lecture 9 - meditation

Question 1

mental actions

Answer 1

• temporally deep cognitive processes like planning, imagining, or judging that help reduce uncertainty about the world
• these happen internally and are not connected to the present moment, but they help us prepare for future actions
• involve thinking “as if” something could happen, which is known as counterfactual thinking
• create a narrative self, where we view ourselves as the cause of potential outcomes in our thoughts. In this way, our sense of self is also shaped by these mental actions.

Question 2

hierarchical models

Answer 2

• higher levels deal with more abstract concepts (like planning or imagining the future)
• lower levels handle more immediate, concrete tasks (like sensing the environment)
• like perception, learning, and cognition the self is also hierarchically modelled

Question 3

PP: conditioned experience

Answer 3

• perception, action, etc. are constructed through predictive models that previously reliably reduced PEs
• therefore, all mental experience is conditioned on past experience and learning

Question 4

flexible mind

Answer 4

• a mind grounded in past experience is adaptive due to its alignment with our econiche
• can be maladaptive too when the environment changes or behaviors are too rigid
• for this reason, our mind must be flexible by balancing internal mental processes with external changes in the environment

Question 5

major premise of buddhism

Answer 5

• conditioned existence: our everyday experience is conditioned by past experiences
• responses to any stimulus are formed by what we seek to obtain and wish to avoid, and we ignore things we deem irrelevant to us
• therefore, every percept and action is influenced by how it benefits us or meets our needs—with ourselves in mind.
• highlights how self-centered our perception of the world can be, according to this perspective.

Question 6

three unwholesome roots in buddhism

Answer 6

1. attachment: created by pleasurable experiences
2. aversion: created by painful experiences
3. ignorance: created by non-relevant-to-self experiences

• these qualities cloud the mind and give rise to craving, which causes suffering/dissatisfaction
• perceptions and actions are automatically linked to this

Question 7

how to revert conditioned existence

Answer 7

through meditation practices

Question 8

heleen paper: deconstructive meditation

Answer 8

1. the brain makes predictions based on past experience (phylogenetic and ontogenetic)
2. deconstructive meditation brings one closer to the here and now by disengaging anticipatory processes

• i.e., meditation gradually reduces counterfactual temporally deep cognition, until all conceptual processing falls away, unveiling state of pure awareness

Question 9

meditation views

Answer 9

1. as cognitive enhancement (e.g., to improve attention)
2. as a method to enhance mental wellbeing
3. esoteric effects: understanding one’s ‘true nature’, ‘the nature of the self’, or attaining certain insights about the nature of reality

• there is no single unifying explanation for how meditation achieves these effects

Question 10

3 styles of meditation

Answer 10

1. focused attention meditation
2. open monitoring meditation
3. non-dual awareness meditation

• these are on a continuum

Question 11

core hypothesis of meditation in PP

Answer 11

• mediation gradually brings a person more into the present moment by reducing the brain’s reliance on temporally deep, hierarchical prediction processes
• this explains changes in cognition and esoteric experiences

Question 12

meditation style: focused attention meditation

Answer 12

• concentrating attention on a single source of present-moment experience
• increasing expected precision of one source of present sensory experience like breath sensations
• this automatically reduces frequency of other mental processes, as their relative precision is low
• brings about a shift from thinking to sensing
• with advanced practice one is no longer primarily engaged in the narrative self, but in a present-moment mode of experiencing

Question 13

meditation style: open monitoring meditation

Answer 13

• allow whatever arises in experience to come and go without judgement or evaluation
• all content is assigned equal precision, meaning everything has low precision
• over time, this can lead to a state of ‘pure experiencing’, which occurs before evaluation of a sensory experience (like labeling a sensation as “painful”)
• thus, non-judgmental experiencing can be considered a mode of experiencing at an earlier (less temporally deep) level of the hierarchy.

Question 14

meditation style: non-dual awareness meditation

Answer 14

• The goal is to experience a state of awareness that is unchanging and independent of what happens in experience. This is described as the “ground of all experience.”
• In FA and OM, there is still a distinction between the observer and what is observed.
• here, this separation disappears.
• It reveals that the duality between self and other is just a mental construct based on past experiences, rather than an inherent truth.

Question 15

pure awareness

Answer 15

• all intentionality and conceptualization falls away
• no sense of self: expectations of future states are released and there is no activation of the basal self-model and duality itself
• no sense of time: if the current moment is no longer related to the previous and next moment in time, the experience of timelessness is a logical consequence

Question 16

consciousness

Answer 16

• a person’s awareness of something/the state of being aware of one’s surroundings
• pure awareness is a minimal, non-egoic form of consciousness

Question 17

consciousness vs sciousness

Answer 17

1. consciousness: involving the self and the distinction between subject and object
2. sciousness: pure and simple consciousness without dual constitution

Question 18

theoretical implications of a theory of consicousness

Answer 18

a theory of conscious should be able to account for minimal non-egoic forms of consciousness (pure awareness)

