The art of permeability: A computational distinction between depersonalisation and advanced meditation

First-person reports reveal a surprising convergence between symptoms of depersonalisation disorder (DPD) and certain forms of advanced meditation (AM). In both, individuals describe a fading, and even disappearance, of the ordinarily stable sense of being an embodied self. Yet the experiential tone and functional consequences strikingly differ. In DPD this alteration is endured as distressing alienation, while in AM it is deliberately cultivated towards psychological transformation and flourishing. We propose that this difference stems from opposite configurations of interoceptive permeability along the same computational axis. In DPD, defensive attenuation of ascending interoceptive precision limits the influence of bodily evidence on higher-level inference and stabilises a detached self-model. In AM, sustained practice increases the influence of bodily evidence on higher-level inference, allowing interoceptive signals to reshape and at times loosen the processes that sustain the sense of self. We account for meditation-related depersonalisation, a documented adverse effect of contemplative practice, by emphasising that increasing interoceptive precision without the regulatory conditions that render it tolerable reproduces the configuration that anchors the DPD pole. Finally, we outline the insula-prefrontal axis as a plausible substrate for this regulation. Clinical neuroscience has not characterised the regime in which bodily evidence constrains the self-model without recruiting defensive withdrawal, and advanced meditation provides a foundation from which to address this gap.