Title:

Enacting Mindfulness: A View from Cognitive Science

Presenter: Evan Thompson, PhD

Presentation Description:

From a cognitive science perspective, many of the cognitive processes crucially involved in mindfulness meditation practices are internalized forms of social cognition and depend not just on the brain but also on the rest of the body interacting with the environment. Therefore, thinking of mindfulness meditation as a kind of internal individual introspection or private mental monitoring in the head is inaccurate. This lecture will explore these ideas drawing from Buddhist philosophy and the cognitive and brain sciences.