Meditation and the Wandering Mind: A Theoretical Framework of Underlying Neurocognitive Mechanisms

Perspectives on Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/1745691620917340 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 174569162091734

Author(s):

Tracy Brandmeyer ◽

Arnaud Delorme

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Neural Substrates ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

Thought Processes ◽

Thought Patterns ◽

Bodily Sensations ◽

Spontaneous Thought ◽

Sensory Processes ◽

The Mind

During the practice of meditation, the tendency of the mind to wander away from the object of focus is ubiquitous. The occurrence of mind wandering in the context of meditation provides individuals a unique and intimate opportunity to closely examine the nature of the wandering mind by cultivating an awareness of ongoing thought patterns, while simultaneously aiming to cultivate equanimity (evenness of temper or disposition) and compassion toward the content of thoughts, interpretations, and bodily sensations. In this article we provide a theoretical framework that highlights the neurocognitive mechanisms by which contemplative practices influence the neural and phenomenological processes underlying spontaneous thought. Our theoretical model focuses on several converging mechanisms: the role of meta-awareness in facilitating an increased moment-to-moment awareness of spontaneous thought processes, the effects of meditation practice on key structures underlying both the top-down cognitive processes and bottom-up sensory processes implicated in attention and emotion regulation, and the influence of contemplative practice on the neural substrates underlying perception and perceptual decoupling.

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El lenguaje y los lugares construidos / The Language and the Built Places

Revista Internacional de Ciencias Humanas ◽

10.37467/gka-revhuman.v2.703 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Francisco Javier Fuentes Farias

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Genetic Basis ◽

Point Of View ◽

Human Being ◽

Language And Cognition ◽

Human Capacity ◽

The Mind ◽

The Relationship ◽

Self Organizing

ABSTRACTIf we don't explain the role of language in the construction of places to live, their study will be incomplete; therefore the built space poses the challenge of defining a method of analysis that takes into account the emergence of cognitive processes in human being, of which perception and categorization of objects in space seems to be the most difficult to explain. And here is where the focus on language, from the point of view of the studies of complexity, admits to interpret and explain the evolution of the human capacity of build. In this sense, it is necessary to review the problem of in witch sense it can be said that language is innate or learned, and if the mind is a blank paper at birth, or has a genetic basis and how would be like. We observed the acquisition of language and cognition, and the construction of places to live, as the product of a cultural-genetic legacy. It is necessary to offer a point of view about the relationship between culture-nature, taking built places as a superior order and self-organizing subsystem: the built spaceRESUMENMientras no se exponga el papel del lenguaje en la construcción de lugares para vivir, su estudio estará incompleto; por ello, el espacio construido plantea el reto de definir un método de análisis que tome en cuenta el surgimiento de procesos cognitivos en la especie humana, de los cuales la percepción y categorización de los objetos en el espacio parece ser el más difícil de explicar. Y es aquí donde el enfoque en el lenguaje, desde el punto de vista de los estudios de la complejidad, permite interpretar y explicar la evolución de la capacidad constructiva del ser humano. En tal sentido, es necesario revisar el problema de en qué medida puede afirmarse que el lenguaje es innato o aprendido, y si la mente es un papel en blanco al nacer, o tiene una base genética y cómo sería ello. Se examina la adquisición del lenguaje y la cognición, y la construcción de lugares para vivir, como producto de una herencia genético-cultual. Se ofrece un punto de vista necesario acerca de la relación cultura-naturaleza, considerando los lugares construidos como subsistemas de un orden superior y auto-organizado: el espacio construido.

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Enactivist Interventions

10.1093/oso/9780198794325.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 198

Author(s):

Shaun Gallagher

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Brain Function ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

