# Neural Mechanisms of Vibroacoustically Augmented Breath Focused Mindfulness for Dissociative Traumatized People

> **NIH NIH R01** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $35,829

## Abstract

Dissociation is a multifaceted, transdiagnostic, and disabling phenomenon that involves
detachment from the self or surroundings. It is prevalent in traumatized people with
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), occurs in other disorders including depression, anxiety,
and schizophrenia, and is a barrier to recovery in first-line treatments. Dissociation is
characterized by attentional impairments and disruptions in body awareness, or interoception.
Mindfulness-based meditative practices, including breath-focused mindfulness meditation
(BFM), are designed to enhance attentional control through focused awareness on interoceptive
cues (breath). However, this is a nearly impossible task for dissociative people, who experience
disruptions in body agency and are unable to access or trust body signals. Exteroceptive
feedback enhances interoceptive awareness and body agency in experimental studies and may
similarly enhance attentional control with minimal cognitive effort. As such, the goal of this study
is to address deficits in interoception and attentional control in dissociative traumatized patients
via BFM augmented with exteroceptive feedback. This is delivered by a unique device that
vibrates in concert with respiration, yielding non-ignorable mechanoreceptor reactivity to
breathing. Using a stimulus-driven mechanism, our device is expected to enhance body agency
and efficiently engage attention and interoception networks. We will recruit 200 traumatized
people with clinically significant dissociation symptoms, divided in four equal groups to yield a
2x2 (breath-focused meditation or rest x with or without vibroacoustic stimulation) design. All
participants will attend 8 sessions of their assigned intervention. We will administer attentional
control and interoception tasks during fMRI pre- and post-intervention to examine: Aim 1)
whether BFM with exteroceptive feedback engages attentional control and interoceptive
networks to a significantly greater degree than the other treatment conditions from pre- to post-
intervention. We will also examine: Aim 2) whether changes in neural network response
correspond with changes in dissociation (and secondarily, other trauma-related problems) to a
greater degree in BFM with exteroceptive feedback as compared to the other treatment
conditions. The immediate impact of this research is to overcome neurobiological barriers to
treatment response in dissociation using novel technology. The long-term impact will be to
inform the development of publicly-disseminable devices that can augment current
interventi ons.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10600443
- **Project number:** 3R01AT011267-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** NEGAR FANI
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $35,829
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-07-01 → 2026-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10600443

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10600443, Neural Mechanisms of Vibroacoustically Augmented Breath Focused Mindfulness for Dissociative Traumatized People (3R01AT011267-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10600443. Licensed CC0.

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