Do you ever wonder how you know that you are here? How you are aware of yourself, probably sitting at a desk, reading these lines? Meta-awareness, the awareness of our own consciousness and the fact that we can report it is one of the key features that makes us human. The level of our meta-awareness fluctuates constantly. Distorted relations between the self and the conscious experience are linked to mental health problems: absorption in negative thoughts is seen in anxiety and depression. A distance between the self and the conscious experience can occur in trauma and dissociation. Mindfulness meditation and hypnosis are increasingly used to improve mental health. The hypnotic state is characterised by absorption, suggestibility and lack of self-consciousness. Mindfulness meditation, a secular form of meditation that draws on Buddhist meditation, aims at strengthening meta-awareness.
Despite the increasing popularity of mindfulness and hypnosis in healthcare and in the general community the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are unclear. The change in the relationship between the self and the conscious experience that they bring about may be crucial. This study aims to identify the neural correlates of self-consciousness in meta-awareness and absorption - using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in healthy participants and intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings in people who have electrodes implanted for clinical monitoring. Both will be combined with detailed first-person experiential accounts and behavioural tasks. This study will provide important clues about the widely reported effects of mindfulness meditation and hypnosis and shed light on the neural correlates of the conscious experience of self.
The aim of this project was to 1) investigate the neural correlates of the consciousness of self in meditation and hypnosis with iEEG and fMRI; 2) link the iEEG and fMRI correlates to behavioural measures and first-person experiences. 3) directly compare the neural correlates of mindfulness meditation and hypnosis states. This will help uncover the neural correlates of self-consciousness, and how hypnosis and meditation may help in anxiety, depression and trauma.