Mathematical Reasoning ◽

Relational Dynamics ◽

Close Coupling ◽

Affective Processes ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

Enactivist Interventions explores central issues in the contemporary debates about embodied cognition, addressing interdisciplinary questions about intentionality, representation, affordances, the role of affect, and the problems of perception and cognitive penetration, action and free will, higher-order cognition, and intersubjectivity. It argues for a rethinking of the concept of mind, drawing on pragmatism, phenomenology, and cognitive science. It interprets enactivism as a philosophy of nature that has significant methodological and theoretical implications for the scientific investigation of the mind. Enactivist Interventions argues that, like the basic phenomena of perception and action, sophisticated cognitive phenomena like reflection, imagining, and mathematical reasoning are best explained in terms of an affordance-based skilled coping. It thus argues for a continuity that runs between basic action, affectivity, and a rationality that in every case remains embodied. It also discusses recent predictive models of brain function and outlines an alternative, enactivist interpretation that emphasizes the close coupling of brain, body, and environment rather than a strong boundary that isolates the brain in its internal processes. The extensive relational dynamics that integrates the brain with the extra-neural body opens into an environment that is physical, social, and cultural and that recycles back into the enactive process. Cognitive processes are in the world, situated in affordance spaces defined across evolutionary, developmental, and individual histories, and are constrained by affective processes and normative dimensions of social and cultural practices.

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Neuromodulation of the mind-wandering brain state: the interaction between neuromodulatory tone, sharp wave-ripples and spontaneous thought

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2019.0699 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 376 (1817) ◽

pp. 20190699 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Claire O'Callaghan ◽

Ishan C. Walpola ◽

James M. Shine

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Mind Wandering ◽

Brain State ◽

Theme Issue ◽

External Stimulation ◽

Sharp Wave ◽

Brain States ◽

Spontaneous Thought ◽

The Mind

Mind-wandering has become a captivating topic for cognitive neuroscientists. By now, it is reasonably well described in terms of its phenomenology and the large-scale neural networks that support it. However, we know very little about what neurobiological mechanisms trigger a mind-wandering episode and sustain the mind-wandering brain state. Here, we focus on the role of ascending neuromodulatory systems (i.e. acetylcholine, noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine) in shaping mind-wandering. We advance the hypothesis that the hippocampal sharp wave-ripple (SWR) is a compelling candidate for a brain state that can trigger mind-wandering episodes. This hippocampal rhythm, which occurs spontaneously in quiescent behavioural states, is capable of propagating widespread activity in the default network and is functionally associated with recollective, associative, imagination and simulation processes. The occurrence of the SWR is heavily dependent on hippocampal neuromodulatory tone. We describe how the interplay of neuromodulators may promote the hippocampal SWR and trigger mind-wandering episodes. We then identify the global neuromodulatory signatures that shape the evolution of the mind-wandering brain state. Under our proposed framework, mind-wandering emerges due to the interplay between neuromodulatory systems that influence the transitions between brain states, which either facilitate, or impede, a wandering mind. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.

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Buildings, Faces, Songs of Alienation: How Interiority Transforms the Meaning Out There

Interiority ◽

10.7454/in.v3i1.68 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 41-60

Author(s):

Pieter Marthinus De Kock

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

Interior Space ◽

Form And Function ◽

The Third ◽

Mind And Body ◽

Spatial Quality ◽

And Function ◽

The Mind

This paper presents a theoretical framework that explores visual meaning in the design and use of interior space. It is comprised of three main parts. The first outlines the framework and draws on several key theories. The second introduces three very different constructs as case studies that in#uence (or are a product of) spatial quality, namely: buildings, faces, and songs of alienation. The third part is a discussion about how each of these three constructs are linked to each other as well as to the idea of interiority. While architectural forms are containers of meaning, the way in which interior space is curated is driven by deeper meaning–one that transcends form and function because people ultimately produce the meaning. And because each person is different, the conditions of interiority (in this case, the meaning that resides within each person) drives the meaning of external constructs that act as enclosures of meaning (buildings and their interiors). The findings are that the mind and body can be projected beyond the facade and into the spaces contained in the buildings we occupy. The role of technology is also important because changes in technology help mediate the process of linking the meaning inside with the meaning out there.

