Mindfulness, Mechanisms and Meaning: Perspectives from the Cognitive Neuroscience of Addiction

The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT; Garland et al., in press) is a process model for explaining how mindfulness might facilitate an upward spiral of positive psychological growth via both eliminative and generative mechanisms. Unlike models that strictly describe the eliminative aspects of mindfulness, MMT provides a theoretical framework for how the iterative cycle of appraisal→ decentering→ metacognitive awareness, coupled with positive reappraisals that extend into broader contexts, may help to extinguish conditioned negative affective sequela and promote positive affectivity and eudaimonic well-being. One of the largest challenges facing the self-aware individual is the filtering and selection of interoceptive and exteroceptive information, particularly with regard to how one regulates what information is attended to and what meanings are construed from experience (Delle Fave, Massimini et al. 2011). MMT proposes that mindfulness practice, over time, can lead to a deepened capacity for meaning-making – or rather, a capacity to positively reappraise experiences of suffering and to amplify the affective experience related to natural rewards through savoring, transforming the context of these experiences in such a way that the experiences become supportive of the individual’s growth-process, thus engendering eudaimonic well-being while transforming the nature of the personal narrative or ‘autobiographical self’ (Garland et al., in press). Over the course of mindfulness practice, agency and self-awareness are often transformed in ways that seem to tune attentional processes towards positive information in the internal and external environment (Kiken and Shook 2011). MMT hypothesizes that, at least in part, this process of attentional tuning towards positive stimuli, and reframing ones relationship with negative stimuli, along with proactive cognitive reappraisal feedback loops, will further generate positive affect, ultimately engendering eudaimonic well-being and spurring motivation towards prosociality (Garland et al., in press). In this manner, MMT hones in on key, heretofore neglected, generative aspects of mindfulness, implicitly contextualized in the framework of Barbara Fredrickson’s “Broaden-and-build” theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson 2004). The “Broaden-and-Build” theory models what happens at the affect-attention interface, proposing that positive and negative affect will either broaden or constrict the attentional field – resulting either in the accumulation or the conservation of psychosocial resources, respectively (Fredrickson 2004). MMT applies this theory to mindfulness practice, posturing mindfulness as a generative mechanism through which positive affect can be increased, positive reappraisals generated, and eudaimonic meaning construed from experiences of adversity. The MMT is a novel and intriguing theoretical model that holds great potential for direct application in modern western society. Though a nascent database of scientific research on the effects of mindfulness practices on mood, cognition and well-being have begun to provide insight into both the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying the processes described in the MMT, a significant amount of research is still needed to identify pathways from dysregulation to well-being. It remains to be seen whether mindfulness-associated positive affect, along with its sequelae, are both necessary and sufficient to provide for the construal of eudaimonic meaning from conditioned and unconditioned stimulus-response sequences. In other words, are the key elements of MMT (decentering, metacognitive awareness, positive reappraisal, attention to positive affect and amplification of natural rewards) necessary and sufficient to provide constant fuel to the self-realizing individual traversing the upward spiral of eudaimonic well-being? Additional longitudinal research on mindfulness will help to assess the MMT and the generalizability of this model to diverse populations (e.g., individual differences, substance use disorders, psychiatric disorders). Notwithstanding these questions, the MMT bridges a significant gap in the literature by explicating a translational model of mindfulness that may be applied to evaluating the effectiveness of mindfulness for treating the pathophysiology of dysregulated behavior, in particular drug addiction. In the commentary to follow, we frame our discussion of the MMT in the context of a brief overview of the neural correlates of mindfulness practice, particularly with regard to distributed neural network connectivity, and discuss the relevance of mindfulness from the perspective of treating the pathophysiology of drug addiction.