John D. Dunne

Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation

Meditation can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Among these various practices, there are two styles that are commonly studied. One style, focused attention meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object. The other style, open monitoring meditation, involves nonreactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment. The potential regulatory functions of these practices on attention and emotion processes could have a long-term impact on the brain and behavior.

Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness: An Introduction

The overall goal of this chapter is to explore the initial findings of neuroscientific research on meditation; in doing so, the chapter also suggests potential avenues of further inquiry. It has three sections that, although integral to the chapter as a whole, may also be read independently. The first section, “Defining Meditation,” notes the need for a more precise understanding of meditation as a scientific explanandum. Arguing for the importance of distinguishing the particularities of various traditions, the section presents the theory of meditation from the paradigmatic perspective of Buddhism, and it discusses the difficulties encountered when working with such theories. The section includes an overview of three practices that have been the subject of research, and it ends with a strategy for developing a questionnaire to define more precisely a practice under examination. The second section, “The Intersection of Neuroscience and Meditation,” explores some scientific motivations for the neuroscientific examination of meditation in terms of its potential impact

Investigating the Phenomenological Matrix of Mindfulness-related Practices from a Neurocognitive Perspective

There has been a great increase in literature concerned with the effects of a variety of mental training regimes that generally fall within what might be called contemplative practices, and a majority of these studies have focused on mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation practices can be conceptualized as a set of attention-based, regulatory, and self-inquiry training regimes cultivated for various ends, including wellbeing and psychological health. This article examines the construct of mindfulness in psychological research and reviews recent, nonclinical work in this area. Instead of proposing a single definition of mindfulness, we interpret it as a continuum of practices involving states and processes that can be mapped into a multidimensional phenomenological matrix which itself can be expressed in a neurocognitive framework. This phenomenological matrix of mindfulness is presented as a heuristic to guide formulation of next-generation research hypotheses from both cognitive/behavioral and neuroscientific perspectives. In relation to this framework, we review selected findings on mindfulness cultivated through practices in traditional and research settings, and we conclude by identifying significant gaps in the literature and outline new directions for research.

Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness: A Heuristic Approach

Over the last several years, various authors have examined contemporary conceptions of mindfulness in relation to Buddhist notions. Some authors maintain that contemporary approaches to mindfulness deviate significantly from the authentic Buddhist approach, while others see more alignment between contemporary approaches and some t\ styles of practice. The differing opinions in this regard can be confusing, and the aim of this chapter is to lessen that confusion by offering an overview of key Buddhist approaches to mindfulness in a manner that enables researchers to make appropriate use of Buddhist sources. In particular, this chapter presents heuristic categories that sort Buddhist theories and practices into two distinct styles, the “Classical” and the “Nondual,” and compares them to contemporary approaches to mindfulness, especially in relation to three crucial aspects of formal practice: ethics, judgment, and present-centered awareness.

Differential effects of non-dual and focused attention meditations on the formation of automatic perceptual habits in expert practitioners

ABSTRACT Non‐dual meditation aims to undo maladaptive cognitive and affective patterns by recognizing their constructed and transient nature. We previously found high‐amplitude spontaneous gamma (25–40 Hz) oscillatory activity during such practice. Nonetheless, it is unclear how this meditation state differs from other practices, in terms of perceptual information processing. Here, we hypothesized that non‐dual meditation can downregulate the automatic formation of perceptual habits. To investigate this hypothesis, we recorded EEG from expert Buddhist meditation practitioners and matched novices to measure two components of the auditory evoked response: the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and the Late Frontal Negativity (LFN), a potential observed at a latency sensitive to attentional engagement to the auditory environment, during the practices of Open Presence (OP) and Focused Attention (FA), as well as during a control state, in the context of a passive oddball paradigm. We found an increase in gamma oscillatory power during both meditation states in expert practitioners and an interaction between states and groups in the amplitude of the MMN. A further investigation identified the specific interplay between the MMN and the LFN as a possible marker to differentiate the two meditation states as a function of expertise. In experts, the MMN increased during FA, compared to OP, while the opposite pattern was observed at the LFN latency. We propose that the state of OP in experts is characterized by increased sensory monitoring and reduced perceptual inferences compared to FA. This study represents a first attempt to describe the impact of non‐dual meditation states on the regulation of automatic brain predictive processes. HighlightsBrain predictive processes are modulated by two types of meditation.The effect is different in expert and novice meditation practitioners.Experts increase gamma power during meditation compared to novices.

Wisdom and compassion: A new perspective on the science of relationships

Abstract In psychological science, mindfulness and compassion are thought to promote physical health, mental well-being and even virtuous character. Yet in Buddhist philosophy, mindfulness and compassion can cause suffering when the two are not balanced. One key mechanism of mindfulness is ‘dereification,’ which amounts to experiencing one’s thoughts just as thoughts and not as real representations of the world. If one focuses solely on thoughts as unreal representations, one can simply dismiss all such activity, leading to apathy. Compassion can be problematic if one gets caught up in other-cherishing and if others’ aspirations and needs fail to align with those that one has imposed upon others. In this article, we review how the integration of mindfulness and compassion yields a novel framework to examine flourishing. As a case study, we apply these insights to the science of relationships, which leads to a re-conceptualization of ‘individual’ flourishing.