Toward a Refined Mindfulness Model Related to Consciousness and Based on Event-Related Potentials

Abstract

<jats:p> Neuroimaging, behavioral, and self-report evidence suggests that there are four main cognitive mechanisms that support mindfulness: (a) self-regulation of attention, (b) improved body awareness, (c) improved emotion regulation, and (d) change in perspective on the self. In this article, we discuss these mechanisms on the basis of the event-related potential (ERP). We reviewed the ERP literature related to mindfulness and examined a data set of 29 articles. Our findings show that the neural features of mindfulness are consistently associated with the self-regulation of attention and, in most cases, reduced reactivity to emotional stimuli and improved cognitive control. On the other hand, there appear to be no studies of body awareness. We link these electrophysiological findings to models of consciousness and introduce a unified, mechanistic mindfulness model. The main idea in this refined model is that mindfulness decreases the threshold of conscious access. We end with several working hypotheses that could direct future mindfulness research and clarify our results. </jats:p>

The heartbeat evoked potential does not support strong interoceptive sensibility in trait mindfulness

“…In addition, we failed to replicate the present correlation within our group of participants across repeated measurements. Taken together, these findings drawn from group-level analyses might erroneously suggest that the enhanced interoceptive body awareness hypothesis in mindfulness (Hölzel et al, 2011;Treves et al, 2019;Verdonk et al, 2020) is not supported by the HEP. Interestingly, the present work takes advantage of repeated measurements within each participant to shed light on an alternative hypothesis in showing that lack of (reliable) association may in fact be partly a result of fluctuations of the HEP measure.…”

“…Such relations between mindfulness and attentional components of body awareness means that mindful individuals are able to self-regulate attention to their body, a core cognitive mechanism that has been proposed to characterize mindful functioning (Hölzel et al, 2011). Recently, we have proposed that self-regulating attention to the body could facilitate the conscious processing of bodily information, thus leading to an enhanced body awareness in mindfulness (Verdonk et al, 2020). Furthermore, relation between the mindfulness dimension of Presence and the interoceptive sensibility dimension of Trusting (i.e., experiences one's body as safe and trustworthy) might corroborate part of behavioral evidence from previous research.…”

Mindfulness, Interoception, and Olfaction: A Network Approach

“…This disposition has been associated with various positive physical and psychological health and with protective functioning (e.g., positive psychology, improvement of the quality of life) for both healthy subjects and patients [14][15][16]. More precisely, MD has been associated with resilience and its maintenance through attentional abilities, psychological flexibility, and efficient emotional regulation [16,17] that contribute to reduced perceived stress [18,19]. Furthermore, MD has been proposed to be associated with effective interoception.…”

“…Overall, it has been proposed that MD is positively linked to interoceptive awareness [23]. This positive association is implicated in the benefits of MD in emotion regulation and cognition [17].…”

“…However, to our knowledge, few studies have evaluated the relationships between interoception, exteroception, and emotion in healthy subjects, and even fewer their causal interactions. Verdonk et al [17] reviewed the Event-Related Potential (ERP) literature related to mindfulness for a better understand of how mindfulness works. The review suggests that mindfulness would facilitate the conscious processing of information that comes from inside and outside the body.…”