Somatosensory awareness

Mindfulness starts with the body: Meditation has been practiced for over two millennia in Asian Buddhist traditions. It is said to involve the cultivation of experiential awareness of the present moment. This present-moment focus is thought to improve well-being by allowing individuals to become aware of sensations, emotions and thoughts that arise in the mind without judgment or reactivity. Over the last two decades, mindfulness-related treatments have become an increasingly common component of the healthcare system. A common set of mindfulness exercises have been shown to reduce distress in chronic pain and decrease risk of depression relapse. These practices require attending to breath and body sensations. Here, we offer a novel view. Somatic focus helps modulate 7–14 Hz alpha rhythms (brain waves) that play a key role in filtering inputs to primary sensory neocortex and organizing the flow of sensory information in the brain. In support of the framework, we describe our previous finding that meditation enhances attention in the primary somatosensory cortex. The framework allows us to make several predictions. In chronic pain, we predict somatic attention “de-biases” neuro activity, freeing up pain-focused resources. In depression relapse, we predict somatic attention competes with internally focused rumination, as internally focused cognitive processes (including working memory) rely on alpha filtering of sensory input. Somatic focus sensitizes practitioners to better detect and regulate when the mind wanders from its somatic focus. Enhanced regulation of somatic mind-wandering may be an important early stage of mindfulness training that leads to enhanced cognitive regulation and metacognition

From Frontiers in Neuroscience [ link ]

Buddhist parable

“I am going to give you big secret of the fountain of youth that will save you much money on cosmetics and plastic surgery: In stillness we do not age as quickly as those whose minds are constantly battling to hold their personalities together.”  ◊  Wing

Psychologists have reached the same conclusion. A large amount of mental activity is spent to making sure that what we say conforms to our personality. In a study titled Cognitive demand and self-presentation [link] they asked participants about a specific event. Participants often answered with an average case that best represented the image they were trying to maintain. That's a lot of work. Far easier to report an actual experience than compute an average.

Neural net neutrality

There’s a space inside my mind that opens up from time to time …and in those rare moments I’m in there, everything resonates with equal potential. I think it’s a place Eastern-practitioners call ‘Buddha mind’ …a neutral state free from forces of passion and indifference …and nagging questions about what’s right and what’s wrong. In other words, it’s out of reach of my judgmental mind. Apparently neuroscientists have discovered this place too. They’ve located a network inside the brain that comes online whenever the analytic networks are at rest. They call it the ‘default state network’ [link] and it lies somewhere outside regions of the brain dedicated to analysis and judgment. It skirts areas that are active in weighing alternatives and narrowing down possibilities. These areas are never at rest. Even when they go offline, the ‘default state network’ keeps them humming in unison. This creates a state of equilibrium where no one tendency outweighs another. They say it restores a sense of balance and even-mindedness. In some ways it sounds as though they’ve discovered what Eastern practitioners have experienced for the last 25 centuries.