PLoS One
September 25, 2012
Kieran C. R. Fox, Pierre Zakarauskas, Matthew L. Dixon et al.
194 citations
People who meditate for many years are better at accurately reporting their own internal bodily sensations than beginners. The study compared subjective reports of touch sensitivity in 20 body regions during a body-scanning meditation with objective measures of tactile sensitivity from prior research. Expert meditators (1–15,000 hours of experience) showed significantly greater introspective accuracy than novices, and overall meditation experience predicted individual accuracy. The findings suggest that long-term meditation practice may enhance the ability to accurately introspect.
Neuroimage
April 30, 2016
Melissa Ellamil, Kieran C. R. Fox, Matthew L. Dixon et al.
150 citations
By studying experienced mindfulness practitioners who can closely observe when a thought first arises, researchers identified distinct brain regions that activate before versus after a thought emerges. Activity in the medial temporal lobe and inferior parietal lobule peaked before the thought began, suggesting these areas help generate spontaneous thoughts. In contrast, regions including the medial prefrontal, temporopolar, mid-insular, lateral prefrontal, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices activated at or just after the thought's onset, indicating a role in elaborating or reflecting on the thought. These timing differences may explain why spontaneous thoughts are so varied and how they connect to memory and attention.
Current Opinion in Neurobiology
April 1, 2015
Sina Fazelpour, Evan Thompson
64 citations
Recent research on spontaneous brain rhythms and neural network coordination supports Immanuel Kant's concept of cognitive spontaneity—the mind's ability to organize sensory input in new ways. However, linking brain activity to cognition precisely remains difficult. Neurophenomenology, which incorporates subjective experience to explain variations in brain dynamics, provides a promising approach to this problem.
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume
January 1, 2003
Robert Hanna, Evan Thompson
48 citations
Consciousness makes the mind-body problem especially difficult to solve. Our failure to understand the relationship between mind and body suggests that current concepts are inadequate and require development. Mind can be understood as a spatiotemporal pattern that shapes the brain's metastable dynamic patterns.
January 1, 2015
Evan Thompson, J. Windt
17 citations
A debate in classical Indian philosophy between Advaita Vedānta and Yoga, which held that consciousness is present in dreamless sleep, and the Nyāya school, which held it is absent, challenges the standard neuroscientific definition of consciousness as that which disappears in dreamless sleep and reappears upon waking or dreaming. The reasoning used by Advaita Vedānta to rebut the Nyāya view offers new resources for contemporary philosophy of mind. Findings from cognitive neuroscience have implications for Indian debates about cognition during sleep and for discussions of the self and its relationship to the body. The Indian materials suggest a need for a more refined taxonomy of sleep states than sleep science currently employs, and that contemplative mind training is relevant for advancing the neurophenomenology of sleep and consciousness.
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
April 4, 2024
E. O. Lawson, Evan Thompson
9 citations
Daydreaming is often conflated with mind-wandering or night dreaming in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, but it has distinct features. This paper argues that daydreams are experiences of spontaneous, immersive imagination during wakefulness, not reducible to either mind-wandering or narrative imagination. The authors distinguish prototypical daydreaming from fleeting imagery and focused visualization, aiming to clarify its phenomenal core—its dreamlike qualities. They propose that precise conceptual and phenomenological distinctions can guide future neurophenomenological studies, help measure individual differences, and eventually identify unique neural correlates for daydreaming versus mind-wandering and night dreaming.
November 13, 2025
S. Sheth, Matthew L. Dixon, Lawrence M Ward et al.
1 citation
preprint
Human consciousness typically produces an ongoing, seemingly continuous stream of thought. Prior work has examined the neural correlates of thought content, but less is known about thought dynamics—how thoughts change over time. The Dynamic Framework of Thought proposes a neural model of how large-scale brain networks contribute to freely moving (spontaneous) versus deliberately constrained thought. In a neurophenomenological study, participants reported their thought stream in real time during fMRI scanning. Freely-moving thought was associated with greater activation of the default network (especially the medial-temporal subcomponent) than the frontoparietal control network, while deliberately constrained thought showed the opposite pattern. Distinct thought dynamics were also reflected in changes in functional coupling within and between these networks.
November 6, 2017
Jelena Markovic, Evan Thompson
1 citation
A necessary first step in collaboration between hypnosis research and meditation research is clarification of key concepts. The authors propose that such clarification is best advanced by neurophenomenological investigations integrating neuroscience methods with phenomenological models based on first-person reports. Focusing on absorption, they argue that previous treatments of hypnosis and meditation as equivalent are incorrect, but they can be fruitfully compared when characteristic features of the states are examined. Using the phenomenological and neurocognitive matrix of mindfulness (PNM), they compare focused attention meditation and open monitoring meditation with hypnosis across its dimensions, interpreting empirical research on hypnosis and shedding light on debates about meta-awareness in hypnosis and the role of suggestion in meditation.
The Embodied Mind
January 13, 2017
Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch
1 citation
Cognition depends on having a body with sensorimotor capacities, which are embedded in broader biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. Sensory and motor processes are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition and have evolved together. The enactive approach holds that perception consists of perceptually guided action and that cognitive structures emerge from recurrent sensorimotor patterns enabling such guidance.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
March 23, 2026
Evan Thompson
The author replies to commentaries on the book The Blind Spot, which argues that science must account for human experience rather than pretend to an objective view from nowhere. The response engages with points raised by Chirimuuta, Froese, Kyselo, and Vanney, defending the book's critique of reductionism and its call for a science that incorporates first-person experience and sense-making. The author maintains that ignoring the subjective, embodied dimension of knowing creates a blind spot that undermines scientific understanding.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2026
Sneha K S Sheth, Mike Doswell, Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva et al.
