#115: Meditation Beyond the Brain - Idil Sezer, PhD

18:25Liam:That's fascinating as well for so many reasons. I mean, of course, you see it in many other disciplines. Some people just pick up tennis really quickly and maestro or the Beethoven of meditation.

18:38Idil Zezer, PhD:Exactly. And then advanced meditators can have brain correlates and heart correlates are different than long-term meditators. So that's also why we want to look at them more specifically. And hopefully we'll have two groups of meditators instead of just long-term meditators. And the literature is more or less going towards that. It's still ongoing. And this is a big part of Matthew's research as well. The third wave of meditation, so research specifically on advanced meditation.

19:15Liam:and before we jump any further i just want to let you know that our amazing founder my friend liam mcclintock's book fit mind has just released i finally have a physical copy and honestly i cannot recommend it enough this is genuinely incredible he's somehow woven his story which is absolutely fascinating with both the contemplative science practice and the western in science and it is just genuinely an incredibly unique book you can order your copy right now at fitmind.org to support the mission and help elevate your mind thank you so much come back to the episode with the review that you did of the um the long-term meditation and positive mental health effects what have you found there what's emerging from that so there's uh teams are uh

20:11Idil Zezer, PhD:emerging in the in the literature it was a huge project where we looked at more than 50 articles on long-term meditation and mental health outcomes so they have changes related to sense of self again interpersonal relationships emotional irregulation sensory and effective Uncoupling of pain, so experiencing pain but not having the affective negative aspect of pain and just the sensory aspect of pain. Stress reduction, which is a big thing, of course, in mental health. Psychiatric illness prevention, so mechanisms, so neuroprotection that will help prevent psychiatric illnesses. So research is organized in key themes.

21:05Idil Zezer, PhD:and as I said it's on multiple levels so not just brain physiology cellular so increases for example in neuroprotective factors factors are against neuroinflammation because there is a strong link between neuroinflammation and psychiatric and neurological disorders we even see it now for example for people having long COVID there is an increase in neuroinflammation that could explain the clinical aspects of long COVID yeah it's a neat project where we see that it's just not one thing not one team and it's across levels it's like a big excellent sales pitch for meditation Yeah, exactly.

21:54Liam:What about gut health? Have you seen, I don't know if you know much or how much you know about that, but there seems to also be an effect on gut health. Is that right?

22:06Idil Zezer, PhD:On this particular review, I think there were only one article where it met the inclusion criteria of the article and they indeed look at gut health in mainstayers and they see that they have better gut health. And there are also research coming on mental health and gut health and how linked it is. But also there are major moderating factors where long-term meditators usually have other lifestyle changes that could explain gut health, such as being vegan, vegetarian. So you have confounding factors. So for now, or maybe I'm not aware of the research, I can't clearly link, causally link meditation to gut health, but there are strong findings related to that.

22:58Liam:How do you even make sense of that? That just purely if everybody was eating the same and the environment was the same, just that they, I mean, we know there's a strong connection between the mind and the body, but it would still be pretty mind blowing if it was affecting the gut health so direct.

23:15Idil Zezer, PhD:It is. It is. Even in cellular factors, molecular factors, how come with meditation you have more good molecules, so growth factors, such as the BDNF, so brain-driven neural network factor? so how can you explain that with meditation you have those wide changes on the cellular impact so i would say for gut health it's similar where it's cellular microbial molecular mechanisms but it's clear it's it's hard to establish a clear link with how come meditation affects us on a cellular level. We don't know yet, I would say.

24:04Liam:The more we look at biology, I don't know if you're across Michael Levin's work as well. I find that particularly interesting. He's making particularly interesting findings in biology relating to bioelectric fields that at least in planarian worms, they will teach the worms a maze and then they can chop off the brain, but the brain can regrow in those worms. But it still remembers how to do the maze, even though its brain is gone. So that starts to point to where is the memory stored? At least, again, just in a small-scale example, but he has a bunch of other really mind-blowing findings.