Question 19

positive long-term effects of meditation

Answer 19

• habitual ways of attending, thinking, and responding are weakened
• cognitive flexibility is enhanced

Question 20

negative long-term effects of meditation

Answer 20

• distortions in the sense of self

Question 21

bayesian model reduction

Answer 21

• brain’s offline process of simplifying its models of the world by reducing complexity unnecessary details while still maintaining accuracy
• fact-free learning: the brain updates and simplifies its models even without new facts, allowing it to refine generative models
• trade-off between accuracy and complexity: a less complex model is more parsimonious at the expense of detail at a higher level in the hierarchy

Question 22

model reduction and meditation

Answer 22

• meditation could promote simpler priors (underlying beliefs), such as the concept of impermanence instead of suffering being inherent in much of experience.
• this means meditators may develop a more straightforward, less detailed understanding of thoughts, feelings, and sensations, allowing them to view experiences in a more detached, less reactive way.

Question 23

predictions

Answer 23

1. a decrease in temporal depth of mental activity from FA > OM > ND meditation
2. if experience is reduced to the present moment, this also modulates novel prediction formation and prediction error signalling

Question 24

prediction 1: decrease in temporal depth

Answer 24

• the temporal depth of mental activity reduces from FA to OM to ND meditation
• thereby, neural activity should decrease across the temporal hierarchy across meditation styles
• this will affect all temporally thick mental processes, including conceptualization and the sense of self

Question 25

prediction 1 [decrease in temporal depth] proof

Answer 25

1. FA meditation brings a shift from thinking to sensing by increasing the expected precision of one source of present sensory experience. this reduces engagement with temporally thick counterfactual predictions higher in the hierarchy.
2. OM meditation withdraws selective attention and observes everything that arises in experience without judgement. this equates a reduction in the relative precision of all contents of experience, resulting in nonreactive awareness, and thus reduced mental acting on events
3. ND meditation makes processes that are temporally prior to appraisal/judgement disappear

Question 26

OM meditation: attentional blink task

Answer 26

• reduced propensity to cling to a target: attention is captured less by T1, resulting in smaller T1-elicited-P3b response (index of higher-order stimulus processing)
• smaller attentional blink to T2

Question 27

what happens when ND makes processes before judgement disappear

Answer 27

• no form of egoic self-consciousness
• no time representation
• no spatial frame of reference
• wakefulness
• epistemic openness
• (i.e., being alert and open to knowing)

Question 28

tonic alertness and pure awareness

Answer 28

• tonic alertness: sustained & internally initiated preparedness to process and responds, implying a capacity for attentional agency
• i.e., preparedness for attention
• pure awareness: seen as the content of a predictive model of tonic alertness, meaning the brain is always ready and aware, even in a state of minimal experience.

Question 29

prediction 2: modulation of novel prediction formation and PE signalling

Answer 29

• if experience is reduced to the present moment, this will also modulate novel prediction formation and PE signalling
• FA reduces novel prediction formation depending on whether the inducing stimulus is the object of FA meditation.
• however, prediction formation may be accellerated when the object contains predictable sensory variance, as because the brain is more focused on the present sensory information (higher MMN)
• ND reduces prediction formation. results in small startle responses and MNN.

Question 30

methodological considerations

Answer 30

1. participant beliefs: placebo effect, hawthorne effect, demand characteristics
2. experimenter beliefs: confirmation bias (many meditation researchers are meditators/buddhists themselves)
3. Neurophenomenology: combines neuroscientific data (such as brain scans and other objective measures) with phenomenological reports (the subjective experiences of individuals)
4. No-report paradigms: method where the need for verbal or conscious reporting is minimized or eliminated. Instead, researchers rely on physiological measures (EEG)

Question 31

solution to participant beliefs

Answer 31

• active control groups
• meditator as its own control: using the same person as both control and experimental subject at different points in time, allowing for direct comparison of their baseline versus post-intervention states

Question 32

solution to experimenter beliefs

Answer 32

1. preregistration
2. blind data analysis

Question 33

no report: meditation and binocular rivalry

Answer 33

• meditation, particularly practices by experienced meditators (such as Tibetan monks), can influence the stability and duration of perceptual dominance during binocular rivalry
• uses EEG to infer what someone is perceiving during binocular rivalry without requiring them to actively report their perceptions. It avoids the potential bias of participants’ responses by directly analyzing brain signals.

Question 34

similarities between the Buddhist idea of a conditoned mind and the mind within predictve processing

Answer 34

1. the “conditioned mind” refers to how mental processes are shaped by past experiences, leading to habitual patterns of thought, emotion, and perception. This idea is quite similar to predictive processing, where the brain constantly generates predictions based on prior knowledge and experiences to minimize surprise or prediction error.
2. the mind is seen as relying heavily on past experiences to interpret and interact with the present, often constraining the perception of reality

• Meditation in Buddhism aims to break free from these habitual patterns, much like altering or reducing the influence of strong priors in predictive processing.