Over the past 25 years, neuroscience has focused on perceptual consciousness, but the dynamic experience of the stream of thought—first described by William James—has received less attention. The Dynamic Framework of Thought (DFT) provides a taxonomy of thought dynamics. This study used four experiments, including laboratory, online, and fMRI-based settings, to test whether people can introspectively access and distinguish two thought dimensions: freely moving and deliberately directed. In all experiments, participants reported their thought dynamics during a probed resting period with eyes open. Using mixed methods, the findings suggest that individuals have some introspective access to these dynamics.
November 15, 2017
Evan Thompson
This commentary engages with Dan Arnold's book, which examines the problem of intentionality—the aboutness of mental states—as it appears in classical Buddhist philosophy and contemporary cognitive science. The author discusses Arnold's argument that Buddhist thinkers, particularly Dharmakīrti, offer a distinctive perspective on intentionality that challenges reductive physicalist accounts in modern philosophy of mind. The commentary explores how taking Buddhist philosophy of mind seriously can illuminate debates about mental representation, causation, and the nature of belief, suggesting that cross-cultural philosophical dialogue enriches our understanding of these foundational issues.
Evan Thompson
Neurophenomenology combines first-person accounts of experience with third-person neuroscientific data to study contemplative practices. The chapter explains how this approach can deepen understanding of meditative states and their effects on consciousness, and discusses its implications for dialogues between science and religion. By integrating subjective reports with brain measurements, neurophenomenology offers a rigorous method for exploring the nature of mind and experience that bridges empirical science and contemplative traditions.
Casting Light on the Dark Side of Brain Imaging
January 1, 2019
M. Lifshitz, Evan Thompson
Meditation is widely promoted as a brain-training tool for improving happiness, productivity, and inner peace, but this perspective overlooks its social and embodied dimensions. The work argues that reducing meditation to neural patterns ignores the richness of these practices and what they reveal about subjective experience. Meditation is better understood as a deeply social, culturally embedded set of embodied practices, not merely a technique for shaping private mental life.
Oxford Handbooks Online
April 5, 2018
Zachary C. Irving, Evan Thompson
Standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated or stimulus-independent thought have significant shortcomings: they miss the dynamic nature of mind-wandering, include task-unrelated thoughts that are not mind-wandering, and exclude task-related mind-wandering. Philosophical analysis offers improved accounts, particularly defining mind-wandering as 'unguided thinking.' This definition is conceptually and phenomenologically precise and can be operationalized for empirical research, unlike definitions based on meta-awareness, cognitive agency, or disunity.
Oxford Scholarship Online
October 19, 2017
Evan Thompson
Cognitive neuroscience often mistakes the brain activity that accompanies mindfulness for mindfulness itself. Mindfulness, classically understood, is not merely inner observation but an integrated exercise of cognitive and bodily skills in ethically directed, situated action. From an enactive perspective, mindfulness depends on internalized social cognition and is a mode of skillful, embodied cognition that relies not only on the brain but also on the body and the physical, social, and cultural environment.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 1, 2016
Jennifer Windt, Tore Nielsen, Evan Thompson
The assumption that consciousness disappears during deep, dreamless sleep is oversimplified. Empirical and theoretical reasons indicate that a range of different types of sleep experience, some distinct from dreaming, can occur in all sleep stages. A novel taxonomy for describing these dreamless sleep experiences is introduced, along with research methods for their investigation. Future studies should focus on memory consolidation, sleep disorders, and sleep state (mis)perception. This proposal suggests new directions for sleep and dream science, the neuroscience of consciousness, and can inform the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders.
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.
Neuroimage
November 1, 2013
K. Garrison, D. Scheinost, P. Worhunsky et al.
Experienced meditators, who are expert in introspection, can link their subjective experience of focused attention and mind-wandering to real-time feedback from their own brain activity. Using real-time fMRI, participants received feedback from the posterior cingulate cortex, a brain region activated during mind-wandering and deactivated during meditation. In a first experiment, both meditators and non-meditators reported correspondence between the feedback graph and their experience. When instructed to volitionally decrease the feedback graph, only meditators showed significant deactivation of the posterior cingulate cortex. These results were replicated in a separate group of meditators using a step-wise protocol without prior knowledge of the expected relationship. The findings support using real-time fMRI to link objective brain measures with subjective reports and demonstrate generalization of introspective expertise.
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.
Diego Cosmelli, Evan Thompson
Binocular rivalry, where conflicting images presented to each eye cause alternating perception, offers a window into how conscious experience unfolds over time. The authors first propose a framework for understanding temporal aspects of consciousness, then review research on multistable perception and binocular rivalry, highlighting methodological and theoretical issues. They describe their own experimental study linking the timing of perceptual switches in rivalry to the timing of cortical brain activity. Emphasizing that both conscious experience and neural activity are inherently dynamic and changing, they argue that concepts of recurrence and variability are key to understanding rivalry and the broader flow of experience.
Michael Lifshitz, Evan Thompson
Meditation is not merely a tool for training the brain; it is a deeply social and embodied set of cultural practices. Reducing it to brain patterns overlooks the richness of how these practices function and what they reveal about subjective experience.
Evan Thompson
Contemplative neuroscience studies volitional consciousness by examining how meditation training enables people to voluntarily generate and regulate mental states. Attention, awareness, and emotion regulation are treated as trainable skills. Research on the neural dynamics of contemplative states and theories of large-scale brain coordination suggests that global system causation plays a key role in brain activity. An interventionist approach to intentional causation is proposed.