24:49Idil Zezer, PhD:I think more and more I see that memory is stored on a cellular level because for example they did an experiment I don't remember the theme on rats or mice where they were traumatized and so they would have an aversive reaction to the cue that traumatized them and then the same mice had offspring that themselves had offspring So we're talking about grandkids of the first mice. And they would get traumatized by the same cue without having had the traumatic experience. So we have clear findings related to the thing that trauma is stored on a molecular level. And that it can be passed on to offspring.

25:43Idil Zezer, PhD:And it's not just related to behaviors. and they actually found epigenetic mechanism that could explain the passing of trauma. So epigenetic is related to the DNA, but it's related to methylation. So you can modify your DNA. So the scientific hypothesis is that the DNA was modified because of the trauma and then this modified DNA was passed on to future generations. And so we're storing a lot in ourselves and we don't know it.

26:22Liam:That's amazing. I think that might have been Nikolai Kukushkin. He found something similar. It might have been his lab mate. So fascinating for so many reasons. Like particularly, I wonder the relationship as well. This is just pure speculation now, so you don't even have to answer. But just it's interesting that we use the body so much for meditation. for like we use like a somatic aspect for it for instance we might use the breath in the in the like the belly area i just find that interesting that that then might relate back to like the body or the cells having some form of of memory yes it could be and also on a

27:05Idil Zezer, PhD:at consciousness level, we think so. We see ourselves as stored in our brain, but consciousness can also be stored in our whole body, and we don't know yet.

27:18Liam:Yeah, it's a hot topic and a deep one, consciousness right now.

27:22Idil Zezer, PhD:Yeah, there's a lot of neuroscience studies on consciousness, and there are three theories that want to explain consciousness in different ways. So it's currently a really hot topic in neuroscience.

27:35Liam:You talk about the brain-heart connectivity in your work, and you found that the brain-to-heart coupling predicts who responds to VR anxiety interventions. What do you think that suggests about personalizing treatments?

27:53Idil Zezer, PhD:Nice question. So this was a project I did during my PhD where individuals with ongoing anxiety, so they weren't stressed in an artificial scientific laboratory environment, but they had anxiety. So they answered a questionnaire related to their state anxiety at that specific time before and after undergoing the virtual reality intervention. And in virtual reality, they were in a calm environment with a script. I would help them calm down. And then they answered the questionnaire again. And what was interesting to see is that some people were helped by this and others were not. And then I was interested in brain correlates, heart correlates, and brain-to-heart connectivity correlates related to differences between treatment responders and non-responders.

28:53Idil Zezer, PhD:and I saw that responders had an increase in without getting into details in a specific region of the brain midline region of beta waves and they also had an increase in low frequency and high frequency components of the heart and so sympathetic and parasympathetic both and it's also why it's not a direct link clearly established saying high frequency is parasympathetic etc But they had an overall increased autonomic functioning. And when looking at directionality, so was the brain beta wave modulating the heart or the opposite, we saw that there was an increase in brain to heart modulation coupling.

29:42Idil Zezer, PhD:whereas for non-responders they didn't have those brain correlates and the heart they only had low frequency increase which can be linked to stress response as i explained previously and they did not have a brain to heart coupling so this gives us two answers was it the brain that was modulating the heart on the opposite it was the brain that was modulating the heart and this can be also opposite in other contexts. It's not that straightforward because the heart can give information to the brain, for example, in emotional context. So this was answered. It was the brain that was mediating the effect.

30:20Idil Zezer, PhD:And the issue was that we also had our second answer where people that were not responding to the treatment, it was because they didn't have this brain to heart modulation and then the idea is to target the brain the region that we found the waves that we found and try to do for example neurofeedback based training to see if this can help them relax in the specific context and you could also need to give them something that would help better so this is also an ongoing area of research in psychiatry where not all treatments are going to fit everyone. It depends on the treatment, depends on the context, the disorder, but you can have, for example, 30 % or 50 % of non-responders.

