Mindfulness and Cognitive Functions: Toward a Unifying Neurocognitive Framework

Mindfulness DOI 10.1007/s12671-016-0654-1 EDITORIAL Mindfulness and Cognitive Functions: Toward a Unifying Neurocognitive Framework Antonino Raffone 1 & Narayanan Srinivasan 2 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Introduction A number of studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience have shown the effects of mindfulness and meditation training in enhancing cognitive functions assessed by a broad range of tasks implicating measures of response accuracy, response time, and associated electrophysiological and neuroimaging patterns (for reviews, see Cahn and Polich 2006; Chiesa et al. 2011; Gallant 2016; Lutz et al. 2008; Malinowski 2013; Tang et al. 2015). The set of cognitive functions found to be enhanced by mindfulness and meditation training includes centrally attentional processes (Malinowski 2013), such as attentional control, orienting, and alertness. These processes are in particular measured by the Attentional Network Test (ANT) (Fan et al. 2002) and its modifications (see Di Francesco et al. 2017), with some differential findings based on duration and type of meditation practice (e.g., Baijal et al. 2011; Jha et al. 2007; Tang et al. 2007; van den Hurk et al. 2009). Sustained attention tasks have also been used for cognitive performance assessment associated to mindfulness training (Jha et al. 2017; Lutz et al. 2009). Other tasks deal with the selective temporal deployment of attention through phenomena like attentional blink (Slagter et al. 2007). Remarkably, enhanced attentional processes and other functions were found with a brief mindfulness meditation training of 4 or 5 days (Tang et al. 2007; * Antonino Raffone 1 Department of Psychology, ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185 Rome, Italy 2 Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India Zeidan et al. 2010). Other studies found effects of meditation on preattentive processes (e.g., Srinivasan and Baijal 2007). Several experimental findings also show the effects of mindfulness training on executive functions, which control and direct cognitive processes for working memory, planning, decision making, self-regulation, and many other goaldirected behaviors (Black et al. 2009; Gallant 2016; Teper et al. 2013), with particular reference to executive inhibition (Gallant 2016; see also Moore and Malinowski 2009). Such executive or cognitive control functions enhanced by mindfulness have been associated to the notion of cognitive flexibility (Kim et al. 2011; Miller and Cohen 2001; Moore and Malinowski 2009). Other studies found that mindfulness training enhances working memory processes, which plays a key role in higher cognitive functions (Mrazek et al. 2013; Quach et al. 2016; van Vugt and Jha 2011). Mindfulness meditation training has also been linked to the enhancement of creative thinking, such as in insight problem solving (Capurso et al. 2014; Greenberg et al. 2012; Ostafin and Kassman 2012). Colzato et al. (2017) emphasize the relevance of open monitoring meditation for divergent thinking, which can be associated with creativity. Other studies have found enhanced moral reasoning and ethical decisionmaking (Ruedy and Schweitzer 2011; Shapiro et al. 2012) and also an association between dispositional mindfulness and critical thinking (Noone et al. 2016). Mindfulness training has also been associated with an improved functioning of long-term memory, and in particular of retrieval processes (Heeren et al. 2009). In particular, mindfulness training has been found to lead to the increase of a characteristic of autobiographical memories known as specificity, i.e., to the degree to which individuals retrieve specific memories for personal experiences when asked to do so (Hargus et al. 2010; Heeren et al. 2009; Williams et al. 2000). Memory specificity is important given that a lack of Mindfulness specificity is often observed with depression and with a history of trauma and abuse (van Vreeswijk and de Wilde 2004; Williams et al. 2007). However, other studies found contrasting or puzzling evidence about the association of dispositional mindfulness or mindfulness training with improvements in episodic memory functioning (Crawley 2015; Rosenstreich 2016). In summary, based on experimental evidence and related neuroscientific investigations, mindfulness meditation training has been linked to the enhancement of a range of cognitive functions, well beyond the initial emphasis on attentional processes. Such cognitive functions include the higher cognitive functions associated to cognitive control and thinking, spanning from selective processing of task-relevant perceptual inputs in different modalities to working memory, episodic memory encoding and retrieval, and more efficient thought processes across multiple tasks. In the following section, we will offer a theoretical framework based on cognitive and consciousness neurosciences to account for the broad range of effects of mindfulness meditation training on multiple cognitive functions. We will also review other findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience of meditation and mindfulness of relevance for this special section and the proposed framework. Finally, we will then introduce the articles contributing to this special section of Mindfulness on BMindfulness and cognition.^ Toward a Unifying Framework for Mindfulness and Cognitive Functions The Brain Adaptive Workspace for Consciousness and Cognition One of the most influential theories of consciousness, with fundamental implications for addressing its neural correlates, is Global Workspace Theory (Baars 1988, 1997; Baars et al. 2003, 2013). This theory distinguishes between a limited capacity conscious processing, which through a global workspace (GW) is accessible to widespread information sources in the brain and unconscious processing, which involves information processing in a substantially segregated or modular fashion in the brain. The notion of GW is also central in the influential Global Neuronal Workspace model (Dehaene et al. 1998, 2006; Dehaene and Naccache 2001; Dehaene and Changeux 2011). This model emphasizes that the GW for consciousness can access perceptual input in different modalities as well as information in (explicit) long-term memory (e.g., during episodic retrieval), can perform evaluation of selected content and select consciously actions, and can direct attention in a top-down manner (Dehaene et al. 1998). Block (1995, 2005) incorporated the notion of GW in his influential distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness refers to qualia, i.e., first-person experiences (see also Huxley 1874; Jackson 1982; Nagel 1974). Thus, phenomenally conscious content refers to subjective experience, such as in the perceptual experiences of red and green. Access consciousness involves content, which is Bbroadcast^ in the GW and made available to the brain’s Bconsuming^ systems, (...truncated)