#52 Kathryn Devaney | The Neuroscience of Awakening

#52 Kathryn Devaney | The Neuroscience of Awakening

From The Metagame by Daniel Kazandjian

May 20, 2026 · 1h 8m

About this episode

Kati Devaney discusses the neuroscience of meditation and reality construction in this episode.

Kati Devaney is a neuroscientist and meditation teacher with over 25 years of practice. She earned her PhD in 2018 using fMRI to study attention and prediction updating in experienced Vipassana meditators and completed a postdoc at Harvard Medical School. She’s now the Chief Scientific Officer at the Consciousness Foundation , co-founded the Berkeley Alembic and the SF Dharma Collective , advises Jhourney on the neuroscience of jhana, and has been quoted on the brain and meditation in The Atlantic, National Geographic, and TIME. In this episode we talk about weird stuff like cessation, jhanas, and non-duality. We also explore how the brain quietly constructs your sense of reality moment-to-moment, and how to (re)start a meditation practice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com

People in this episode

Host: Daniel Kazandjian

Guest: Kati Devaney

Topics covered

  • neuroscience
  • meditation
  • attention
  • jhana
  • non-duality
  • reality construction

Keywords

  • neuroscience
  • meditation
  • Vipassana
  • jhana
  • attention
  • reality
  • non-duality
  • Kati Devaney

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Consciousness Foundation, Berkeley Alembic, SF Dharma Collective, Jhourney, The Atlantic, National Geographic, TIME

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