31:08Idil Zezer, PhD:So instead of trying everything, can you find objective, neural, or physiological markers that could then tell you if this individual, so predict if this individual is going to answer to this treatment or another treatment, for example. So it could be modulating their brain to get there or even finding other treatments that would help them better.

31:32Liam:What does the treatment look like? What would they be doing in the VR?

31:36Idil Zezer, PhD:So also, I want to say that we call it a treatment because its release is pain or anxiety. But this was done on a healthy subject and it wasn't tested on individuals with psychiatric symptoms. So this remains to be seen. So I want to be cautious about that. But in the case of this article, so it was in virtual reality and they were in the Zen garden. So and they had a strip that was related to hypnosis. It was a hypnotic script, but they weren't on full on hypnose. And the scripts told them to focus on the environment, the grass beneath their feet, the sound of the lake was, etc. And they also had a strong breathing exercise just at the beginning of the virtual environment.

32:34Idil Zezer, PhD:And this is called cardiac coherence. You might be familiar with it, so they had to breathe. Heart coherence or cardiac coherence is similar to what I found in Meditator, is linking the respiratory system to the heart's function. So you have to breathe in exactly 10-second cycles. And in some exercises, it's six-second inhalation, four-second exhalation. But it can be worse or it can be 5-5. So you have to breathe in specific 10-second cycles. And this gives a coherence between a coupling between the respiratory system and the heart system. And it helps to relax the individual. It cuts the brain and it goes directly to the physiological functioning and then you're more relaxed than you were.

33:26Idil Zezer, PhD:And so they did this exercise at the beginning of the virtual environment. And in my findings, I actually saw that there were this brainwave induction at the beginning when they did this breathing exercise. But they only did it for a couple of minutes at the very beginning and not later on the 20 minutes of the experiment. but we could still see a long-standing effect of this exercise in responders, whereas in non-responders, it's just after the exercise. So it's a bit of a synergistic effect where we don't know exactly if the treatment helped because of the eye environment, because of the breathing exercise, because of the hypnotic script.

34:06Idil Zezer, PhD:It could be all of them together. We don't know.

34:09Liam:With the brain-heart coupling, what does that actually look like? How do you know that they're coupled or how do you look at the relationship there?

34:18Idil Zezer, PhD:There are several methods to look at it. So it's mathematical equations where you see, for example, the brain waves and you look at if they can predict the next low frequency, high frequency components of the heart. Or the opposite, you look at low frequency, high frequency components and their data points, time histories. and you see if those can predict the brain waves that you're going to get. And you also have, this was not my method, but you also have other types of analysis like that, for example, dynamic causal modeling. So you can see a causal relationship between the two. And with that, you can get an indication or coefficient of coupling where if you're able to predict, then it means that brain is connected to the heart or the opposite.

35:09Liam:So it can become almost more synchronized, more coupled. Could you use that interchangeably? And would there be a state where the heart and the brain look is coherent or something like that?

35:22Idil Zezer, PhD:You can also have the idea of coupling. So those are coherence analysis. And then, yes, you look at if they are coupled or uncoupled. So they do that, for example, with heart components and alpha waves in the brain. And you can also look at analysis of connectivity, where you look at if the brain is informing the heart or the other. So you can look at both. Yes. And I think it's more common for them to be uncoupled than coupled. So when you're coupled, when the brain and the heart is coupled, it's more related to deep relaxation or absorption than functioning, day-to-day functioning.

36:02Liam:Yeah, that's what I would have predicted, but it's interesting. I don't think that most people would know that. And you recently moved to Olaf Blanke's lab. So for those of the people that don't know, that's the lab that spent, I think, well, decades now studying the bodily basis of the self. so what will you be doing there?