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Experiencing The Space: Visiting Cemeteries On All Saints’ Day and an Ordinary Day

The Qualitative Report ◽

10.46743/2160-3715/2021.4332 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Krzysztof Konecki

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Lived Experiences ◽

Collaborative Research ◽

Body Awareness ◽

Main Concern ◽

Person Perspective ◽

Bodily Sensations ◽

First Person Perspective ◽

The Mind

This paper is a description of collaborative research that was done together with students during the class “Contemplative Sociology. Experiencing Self, No-Self and the Lifeworld.” The goal of the research was to introduce the students to the contemplative methods that could be used to research lived experiences and the vision of the lifeworld through contemplation of the mind, bodily sensations, and emotions. A project was started on experiencing the cemetery space. The space for experiencing was chosen to sensitize the students to concerns (such as death, religious holidays, everyday life, suffering, etc.) that could be investigated from the first-person perspective by using contemplation as an alternative to survey-sociological methods, psychological methods and ethnography. The students learned the contemplative techniques of meditation, body awareness, self- observation, and self-description to face their concerns, including the ultimate ones. However, the main concern was the role of the mind, body and emotions in cognition and creating the mood.

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Analyticity, Linguistic Rules and Epistemic Evaluation

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement ◽

10.1017/s1358246100010250 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

pp. 197-218

Author(s):

Christopher Hookway

Keyword(s):

Definite Function ◽

Thought Processes ◽

Special Relation ◽

Epistemic Evaluation ◽

Logical Status ◽

Linguistic Rules ◽

The Mind

We can characterise thought in two different ways. Which is preferred can have implications for important issues about reasoning and the norms that govern cognition. The first, which owes much to the picture of the mind encountered in Descartes' Meditations, observes that paradigmatic examples of thoughts and inferences are events and processes whose special characteristics stem from their being ‘mental’ occurrences. For example they are conscious or, if unconscious, they stand in some special relation to thought processes that are conscious. They typically involve attitudes towards contents or propositions. In general, thoughts have a distinctive onto-logical status and this status depends upon their being mental and typically conscious. The second emphasises that thought is a kind of activity with a definite function. It involves the use of intelligence to solve problems, answer questions, make plans and so on. Thought should be studied as a kind of goal-directed activity. Those interested in the norms that govern thought should attend to the role of responsible disciplined reflection in carrying out this activity.

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Applying Evidence in Practice

Advances in Human Services and Public Health - Evidence Discovery and Assessment in Social Work Practice ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-6563-7.ch003 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 65-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ian Dore

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Social Workers ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Service Users ◽

Positive Outcomes ◽

Thought Processes ◽

Unconscious Thought ◽

Analytical Reasoning ◽

The Way

Judgement and decision-making lie at the heart of practice and are feats that practitioners perform under conditions that are complex and uncertain, the attainment of positive outcomes for service users dependent upon the aptitude of those charged with the task and the scaffolding provided by their employing organisations. Faced with such a challenge, social workers somehow avoid paralysis and take action to support and protect those with whom they work, drawing on experience, skill, information, and intervention evidence. The way they negotiate, orientate, interpret, and apply this knowledge is often through unconscious thought processes that require illumination and balance. This chapter considers how practitioners make sense of the situations that they come into contact with and discusses the intuitive-analytical reasoning continuum integral to this. Attention is given to the role of value as an influence upon perception and subsequent interpretation, together with the role played by cognitive processes.

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Is ugliness in the mind of the beholder?

International Journal of Language and Culture ◽

10.1075/ijolc.00037.gla ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Anna Gladkova ◽

Jesús Romero-Trillo

Keyword(s):

Theoretical Framework ◽

Corpus Analysis ◽

Special Role ◽

Human Actions ◽

Analysis Methodology ◽

Corpus Data ◽

The Mind ◽

Cognitive Salience

Abstract The paper explores the meaning and use of ugly in English. The study is based on corpus data from Cobuild Wordbanks Online and investigates the polysemy and the spheres of application of the concept. Through corpus analysis methodology, we investigate the most common collocations and the pragmatic and contextual uses of the term. Based on this analysis, our study proposes semantic explications of ugly in universal human concepts within the theoretical framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). We also analyze the most common collocations with the word ugly and classify them into several meaning-based categories. A comparison between beautiful and ugly reveals that they are not identical in their distribution, which suggests different cognitive salience of the concepts. We also note the special role of ‘people’ and ‘nature’ in conceptualization and use of beautiful and that of ‘human actions’ in ugly.

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Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18000274 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Author(s):

Kevin Arceneaux

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Behavioral Responses ◽

History Of ◽

Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

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