Neuron
February 1, 2010
Cosimo Urgesi, Salvatore M. Aglioti, Miran Skrap et al.
220 citations
Damage to specific regions in the left and right inferior posterior parietal cortex can increase self-transcendence, a personality trait linked to spiritual feelings and behaviors. Combining personality assessments before and after neurosurgery with brain-lesion mapping, the authors found that selective damage to these parietal areas induced a specific increase in self-transcendence, suggesting that neural activity in temporoparietal areas can rapidly modulate this normally stable trait. The findings point to an active role of left and right parietal systems in self-transcendence and offer insights into the neurobiological basis of altered spiritual and religious attitudes in neurological and mental disorders.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 5, 2021
Alessandro Monti, Giuseppina Porciello, Maria Serena Panasiti et al.
6 citations
preprint
Bodily self-consciousness, the awareness of one's own body, is fundamental to human experience but poorly understood. By combining an ingestible capsule that measures gut activity (temperature, pressure, pH, and gastric peak frequency) with surface electrogastrography during a virtual bodily illusion, specific patterns of stomach and bowel activity were found to covary with distinct facets of bodily self-consciousness, such as feelings of body agency, location, and disembodiment. These findings reveal a link between gut physiology and the self-conscious perception of being embodied, demonstrating the potential of minimally invasive probes for studying mind-gut connections.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 20, 2025
Vasil Kolev, Peter Malinowski, Antonino Raffone et al.
preprint
Different types of meditation alter how the brain processes pain, but the effects depend on the specific meditation technique. Focused attention meditation reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness by modulating activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, while open monitoring meditation reduced pain unpleasantness without affecting intensity, engaging different neural pathways. Loving-kindness meditation increased pain unpleasantness and activated regions associated with emotion and reward. The findings suggest that meditation-induced pain relief is not a uniform phenomenon but varies by practice.