brain science

For some time at Mindful we’ve been concerned that discussions of the brain—particularly in the context of mindfulness and meditation—have become simplified to the point of distorting the truth. They often present the brain as a set of building blocks or Lincoln Logs, each with its own function. The goal of meditation in this model is to strengthen certain parts and suppress others. When we asked neuroscientists doing actual research about these notions, the answer ranged from “that’s very, very simplistic” to “that’s nonsense.”