Cognitive benefits of mindfulness meditation

Studying the influence of meditation on the intertwined processes of cognition and emotion can benefit from computational or mathematical modeling to develop more detailed understandings of the mechanisms through which meditation exerts its effects. Because computational models describe the processes they model in great detail, they help to make fine-grained predictions about how the set of cognitive–emotional processes involved in meditation changes our habitual ways of processing. Models can also point to the commonalities between seemingly different tasks. For example, in this chapter I have indicated that the drift diffusion model can be used to describe both response inhibition tasks and recognition memory decisions. And yet these models can also highlight subtle differences between behaviors that are not obvious from the verbal descriptions of the participants. By defining precisely what cognitive processes are involved in different tasks, including the task of meditation, this approach may lead to a more detailed understanding of how mindfulness impacts thought and emotion, and why mindfulness has the benefits that research has demonstrated