Chapter 19 - Meditation and the neuroscience of consciousness: an introduction

Summary

This chapter discusses the contributions of meditation to the neurobiological study of consciousness and to cognitive and affective neurosciences in general. In doing so, it suggests potential avenues of further inquiry. The chapter first clarifies conceptually what the term meditation means and proposes an operational definition. Focusing on Buddhist meditative practices as a canonical example, it provides a short presentation of the main tenets of Buddhist psychology and epistemology. The chapter explores some scientific motivations for the neuroscientific examination of meditation in terms of its potential impact on the brain and body of long-term practitioners or its possible role in the neuroscientific study of subjective experience. After an overview of the mechanisms of mind-body interaction, the chapter addresses the use of first-person expertise, especially in relation to the potential for research on the neural counterpart of subjective experience.