Shawn Prest: research papers - The Consciousness Library

Toward a Computational Phenomenology of Meditative Deconstruction: "Letting Go" and the Deconstruction of Experience With Active Inference.

Neural Computation June 2, 2026 Shawn Prest

Meditative experience has long been associated with conceptual attenuation, reduced reactivity to phenomena, increased present moment perception, and more pleasant experience. However, the computational mechanisms underlying such meditative deconstruction are not well understood, with no formal computational models available to explicate how deconstruction alters perception and action during...

DOI: 10.1162/neco.a.1534 Full text

What can meditative experience tell us about affective valence? A computational perspective on the determinants of affect

PsyArXiv May 27, 2026 Shawn Prest preprint

Understanding affective valence is essential to the fostering of well-being since positive and negative experiences shape our quality of life. One promising approach is to use computational frameworks of perception and action, which seek to formalise the mechanisms underlying valenced experience. Within one such framework, active inference, valence is canonically treated as a consequence of...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/s98n7_v1 Full text

Active inference, computational phenomenology, and advanced meditation: Toward the formalization of the experience of meditation.

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 1, 2026 Hagar Tal, Malcolm Wright, Shawn Prest et al. 2 citations

Computational phenomenology has emerged as a powerful framework for investigating advanced meditation states and stages, and meditative development and endpoints. Various models have been proposed to mechanistically explain the diverse experiences associated with these practices, including enhanced well-being, shifts in attentional control, the loosening or 'defabrication' of perceptual...

DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106539 Full text Aif Advanced meditation Attention Computational phenomenology +1

Towards an Active Inference Account of Deep Meditative Deconstruction

January 26, 2024 Shawn Prest, Kevin Berryman 5 citations preprint

This paper explores the intersection of deep meditative deconstruction, in particular the Buddhist defabrication process and its associated phenomenology, and computational mechanisms under the active inference framework (AIF). We contextualise states such as the jhānas within this process, drawing on both Buddhist theoretical frameworks and contemporary phenomenological understanding. We take...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/d3gpf Buddhism Meditation Inference Phenomenology philosophy +6

Towards a computational phenomenology of meditative deconstruction: modelling ‘letting go’ and the deconstruction of experience with active inference

Shawn Prest preprint

Meditative experience has long been associated with conceptual attenuation, reduced reactivity to phenomena, increased present moment perception and more pleasant experience. However, the computational mechanisms underlying such meditative “deconstruction” are not well understood, with no formal computational models available to explicate how deconstruction alters perception and action during...

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/evfg3_v1

Papers

Toward a Computational Phenomenology of Meditative Deconstruction: "Letting Go" and the Deconstruction of Experience With Active Inference.

What can meditative experience tell us about affective valence? A computational perspective on the determinants of affect

Active inference, computational phenomenology, and advanced meditation: Toward the formalization of the experience of meditation.

Towards an Active Inference Account of Deep Meditative Deconstruction

Towards a computational phenomenology of meditative deconstruction: modelling ‘letting go’ and the deconstruction of experience with active inference