Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness

Abstract

Mindfulness-as a state, trait, process, type of meditation, and intervention has proven to be beneficial across a diverse group of psychological disorders as well as for general stress reduction. Yet, there remains a lack of clarity in the operationalization of this construct, and underlying mechanisms. Here, we provide an integrative theoretical framework and systems-based neurobiological model that explains the mechanisms by which mindfulness reduces biases related to self-processing and creates a sustainable healthy mind. Mindfulness is described through systematic mental training that develops meta-awareness (self-awareness), an ability to effectively modulate one's behavior (self-regulation), and a positive relationship between self and other that transcends self-focused needs and increases prosocial characteristics (self-transcendence). This framework of self-awareness, -regulation, and -transcendence (S-ART) illustrates a method for becoming aware of the conditions that cause (and remove) distortions or biases. The development of S-ART through meditation is proposed to modulate self-specifying and narrative self-networks through an integrative fronto-parietal control network. Relevant perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral neuropsychological processes are highlighted as supporting mechanisms for S-ART, including intention and motivation, attention regulation, emotion regulation, extinction and reconsolidation, prosociality, non-attachment, and decentering. The S-ART framework and neurobiological model is based on our growing understanding of the mechanisms for neurocognition, empirical literature, and through dismantling the specific meditation practices thought to cultivate mindfulness. The proposed framework will inform future research in the contemplative sciences and target specific areas for development in the treatment of psychological disorders.

Keywords: brain networks; contemplative; meditation; mindfulness; self; self-awareness; self-regulation.

Figure 1

Reification of the dysfunctional narrative self based on Beck's cognitive triad—a model for psychopathology (Beck, 1976). Dysfunctional attitudes, rumination, and negative self-focus reify the self-narrative for the past, present, and future. The arrows depict causal influences for integrating self-identity (“ME”) over time and negative feedback in a dysfunctional narrative that leads to affect-biased attention at both sensory-perceptual and cognitive levels.

Figure 2

Self-networks and neurocognitive systems supporting S-ART. This working model represents a parcellation of task positive (self-specifying: EPS and EES), task negative (NS), and integrative fronto-parietal control networks. It also represents the individual components of the attentional systems and prosociality network purported to be modulated by mindfulness. The substrates for six component mechanisms of mindfulness within a framework of S-ART are also represented. EPS, experiential phenomenological self; EES, experiential enactive self; NS, narrative self; FPCN, fronto-parietal control network; FEF, frontal eye fields; DMPFC, dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex; AMPFC, anterior medial prefrontal cortex; VMPFC, ventromedial prefrontal cortex; PHG, parahippocampal gyrus; HF, hippocampal formation; RSP, retrosplenial cortex; PCC, posterior cingulate cortex; Dorsal ACC, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; DLPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; VLPFC, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; TP, temporal pole, LTC, lateral temporal cortex; TPJ, temporoparietal junction; sPL, superior parietal lobe; pIPL, posterior inferior parietal lobe; aIPL, anterior inferior parietal lobe; nAcc, nucleus accumbens; VSP, ventrostriatal pallidum; dstriatum, dorsal striatum; S1, primary somatosensory cortex; AIC, anterior insular cortex; PIC, posterior insular cortex; sgACC, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex; VMpo, ventromedial posterior nucleus; sc, superior colliculus; BLA, basolateral amygdala; CE, central nucleus.

Figure 3

Mindfulness process model—concentrative practice. FA meditation using the breath as the object of focus is illustrated as an example, but the processes are proposed to be the same across concentration styles of practice. Intention is formed along with motivation to practice before an executive “set” is created. Executive set is supported by the working memory system in order to implement and maintain practice instructions. Focused attentional networks are recruited and sustained along with support by component mechanisms including executive monitoring, emotion regulation, and response inhibition. Unintended objects of distraction can include any stimulus available to extero- or interoceptive sensory and mental processes. Affective responses to unintended objects can have a positive, negative, or neutral valence and are likely to proliferate endlessly unless awareness and de-centering promote response inhibition and disengagement. Motor learning provides a framework for automatization and mindfulness skill development. Effortful control is reduced through continued practice. Through practice, awareness itself becomes the object of attention in meta-awareness as the meta-function is acquired as a skill. Clarity, as a form of phenomenal intensity during practice increases as does equanimity, which refers to impartiality reducing later attentional and emotional stages of strategic processing that could potentially involve prolonged sympathetic arousal, cognitive elaboration, or ruminative qualities.

Figure 4

Mindfulness process model—open monitoring receptive practice. OM meditation with no object of focus (ambient attention) is illustrated as an example, but the processes are proposed to be the same across receptive styles of practice. Intention is formed along with motivation to practice before an executive “set” is created. The working memory system helps to maintain motivation and practice instructions. Ambient (diffuse) attentional networks are recruited and sustained along with support by component mechanisms including executive monitoring, emotion regulation, and response inhibition. Mental noting and labeling of stimuli arising, passing, and absent in phenomenal conscious awareness is a form of emotion regulation and contributes to extinction and reconsolidation of maladaptive procedural and declarative memories that represent sensory-affective-motor scripts and schemas. Affective responses may arise in response to an object of attention with a positive, negative, or neutral valence and are likely to proliferate unless awareness and de-centering promote response inhibition and disengagement. Over time and continued practice, effortful control is reduced and awareness itself becomes the object of attention as meta-awareness is cultivated as a skill. Clarity and Equanimity increases through practice.

Figure 5

Mindfulness process model. Ethical-enhancement (EE) practice. Intention is formed along with motivation to practice before an executive “set” is created within the working memory system in order to implement and maintain practice instructions. Focused attentional networks are recruited for orienting toward sustained episodic memory recall involving mentalizing and shared experience. OM practice is described to supplement EE practice facilitating awareness of any modality of experience that arises. The processes are proposed to be the same across ethical styles of practice that require imagined suffering or a particular declarative memory [of someone or something]. Mentalizing one's own or others' suffering continues recurrently as part of sustained episodic memory recall. With clarity and equanimity for affective reactivity, OM practice allows the practitioner to remain mindfully aware of difficult emotions while the declarative (episodic) memory is positively reappraised. Negative associations are extinguished and reconsolidated into more adaptive or positive memories using prosocial/empathic concern for the object of meditation. Continuous reappraisal along with prosocial concern is thought to enhance exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation processes such that new episodic memories are laid down and inhibit older maladaptive forms of the memory.