership and dual self-location. These findings suggest that the coherent sense of the bodily self located at a single place in space is the result of an active and dynamic perceptual integration process.

Impact of Elderly Mother's Death on Middle Age Daughters

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam S. Moss ◽  
Sidney Z. Moss ◽  
Robert Rubinstein ◽  
Nancy Resch
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Home ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Letting Go ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance

Daughters' responses to an elderly mother's death are found to be multidimensional. In the first six months of bereavement many daughters experience themes of both holding on and letting go. Measured were depression, grief, somatic reactions, as well as impact on the sense of self, degree of acceptance of the death, and ways in which the tie with the mother endures. Though many of these reactions are intercorrelated, they are differentially associated with characteristics of the daughter, mother, and the quality of their relationship. Relatively sudden deaths were associated with more intense grief, less acceptance, and more thoughts of reunion than deaths that occurred in a nursing home.

scholarly journals BODILY-AFFECTIVE ATTUNEMENT IN SOCIAL INTERACTION

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
ANNA KHAKHALOVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Joint Attention ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Affective Attunement

The paper intends to supplement the studies of emotional affordances of BAA by elaborating on the conception of participatory sense-making as well as developmental studies on joint attention and interattentionality. I address different spheres of expertise from the experience-based phenomenological perspective, which allows exploring the problem both from the first-person and second-person perspectives. This research presents the conception of inter-selfness that carries on M. Merleau-Ponty’s idea of intercorporeality, T. Fuchs’ et al. analysis of intersubjectivity and phenomenologically oriented psychoanalysis by E. Z. Tronick et al., R. Stolorow et al. The mechanism of BAA is presented through the conception of participatory sense-making and the idea of minimal inter-attentionality in developmental studies. The paper presents an emotional affordances scheme that illustrates the emotional regulation of BAA. By examining this process of regulation one could see in what way the self becomes an inter-self in communication. The article also postulates correlation between cultural mediation of emotional affordances and their direct accessibility from the second-person perspective. In the last part of the paper, I examine social interaction from the viewpoint of developmental studies (C. Trevarthen, V. Reddy, M. Carpenter). The developmental perspective supplements the idea of emotional regulation in interaction, by focusing on primary such forms of BAA between a caregiver and a baby, as joint attention and mutual gaze. Herein, I demonstrate how the initial forms of the positive bodily-affective attunement develop into the interattentionality and self-representation practices of the subject. This point could contribute to the theory of personal identity by exploring the process of maturing of the sense of self in its different aspects. The results of the research could be useful for further study of BAA and its pathologies. The results could also be of use for the discussion on non-human or human-like affordance-based technological interaction theory.

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