Morgan Healey
Yaser Sanchez-Gama — Neurospirituality Lab, Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston, MA, USA / Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Mengyuan Ding — Neurospirituality Lab, Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston, MA, USA / Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Oakland, CA, USA
James Tanner McMahon — Department of Neurosurgery, Mass General Brigham, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Chase Bourbon — Neurospirituality Lab, Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston, MA, USA
Rumaisa Jesani — Neurospirituality Lab, Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston, MA, USA
Ginger Atwood — School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Brian Lord — University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Jay Sanguinetti — University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Judson Brewer — School of Public Health, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
David Vago — Department of Psychiatry, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Shan Siddiqi — Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Franco Fabbro — Institute of Mechanical Intelligence, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, n/a, Italy
Cosimo Urgesi — Department of Human and Social Sciences, Universitas Mercatorum, Roma, n/a, Italy / Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Pasian di Prato (UD), n/a, Italy
Jared Nielsen — Department of Psychology & Neuroscience Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
Michael Ferguson — Neurospirituality Lab, Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston, MA, USA / Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Self-transcendence, the reorientation of experience away from the self toward others, nature, or broader meaning, is a fundamental dimension of human psychology, yet its causal neural architecture remains poorly understood. We applied lesion network mapping to 88 neurosurgical patients with pre- and post-operative assessments of trait self-transcendence to identify the distributed brain network whose disruption alters this capacity. The resulting network showed significant spatial correspondence with the default mode network and, at a finer parcellation level, with frontoparietal control subnetworks. Leave-one-out analyses identified posterior midline regions as the most stable correlates of increased self- transcendence following brain lesions. Independent validation against fMRI meta-analyses of self-referential processing, compassion, and ketamine administration, alongside a neuromodulation target previously shown to modulate the sense of self, converged on a consistent model. These findings provide causal evidence for a network architecture in which posterior midline hubs constrain, and brainstem and anterior midline regions facilitate, self-transcendent experience.