Yang Winson F Z, Chowdhury Avijit, Sparby Terje, Sacchet Matthew D
Meditation Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA.
Meditation Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA; Depression and Anxiety Center for Discovery and Treatment, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY 10029, USA.
Neuroimage. 2025 Jan;305:120968. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120968. Epub 2024 Dec 7.
The stages of insight (SoI) are a series of psychological realizations experienced through advanced investigative insight meditation (AIIM). SoI provide a powerful structured framework of AIIM for understanding and evaluating insight-based meditative development through changes in perception, experiences of self, cognition, and emotional processing. Yet, the neurophenomenology of SoI remains unstudied due to methodological difficulties, rarity of suitable advanced meditation practitioners, and dominant research emphasis on attention-based meditative practices. We investigated the neurophenomenology of SoI in an intensively sampled adept meditator case study (4 hr 7T fMRI collected in 26 runs with concurrent phenomenology) who performed SoI and rated specific aspects of experience immediately thereafter. Linear mixed models and correlations were used to examine relations among the cortex, subcortex, brainstem, and cerebellum, and SoI phenomenology. We identified distinctive whole-brain activity patterns associated with specific SoI, and that were different from two non-meditative control states. SoI consistently deactivated regions implicated in self-related processing, including the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal poles, while activating regions associated with awareness and perception, including the parietal and visual cortices, caudate, several brainstem nuclei, and cerebellum. Patterns of brain activity related to affective processing and SoI phenomenology were also identified. Our study presents the first neurophenomenological evidence that SoI shifts and deconstructs self-related perception and conceptualization, and increases general awareness and perceptual sensitivity and acuity. Our study provides SoI as a foundation for investigative, and advanced meditation in particular.
洞察阶段（SoI）是通过高级探究性内观冥想（AIIM）所体验到的一系列心理领悟。SoI为AIIM提供了一个强大的结构化框架，用于通过感知、自我体验、认知和情绪处理的变化来理解和评估基于洞察的冥想发展。然而，由于方法上的困难、合适的高级冥想修行者稀少，以及研究主要集中在基于注意力的冥想练习上，SoI的神经现象学仍未得到研究。我们在一个密集采样的熟练冥想者案例研究中调查了SoI的神经现象学（在26次扫描中收集了4小时的7T功能磁共振成像，并同步进行现象学研究），该冥想者进行了SoI，并在此后立即对体验的特定方面进行评分。使用线性混合模型和相关性分析来研究皮质、皮质下、脑干和小脑与SoI现象学之间的关系。我们确定了与特定SoI相关的独特全脑活动模式，这些模式不同于两种非冥想对照状态。SoI持续使涉及自我相关处理的区域失活，包括内侧前额叶皮质和颞极，同时激活与意识和感知相关的区域，包括顶叶和视觉皮质、尾状核、几个脑干核团和小脑。还确定了与情感处理和SoI现象学相关的脑活动模式。我们的研究提供了首个神经现象学证据，表明SoI会改变和解构与自我相关的感知和概念化，并提高总体意识以及感知敏感性和敏锐度。我们的研究为探究性冥想，尤其是高级冥想提供了SoI这一基础。
