Mindfulness and Compassion Grand Rounds at Harvard Medical School will be held about twice monthly, live online via Zoom, and is open to those within Harvard Medical School, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), and members of the CMC community, for free. Our Grand Rounds series has 3 main aims:

• Disseminate information about new cutting edge science and impactful clinical research findings

• Highlight best practices for enhancing the efficacy, accessibility, and safety of mindfulness and compassion delivery and applications for population mental health

• Provide opportunities for healthcare provider self-care and burnout prevention

Not able to attend live over Zoom? All registrants will receive a link to the recording.

2026/27 Academic Year

Subject of Lecture :

The Self Dissolved Into Us:

Mindfulness, Psychedelics, and the Neuroscience of Compassion

Date: Monday, November 2, 2026
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm (ET)
Presenter: Dr Fadel Zeidan

Topic Description:

Much human suffering rests on a deceptively simple process: the brain's tendency to build and defend a fixed sense of self. This self-referential processing shapes how we experience pain, how we react to stress, and how readily we connect with or withdraw from others. Two very different practices, mindfulness meditation and psychedelic-assisted therapy, appear to loosen this grip, producing states in which the boundary between "me" and "us" softens. What happens in the brain when that occurs, and can it be harnessed to relieve suffering and cultivate compassion?

This lecture draws on more than two decades of clinical and neuroimaging research from the Zeidan Lab to address these questions. Using perfusion and BOLD fMRI alongside randomized controlled trials, our work shows that mindfulness reduces pain through distinct brain mechanisms, including the decoupling of sensory experience from self-referential appraisal. I will then turn to emerging research on psilocybin-assisted therapy for chronic pain and discuss how mindfulness training may prepare, deepen, and extend the therapeutic effects of the psychedelic experience. Finally, I will consider how these converging findings illuminate the neuroscience of empathy and compassion, and propose that diminished self-focus may be a shared pathway linking reduced personal suffering with greater care for others. Together, this work points toward a mechanistically informed model of contemplative and psychedelic interventions, one in which dissolving the self is not a loss but a route to resilience, connection, and wellbeing.

Presenter Bio:

Dr. Fadel Zeidan, is a Professor of Anesthesiology at UC San Diego's Center for Pain Medicine. Fadel is a Co-Founder and Neuroscience Director of the newly formed UCSD Center for Psychedelic Research. He is also an Endowed Professor of Compassion Research at the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. Fadel is also a Co-Founder and Executive Committee member of the International Society for Contemplative Research. His research is focused on determining the active mechanisms that mediate the relationship between self-regulatory practices and health. In particular, Fadel's research examines the neural mechanisms supporting the modulation of pain and health by mindfulness meditation and placebo. He is also dedicated to understanding how psychedelics like psilocybin, DMT and cannabis impact pain-related behavioral and neural processes. His research program has recently expanded to appreciate how empathy and compassion can be cultivated through self-regulatory practices and psychedelic therapies. His work has also been featured in traditional media outreach (CNN; NPR; Time Magazine, CBS and others), TedX and personally presented his work to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama in Mongolia. Fadel was also awarded the 2014 National Institutes of Health Mitchell Max Award for Research Excellence.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Describe how self-referential processing contributes to pain, stress and emotional suffering and identify the key brain networks involved. 

2. Explain the neural mechanisms by which mindfulness meditation reduces as revealed by perfusion, BOLD fMRI studies and randomized controlled trials.  

3. Distinguish the neural and psychological of empathy, empathic distress and compassion, including the roles of shared pain representations, reward and affiliation circuits and self-other distinction.

4. Evaluate how mindfulness and psilocybin assisted therapy may foster compassion by reducing self-focus, and discuss the implications of this.

Continuing Education Credits -

For those seeking CE credit, the link to a feedback form will be sent during the live lecture in the Zoom chat. This must be filled out to receive CE; credits are processed at the end of the academic year in June 2026 for the entire Grand Rounds series. CE certificates are issued after that time.

· Although these sessions are recorded, we can only offer CE to those who attend live.

· An attendance attestation form will be shared during each event

· The Harvard Medical School is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The Harvard Medical School designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

· Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This program offers 1.0 continuing education credits.

· Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5444. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This program offers 1.0 continuing education credits and is also applicable for Commonwealth of Massachusetts Counseling/Allied Mental Health accreditation for 1.0 credits.

· As a Jointly Accredited Organization, Harvard Medical School is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved under this program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. Social workers completing this course receive 1 clinical continuing education credit.

Further Reading -

• Dean, J. G., Hurwitz, E., Furnish, T., Castellanos, J., McKinty, A., Farrell, B., Barrows, D., Peck, S. K., Trim, J., Samadhi, E., Renwick, G., Mudge, R., Vieten, C., Cuccurazzu, B., Coleman, P., Lin, A., Geyer, M. A., Zeidan, F., & Halberstadt, A. L. (2026). Feasibility and Tolerability of Psilocybin for Phantom Limb Pain. The journal of pain, 106404. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2026.106404 

• Jinich-Diamant, A., Garland, E., Baumgartner, J., Gonzalez, N., Riegner, G., Birenbaum, J., Case, L., & Zeidan, F. (2020). Neurophysiological mechanisms supporting mindfulness meditation-based pain relief. Current Pain and Headache Reports, 24(10), Article 56.

• Zeidan, F., & Vago, D. R. (2016). Mindfulness meditation-based pain relief: A mechanistic account. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373(1), 114–127.

• Oliva V, Riegner G, Dean J, et al. I feel your pain: higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity. Pain. 2025 Apr;166(4):e60-e67. DOI: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000003434. PMID: 39661395.

• Riegner, G., Posey, G., Oliva, V., Jung, Y., Mobley, W., & Zeidan, F. (2022). Disentangling self from pain: Mindfulness meditation-induced pain relief is driven by thalamic-cortical decoupling. Pain, 163(12), e1166–e1177.

Previous Speakers

Sign up to get the link to the recordings here

Speaker Archive 2021-2022

Speaker Archive 2020-2021