From many to (n)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind.

Summary

Deconstructive meditation may help individuals change their cognitive processes by reducing anticipatory thinking and revealing a state of pure awareness. This practice gradually diminishes ingrained habits of prediction, including the sense of self, and allows for insights through introspection. The authors suggest that different meditation styles can be understood on a continuum based on how they disengage predictive habits. Further experimental approaches are necessary to explore the effects of meditation on predictive processing.

Study at a glance

Abstract

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of deconstructive meditation under the predictive processing view. We start from simple axioms. First, the brain makes predictions based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, deconstructive meditation brings one closer to the here and now by disengaging anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces counterfactual temporally deep cognition, until all conceptual processing falls away, unveiling a state of pure awareness. Our account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual) on a single continuum, where each technique relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the predicted self. This deconstruction can also permit certain insights by making the above processes available to introspection. Our framework is consistent with the state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence and illuminates the top-down plasticity of the predictive mind. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms are needed to further understanding of how meditation affects predictive processing and the self.

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