Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Kathleen A. Garrison, Juan F. Santoyo, Jake H. Davis et al.
226 citations
Meditators' subjective experiences during a real-time fMRI neurofeedback study align with activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a core region of the default mode network. Reports of undistracted awareness—such as concentration, observing sensory experience, and effortless doing (including not efforting and contentment)—correspond with decreased PCC activity. In contrast, experiences of distracted awareness (distraction, interpreting) and controlling (efforting, discontentment) correspond with increased PCC activity. The findings also generated novel hypotheses, including a distinction between meditating and trying to meditate, offering insights into how meditation relates to mind wandering and self-related thinking.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Jake H. Davis, David R. Vago
43 citations
Contemplative science has grown rapidly but mostly ignores the original soteriological goal of enlightenment, focusing instead on stress reduction and clinical health. This is a serious oversight because mindfulness practices in traditional Buddhist contexts aim at profound transformation across ethical, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive domains. Short-term interventions as brief as a few sessions already produce neuroplastic changes, suggesting that even secular practitioners may develop states and traits linked to progress toward enlightenment. To properly assess meditative interventions, it is essential to investigate whether enlightenment can be traced to specific neural correlates, cognition, or behavior.
January 1, 2015
Jake H. Davis, Evan Thompson
After being excluded from mainstream science during the behaviorist era, the study of consciousness returned to cognitive science in the 1980s and has since generated extensive research on the neurophysiological basis of conscious experience and the roles of attention and emotion. This research climate offers valuable but underused resources for understanding mindfulness meditation, which in Buddhist tradition is part of a process of awakening. Advances in the cognitive science of consciousness can deepen understanding of how contemplative attention-training practices function in both traditional and modern clinical contexts.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
January 1, 2014
Willoughby B. Britton, Jared R. Lindahl, B Rael Cahn et al.
Buddhist meditation is traditionally described as a state of relaxed alertness that avoids both excessive hyperarousal (restlessness) and excessive hypoarousal (drowsiness, sleep). While modern research has emphasized meditation's relaxing and hypoarousing effects, this review draws from Buddhist texts and scientific studies—including subjective, behavioral, and neuroimaging data during wakefulness, meditation, and sleep—to show that meditation also has arousing or wake-promoting effects. Factors such as dose, expertise, and contemplative trajectory influence whether meditation increases or decreases arousal. The course of meditative progress suggests a nonlinear multiphasic trajectory: early effortful phases may produce more fatigue and sleep propensity, while later stages yield greater wakefulness due to neuroplastic changes and more efficient processing.
Jake H. Davis, Evan Thompson
The chapter explores connections between modern philosophical theories of consciousness and the Buddhist framework of the five aggregates, which describe the components of a sentient being. It relates these two traditions to highlight parallels and divergences in their understanding of the mind and self.