Dr. Jonas Mago | Meditation coach & computational neuroscientist

I am a computational neuroscientist and meditation coach, deeply invested in understanding how contemplative practices shape experience and support human flourishing.

My research and teaching grow from a shared interest: how can we work with attention, awareness, and our ways of perceiving to cultivate greater flexibility, clarity, and wellbeing?

Practice and teaching

I have been practising meditation for more than ten years and teaching for the past four. My personal contemplative practice profoundly informs my work, bridging theoretical insights with lived experience.

I am a certified Unified Mindfulness meditation coach, with training in the system developed by Shinzen Young and taught with Julianna Raye. I am also certified in The Mind Illuminated meditation coaching, having completed teacher training with Dr. Mark Miller in the approach developed by John Yates, also known as Culadasa.

My teaching draws on these approaches alongside the work of Rob Burbea. I am interested both in the careful cultivation of attention and awareness and in the ways contemplative practice can open new possibilities for experiencing and relating to the world.

Academic background

I completed my PhD in neuroscience at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Michael Lifshitz and co-supervision of Dr. Karl Friston. My doctoral research explored the neurocomputational mechanisms of contemplative practice.

I continue this work as a research affiliate at McGill University’s Psychedelics and Contemplation Lab with Dr. Lifshitz, and at the University of Southern California’s Center for Mindfulness Science with Dr. Rael Cahn.

My academic journey also includes a master’s degree in Mind, Language, and Embodied Cognition from the University of Edinburgh and undergraduate studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Maastricht.

The neuroscience of meditation

My research explores contemplative practices designed to cultivate wholesome states of mind. I approach these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating cognitive science, neurobiology, computational modelling, and phenomenology to investigate mechanisms of self-regulation and transformation.

A particular focus is jhāna meditation: states of deep meditative absorption. Working with experienced practitioners, I use EEG, fMRI, and computational modelling to investigate how these states emerge, their underlying mechanisms, and their relationship to attention and perception.

Computational neurophenomenology

Computational models offer ways to investigate how neurobiological processes relate to cognition and experience. My work contributes to an approach called computational neurophenomenology, bringing these models into conversation with careful descriptions of subjective experience.

I am particularly interested in how meditation changes the ways we perceive and make sense of the world, including experiences in which mental activity becomes exceptionally quiet while awareness remains.

Practice, relationships, and shared experience

Human interactions provide a mirror through which we can better understand ourselves. Much of our identity is shaped by our social and cultural lives, as well as by our interactions with others.

My research also examines how dynamics between bodies and minds emerge in contexts such as collective prayer, meditating with others, and shared contemplative practices. I am interested in how these encounters shape individual and collective experience.

Selected publications

For a comprehensive and up-to-date list of my publications, please visit my Google Scholar profile.