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

Deconstructive meditation can profoundly change the mind by reducing the brain's tendency to generate predictions based on past experience. The predictive processing framework suggests that meditation disengages anticipatory processes, gradually decreasing counterfactual and temporally deep cognition until all conceptual processing falls away, unveiling a state of pure awareness. Three main meditation styles—focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual—lie on a single continuum, each relinquishing increasingly ingrained habits of prediction, including the predicted self. This deconstruction permits insights by making these processes available to introspection. The framework is consistent with empirical and neurophenomenological evidence and highlights the top-down plasticity of the predictive mind.

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.