Towards a refined mindfulness model related to consciousness and based on ERP

Neuroimaging, behavioral and self-report evidence suggests that there are four main cognitive mechanisms that support mindfulness: 1) self-regulation of attention, 2) improved body awareness, 3) improved emotion regulation, and 4) change in perspective on the self. The current paper discusses these mechanisms, based on studies of Event Related Potential (ERP). We review the ERP literature related to mindfulness and examine a dataset of 29 articles. Our findings show that the neural features of mindfulness are consistently associated with the self-regulation of attention and, in most cases, reduced reactivity to emotional stimuli and improved cognitive control. On the other hand, there appear to be no studies of body awareness. We link these electrophysiological findings to models of consciousness, and introduce a unified, mechanistic mindfulness model. The main idea in this refined model is that mindfulness decreases the threshold of conscious access. We end with several working hypotheses that could direct future mindfulness research, and clarify our results.