36:23Idil Zezer, PhD:So there I will have a project on meditation in the context of virtual reality so I will have two projects one on self-compassion meditation in virtual reality where it's in a room with cameras so in the virtual reality you can see yourself as yourself so the clothes that you have on that day because it's based on the images of the camera. And for example, we can investigate meditation related to self-compassion where you see yourself in front of you in VR as another person because when you move your right arm, you are also in front of you moving the right arm. So it's not a mirror self, but an other person self, we call it in VR.

37:10Idil Zezer, PhD:So I'm going to investigate heartbeat evoked potential and brain changes related to those. And we have also another project on nature of mind meditation. So where participants are going to go on each retreat. I think the first one is one week. And then it goes up to three-year retreat. And we're going to look at brain differences related to the retreat. And they're going to do a measure that was developed by Olaf Blanke. That is the full-body illusion. it's i don't know if you've heard of the rubber hand illusion i'm not exactly sure how exactly they did that where they tricked the brain in thinking that the rubber hand where it was their own hand but they had an experiment where they were stroking the rubber hand and the participant's hand at the same time and this tricked the brain into thinking that the rubber hand where there was their own brain and so in Olaf Blanca's team they do this with the full body illusion so in VR you see your own body as a third person perspective this time so you see more your back side in VR and there then they they take a stick and they stroke your back so you see because of the camera as you see it in front of you and they do a sync condition and ac condition so stroking and you see it at the same time that it's exactly the same stroking or acing conditions of this more of a control condition where there is a small delay and people get a sense that their their body is located there and they have a drift in self-location and that is the illusion so they're going to do this.

39:05Idil Zezer, PhD:We're going to do this measure as well in advanced meditator. And the idea is that advanced or long-term meditators get less tricked with those types of measures than non-meditators. We'll see.

39:19Liam:What do you think that those studies, what do they suggest about the self? Well, this is actually the investigation

39:31Idil Zezer, PhD:of the team where they are trying to understand the self and where the minimal self, the self, when you move away from all experiences, what are you left with? So where this minimal self is located. So then they look at self-identification changes under experimental conditions and self-location changes for example under experimental condition and the scientific idea is that in the self you have the cognitive self so autobiographical memory i was born on that day i lived there etc etc and then you have a more experiential bodily self where the self that is stored in your body and with experimental manipulation you can manipulate it and they're trying to find and see changes related to those manipulation.

40:28Liam:Do you or do they have a running hypothesis?

40:31Idil Zezer, PhD:They're very exploratory. So for example, they want to see, for example, in stages of non-dual awareness. And that's why we have another project in VR where we want to try to get meditators quicker to a stage of non-dual awareness. When you're on this where you feel as if you're one with everything, do you still get a sense of self in your body and where is it located so in the team historically they were mostly interested in heartbeat potential so this is also similar to brain heart connectivity but on another aspect where it's more related to interception so it's the brain computation of all my i just got a heartbeat the heartbeat potential so they are looking at those changes related to changes of self-identification or self.

41:31Idil Zezer, PhD:So it's very important.

41:32Liam:Within the headset, what would you be doing to explore non-dual awareness?

41:39Idil Zezer, PhD:So just in the time where we're actually implementing the virtual reality sequences, so because the population that we're going to test are long-term meditators, We're actually deeply thinking about that. And we want to destabilize them a bit and shift a bit their mental constructs. So we're doing remodulations, for example, at the beginning. So they're in their embodied self where it's first person perspective in VR. Where when you look down, you see exactly yourself and there's no changes. Then we get them out of their body. so third person perspective and they see themselves exactly how they are seated on that specific room then we get back into the body for example and so this time they're in first person perspective but they're inverted so if they move the right arm it's the what they're seeing in VR is that it's the left arm that's moving so there is a conflict between what they're doing and the visual stimuli.

