Mindfulness in the focus of the neurosciences - The contribution of neuroimaging to the understanding of mindfulness.
Front Behav Neurosci October 17, 2022 Bruno J. Weder 34 citations
Mindfulness involves learning to perceive experiences—sensations, emotions, and thoughts—immediately and without bias. Neuroimaging studies show that as people practice meditation, they progress from voluntarily controlling emotions to regulating them and observing phenomena impartially. This improves metacognitive monitoring, increasing self-specifying thoughts (linked to the experiential self) and reducing self-relational thoughts (the narrative self). The ratio of these thought types may affect awareness, working memory, mind wandering, and belief formation. Both thought processes rely on the default mode network, particularly the dorsal and medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which are activated differently depending on which process dominates. Long-term mental training produces functional and structural brain changes, indicating plasticity.