A Framework for Understanding the Neurobiological Mechanisms of Mindfulness

For anyone interested in researching scientific studies of meditation in detail, this article at Frontiers might be a great place to start. The writers, David R. Vago and David A. Silbersweig, focus on mindfulness meditation but they don't try to just examine one aspect and pin it down to one thing. They look at several different areas and realise that this type of meditation has different factors which make it work. It also has literally hundreds of references, many of which are linked for further reading, which means researchers can go off into different areas and look further into them too.

It might look like an over the top read when you first see the size of it, but it's something that anyone wanting to get a good idea of the history of meditation and scientific studies into it can probably spend a lot of time with. The actual page at Frontiers doesn't have any links to different sections, but if you download the .pdf you do get those, which makes it a lot easier to navigate.

Another good thing is that it's part of a research topic on the site, which also has several other articles that look into Neural Effects of Mindfulness/Contemplative Training. There's probably a lot of sites around that go into great detail about how science has researched meditation, but for quality it seems like the information in this article and the others that share the same topic can help to give a detailed history of how science has increasingly started to understand how important meditation can be for improving health, awareness, psychology and many other aspects.

Part of the abstract is here :

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 rest of the abstract : (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness - Abstract - Frontiers

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

.pdf version, which as I said is best because it has links to each part : Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness - (.pdf) - Frontiers