@sebastianehmann.bsky.social
Clinical Psychology Ph.D. student, University of Arizona. Researching meditative development and advanced meditation, and novel treatment modalities including transcranial-focused ultrasound and psychedelics.
This was such a delight to work on. Truly incredible findings.
15.12.2025 16:10 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Led by Sebastian Ehmann @sebastianehmann.bsky.social, with co-authors Idil Sezer, Arielle Keller @ariellekeller.bsky.social, and Isaac Treves @isaactreves.bsky.social, we examined attention-related findings across long-term meditators and situated them in emerging models of meditative development.
08.12.2025 11:20 — 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Neurofluid circulation changes during a focused attention style of mindfulness meditation | PNAS #mindfulness #contemplativvescience #glymphaticsystem www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
04.12.2025 02:04 — 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
Announcing our new unifying theoretical model of enlightenment
Can science help teach us how to become free from human suffering?
Transformative experiences traditionally called “awakening,” “Nirvana,” or “enlightenment” are often described as non-conceptual, ineffable, and paradoxical.
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Consider participating in this study by if you're starting to meditate (<4 months) and from Australia, New Zealand, UK, or USA!
psychologicalsciences.unimelb.edu.au/CSC/research...
This was such a joy to work on. Thank you to everyone involved.
29.10.2025 16:53 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0This was a delight to work on. Thank you to everyone involved in bringing this to fruition.
20.10.2025 11:17 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Fig. 2. The ten circles graphically depict the pattern theory of self, where each self-process dynamically relates to all other processes, creating an overarching dynamical gestalt (Gallagher, 2021). The central part of the figure provides a non-comprehensive description of the dynamical gestalt of long-term meditators. We propose a skill-based comprehensive model of mindfulness as a suitable way to describe changes in the gestalt and, consequently, the self-pattern, with less transparency in the three factors of mindfulness indicating enhanced robustness of evidence (Young, 2016). The dynamical gestalt does not causally influence the pattern; rather, the pattern itself embodies the gestalt through its processes and relations (e.g., rational decision-making as a behavioral expression of equanimity). The dynamical gestalt and the evidence for different self-processes are limited by the scope of the review and do not represent an absolute depiction of long-term meditators. The boxes summarize the behavioral and neural results for individual constituents in the self-pattern. The arrows indicate the directionality of change, with grey arrows denoting preliminary support and dark arrows representing stronger evidence. Small arrows show the direction of connectivity or activation changes for neural findings. aMCC: anterior midcingulate cortex; dACC: dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; dmPFC: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; dlPFC: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; IFG: inferior frontal gyrus; mPFC: medial prefrontal cortex; mOFC: medial orbitofrontal cortex; PCC: posterior cingulate cortex; PCG: precentral gyrus; PHG: parahippocampal gyrus; Prc: precuneus; pSTC: posterior superior temporal cortex; pSTS: posterior superior temporal sulcus; TPJ: temporoparietal junction.
Fig. 1. Five exemplary tasks used in the study: (a) Cardiac interoceptive awareness was assessed by having participants mark where they felt their heartbeat on a body map, generating proportional maps based on these responses (Khalsa et al., 2020). (b) Graded thermal stimulation induced moderate pain, which participants rated on a point scale (Lutz et al., 2013; Grant & Rainville, 2009; Grant et al., 2010, 2011; Perlman et al., 2010; Zorn et al., 2020). (c) Participants viewed emotional pictures and rated their subsequent emotional responses (Chen et al., 2018; Taylor et al., 2011). (d) The Ultimatum Game assessed economic decision-making, with participants deciding whether to accept or reject various offers from human and computer partners (Kirk et al., 2018). (e) In the time production task, participants pressed a button to match target durations, evaluating their time estimation ability with eyes closed (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2011).
Long-term meditators (LTMs) and cognitive processing
What do we know?
Delighted to share our new preprint titled:
Mindfulness, cognition, and long-term meditators: Toward a science of advanced meditation.
doi.org/10.31219/osf...
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