42:49Idil Zezer, PhD:So we're breaking a bit the mental patterns of being used to being in your own body. And then they can also have, for example, themselves inverted in VR and then themselves as another person in VR at the same time. We can also play with multiplicity in VR. So yes, we're trying to destabilize the mental construct related to embodiment, the sense of embodiment, coupled with the virtual reality. And with the virtual reality would be a meditative script where the guide is asking questions related to their sense of ownership of their body or the body locations. when they have two bodies in VR, which body do you feel being yours?

43:42Idil Zezer, PhD:Is it the one that is inverted in front of you? Is it the one in front of you or is it the one that you see on first-person perspective inverted? So stuff like that.

43:51Liam:I was wondering in my mind how you could possibly do it with VR, but that's a really good idea. Just knowing what some of the non-dual pointing out exercises might entail. That feels like it might. Because the visual system is so dominant for most people, I think.

44:11Idil Zezer, PhD:Yes.

44:12Liam:So to bring that in, particularly if somebody maybe has difficulty with just doing it themselves internally, I think it's such a good idea.

44:20Idil Zezer, PhD:Yes. And for meditators, it's interesting to have a mismatch between what you're doing and the visual stimuli. So they built an expert meditator, long-term meditator. And when it was flipped in for a person, he was moving his right hand very slowly and looking at the left hand moving VR for a long time. So you can even meditate on those conflicts for a long time. VR is very interesting to use in those contexts.

44:47Liam:And my next question is just where do you think that the field of contemplative neuroscience is heading in the next like five to ten years?

44:59Idil Zezer, PhD:That's a great question.

45:04Idil Zezer, PhD:I think we're going to see more and more correlates of different stages of advanced meditation and get a better idea of what they mean. For consciousness, it's a very tricky question, so I don't know if we're going to have, especially in only 5 or 10 years, clear answers to consciousness and consciousness questions. But yes, I think it's going towards a deeper understanding of what advanced meditation means in the brain and the body. But I wouldn't know where.

45:47Liam:Yeah, we're at such an inflection point in general, particularly with AI and societal changes. Exactly. It's terrifying and extremely exciting.

46:01Idil Zezer, PhD:understanding of or experience as humans or existence I don't know

46:09Liam:let's hope so and for someone that's listening and is wondering maybe they have a mental health challenge and they're wondering about meditation and VR or something else what would you say is the right entry point do you have any advice for them

46:26Idil Zezer, PhD:I would say that we should try what works for them. It could be an application. It could be, yes, it could be a VR headset. They have some applications in VR headsets or going on walks. You can also meditate being outside, walking, yoga. And it's okay if one particular thing doesn't work. You can try other things. You can try it for some time to see if you have changes after a specific time because sometimes it can take a bit of getting used to the practice to see the effects or sometimes you don't see the effects but they're actually happening. And it's okay to try different things. It's okay to have some time before finding what works.

47:21Idil Zezer, PhD:And this is actually the same in Psychotrap. there you have wide ranges of different psychotherapies and applications and it's okay to try some and take a bit of time before finding one that actually works for you and if it doesn't you always switch it's okay this i know that's a big thing it's not everyone is the same so it takes the time to find something that really works for you for example if you don't like sitting around meditation might be very hard for you and that's fine you can try yoga for example and you can even try active types of yoga such as vinyasa where it's exercise i massively agree and i loved

48:07Liam:one of my teachers gave me the advice that the practice that you should be doing is the one that

48:11Idil Zezer, PhD:you enjoy and that you'll come back and do i think it's important if you're not gonna if you're not

48:21Liam:find enjoyment in it then it might be difficult to practice idil thank you so much it's been an absolute pleasure and keep going with your work i think it's fascinating and really really important

48:36Idil Zezer, PhD:and yeah we wish you the best of the life thank you so much for having me here it was a pleasure to be here especially as a young researcher it's so nice thank you so much for listening to the

48:47Liam:episode if you enjoyed it please if you could give us a like a subscribe and hit the notification bell that would really help us out or just share this episode with a friend share the course with a friend anything would go such a long way thank you so much and i hope to see you soon

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