Dear Members of the Mind-Brain-Mindfulness Community,

Below is the agenda for the meeting on the 20th of September 2024:

13:30 – 13:40 Arrival and Settle down

13:40 – 13:55 Guided Meditation

13:55 – 14:15 Introductions: Who am I? What do I expect from this meeting? What am I working on? What am I excited about (and what am I struggling with) lately regarding work? 

14:20 – 14:50 Talk by Dr. Ivana Buric, Postdoctoral fellow (University of Amsterdam)

Towards Precision Psychology: A Precision Framework for Mindfulness-Based Interventions

Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) are essential tools for improving mental health, yet their effectiveness varies widely across individuals. While some experience profound improvements, others show little to no benefit, and a small subset may even face adverse effects. This project aims to introduce a new era in psychological research by developing a precision psychology framework that predicts responses to these interventions and uncovers the mechanisms driving this variability. I will use MBIs as a case study to provide a blueprint that can be extended to other psychological interventions. Through integrating data across disciplines—including psychology, neuroscience, and immunology–and leveraging advanced machine learning techniques, this interdisciplinary project will identify distinct subgroups and individual profiles with differential responses. By adopting a data-driven approach, the research will reveal complex interactions that traditional methods have overlooked, offering a nuanced understanding of why some individuals benefit more from certain interventions. The project is structured around four interlinked work packages, each designed to progressively build and validate the precision psychology framework. The final phase will involve a randomised controlled trial to validate the predictive models in real-world settings, ensuring that the framework is both accurate and applicable. This innovative approach will set a new standard for research, moving beyond one-size-fits-all models and introducing a new paradigm for studying MBIs.

14:55 – 15:25  Talk by Dr. Aidan Lyon, Philosopher (Leiden University)

Exploring Neural Correlates of Chakra Meditation: An fMRI Study Design

This presentation outlines an ongoing fMRI study at Leiden University investigating the neural correlates of chakra meditations. Utilizing fMRI, the research aims to identify distinct activation patterns and functional connectivity changes associated with these meditative states. The experimental protocol incorporates standard and yogic resting states as baselines, followed by guided chakra meditations. Post-scan micro-phenomenological interviews capture detailed subjective experiences. By integrating this rich experiential data with neuroimaging measures through AI-driven analysis, this study represents a novel approach to understanding the neurophysiological basis of specific yogic meditation techniques, potentially bridging ancient practices with modern neuroscience and contributing to broader consciousness research.

15:25 – 15:35 Plans for the next meeting

15:35 – 16:00 Tea break/navigating to a different venue for the final talk

16:00 – 17:00 Cognitive Psychology Colloquium Talk by Dr. Toby Woods, Postdoctoral research fellow (Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Australia)

Do Nothing Meditation and Stillness of Mind

In the Do Nothing meditation developed by the Australian psychiatrist Ainslie Meares (1910-1986), doing nothing is said to lead quickly and easily to a complete of stillness of mind withoutthoughts or perceptions. This state is said to involve profound calm, naturalness, freedom, and insight, and it appears to be what the philosopher Thomas Metzinger refers to as minimalphenomenal experience or pure consciousness. In this talk I will present findings from my 7 years of full time research examining the Do Nothing practice and comparing it with FocusedAttention practice, the classical method used to access complete stillness. I will concentrate on three studies which compared the two practices head-to-head and which involved a total of morethan 500 participants. How does one do nothing? How might doing nothing lead to complete stillness? Is it really possible to access the stillness through this practice? And is it possible to do so quickly and easily? My presentation will address these questions, drawing on both the research and on personal insights from my more than 20 years practising this method.

Please note that the Zoom link for this final talk is different from the one above and it will be provided in the next email.

17:10 onwards: Drinks @ The Living Cafe on VU campus (optional)

Previous meetings in 2024

When: Friday, the 26^th of January 2024, 13:30 h -17:00 h

The agenda: 

13:30-13:50 Guided meditation

13:50-14:30 Introductions: Who am I? What do I expect from this meeting? What am I working on? What am I excited about (and what am I struggling with) lately regarding work? 

14:30-15:00 Tea break

15:00-15:45 Talk by Amber Bunting (PhD Student at the University of Groningen): 

Moving Towards a Physicalist Understanding of Minimal Selfhood

Abstract: Humans describe having a sense that experiences happen in relation to themselves, referring to the pre-reflective quality of subjectivity which permeates most conscious experiences, i.e. the minimal self. 20th century philosophers deemed the minimal self an inherent part of existence. Advancements in cognitive science and recent recognition of ancient practices such as those using psychedelics and meditation have progressed the contrary idea that minimal self may be physically generated. The current thesis aims to explore this idea, by investigating whether the generation of minimal self may be understood feasibly through computational perspectives. To do this effectively, the first part of the thesis consisted of a scoping review of all mechanistic theories on minimal self to date and categorised them according to their central assumption on the physical basis of selfhood. The second part of the thesis was an integrative analysis of psychedelic ego-dissolution (PED) and meditative non-dual awareness (MNDA) theories, to advocate for the analysis of such cases in providing direction towards theory-informed operationalisation of minimal self. Together, results indicated that mechanistic understandings of minimal self largely equate its physical basis to processes related to Bodily Self-Consciousness, and that directions towards the neuroscientific operationalisation of minimal self may be found by integrating PED and MNDA under the Free Energy Principle (Friston, 2012) and hierarchical predictive coding. The thesis therefore concludes that computational understandings of minimal self are feasible and desirable. Implications of these analyses, their limitations, and future directions for minimal selfhood research are discussed.

15:45-16:30 Panel Discussion: Teaching Contemplative Practices in University (Ivana Buric/Marieke van Vugt)

16:30-17:00 Plans for the upcoming year

17:00-onwards: Drinks close to the meeting venue (optional)

Everyone is welcome! From students to full professors, from novices curious about mind and mindfulness to very experienced contemplatives, regardless of whether you are actively involved in contemplative science research.

Next dates for 2024., mark your calendar:
26.04.2024.
14.06.2024.