Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 1, 2024
Shaun Gallagher, A. Raffone, S. M. Aglioti
Compassion, empathy, and sympathy are often conflated in academic and clinical literatures. This article proposes a pattern-theoretic approach to distinguish them. Drawing on psychology, Western philosophy, affective neuroscience, and contemplative science, the authors clarify compassion as a specific pattern of dynamically related factors: physiological, cognitive, affective, relational/intersubjective, and motivational/action tendencies. They show that this dynamic pattern is reflected in neuroscientific findings and in compassion practice. The pattern theory enables clear distinctions between compassion, empathy, and sympathy, arguing that each involves different configurations of these factors.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
May 21, 2021
A. Accoto, S. Chiarella, A. Raffone et al.
During the first total lockdown in Italy, an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course plus six weeks of video support for meditation practice improved self-acceptance, purpose in life, and relation to others in a sample of Italian females, compared to a control group. Participants with greater mindfulness scores showed high levels of psychological flexibility, which in turn was positively associated with higher psychological well-being. The findings suggest that MBSR can support psychological well-being in female subjects even during an unpredictable adverse event like the COVID-19 lockdown.
Progress in Brain Research
January 1, 2019
A. Raffone, L. Marzetti, C. del Gratta et al.
A unified Brain Theory of Meditation (BTM) is proposed, grounded in the roles of the central executive, salience, and default mode networks and the brain's energetic limitation that only about 1% of cortical neurons can be concurrently active. The theory suggests distinct mechanisms for different meditation forms: down-regulation of brain network activities in focused attention meditation, gating and tuning of network coupling in open monitoring meditation, and state-related up-regulation in compassion and loving kindness meditation. It also advances a leftward asymmetry in top-down regulation and enhanced inter-hemispheric integration in meditation states and traits, with implications for understanding conscious access. Meditation provides a meta-function for efficient brain resource allocation, related to mindfulness.
Progress in Brain Research
January 1, 2009
A. Raffone, N. Srinivasan
A theoretical framework for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is proposed, integrating endogenous attention, access consciousness, phenomenal awareness, metacognitive consciousness, and a non-referential unified consciousness. The adaptive workspace hypothesis builds on the global workspace model, emphasizing transient resonant neurodynamics and prefrontal cortex function, particularly the anterior prefrontal cortex. Transient dynamic links within an adaptive coding net, involving ongoing intrinsic and long-range signal exchanges between prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain, flexibly regulate the interplay among these processes. Moment-to-moment modulation by body and environment states, along with brain regions associated with interoceptive and exteroceptive self-awareness (as highlighted in open monitoring meditation), play a key modulatory role in adaptive workspace transitions.