Case Study of Ecstatic Meditation: fMRI and EEG Evidence of Self-Stimulating a Reward System

Table 1

Mean percent BOLD signal change in a priori defined ROIs related to 6 hypotheses on jhana activity contrasted with rest and AC meditation, followed by its two-sided 𝑡 test (corrected for multiple comparisons). Contrasts labeled simply “jhana” refer to the pooled activity over all recorded jhanas 2–5. All 22 planned contrasts are in the predicted direction.

Subjective report during jhanas	A priori ROI (MNI coordinates of centroid of ROI)	Predicted sign of contrast (jhana-rest)	BOLD contrast; (jhana-rest)	BOLD contrast (jhana-AC)
(1) “External awareness dims”	Visual: BA 17, 19; (±30 −80 6)	(−)	−.81 𝑡=−4.3^∗∗	−.73 𝑡=−4.0^∗∗
	Auditory: BA 41, 42; (±55 −26 12)	(−)	−.63 𝑡=−2.5^∗	−.25 𝑡=−1.0
(2) “Internal verbalization fades”	Broca: BA 44, 45; (±54 18 12)	(−)	−.84 𝑡=−4.6^∗∗	−.85 𝑡=−4.8^∗∗
	Wernicke: BA 39, 40; (±51 −51 34)	(−)	−.76 𝑡=−3.7^∗∗	−.70 𝑡=−3.5^∗∗
(3) “Altered sense of personal boundaries”	Orientation: BA 5, 7; (±17 −59 52)	(−)	−1.8 𝑡=−6.9^∗∗	−1.4 𝑡=−5.6^∗∗
(4) “Attention is highly focused”	ACC: BA 32, 33; (±8 36 14)	(+)	.62 𝑡=2.86^∗	.10 𝑡=.44
(5) “Ecstatic joy experienced”	N Ac; (±10 9 −4)	(+)	.88 𝑡=3.5^∗∗	.94 𝑡=3.8^∗∗
	Med OFC; (±8 50 −9)	(+)	1.44 𝑡=7.2^∗∗	.49 𝑡=2.6^∗
(6) Less rhythmic movement	Somatosens: BA 1, 2, 3; (±39 −28 53)	(−)	−1.50 𝑡=−7.3^∗∗	−1.38 𝑡=−6.9^∗∗
	Prim Motor: BA 4 (±35 −23 53)	(−)	−1.47 𝑡=−5.8^∗∗	−1.38 𝑡=−5.6^∗∗
	Cerebellum (±0 −61 −34)	(−)	−.77 𝑡=4.3^∗∗	−.62 𝑡=−3.6^∗∗

^∗∗𝑃<.001.
^∗𝑃<.05.
BA: Brodmann’s area, NAc: nucleus accumbens, Med OFC: medial orbitofrontal cortex, and ACC: anterior cingulate cortex.