Meditation is not only a contemporary topic of research, it's a research method.
Meditation can be classified into different types, one form is opening monitoring- where we simply sit and observe thoughts and sensations that come to mind without becoming involved or attached with any one thought or feeling. Its likely that the introspection of open monitoring can give us insight into the organisation of our minds.
Meditation can be classified into different types, one form is opening monitoring- where we simply sit and observe thoughts and sensations that come to mind without becoming involved or attached with any one thought or feeling. Its likely that the introspection of open monitoring can give us insight into the organisation of our minds.
Semantic memory models from
the field of cognitive psychology assume that it's structured so that related
concepts are more closely associated.
Take, for example, a free association
task where someone says a word and you're required to say the first word that
comes to mind- it's typically a related concept. Also the speed in which we can
say a word is increased if we've just read or said a related word- this is
called priming.
These sorts of results have
given rise to the spreading activation model of semantic memory. According to
this model concepts are simplified in the mind as single units, or nodes, that
are interconnected. This allows for activation to spread by proxy and move
through these networks of concepts. The more closely or strongly related the
two concepts the more easily the activation can spread.
This means that our mind
does not simply jump from one random concept to another. Instead activation
travels through interconnected networks of nodes so that our thoughts flow from
one related concept to another.
Here's an image to
illustrate this (1). The concept of table is a single unit. When we think of
a table we're likely to then think of related concepts such
as eat or legs. The activation of the concept of
table spreads so that related concepts are more easily brought to mind.
This model has to do with discrete concepts, but it's likely that
larger ideas about situations and events flow in a similar manner. I think it's possible that we can notice this when sitting in a state of meditation watching the
flow of thoughts, can we observe relationships between concepts in our minds?
To do so you would have to stay in a meditative uninvolved state
of awareness, because if didn't we wouldn't be able to objectively (funny word
to use here, when discussing the essence of the subjectivity) observe how the
thoughts flow.
There are often gaps between thoughts when the flow stops. How
does it start again? Does it begin back on a related issue, or perhaps a new
concept or situation bubbles up? If it's a new concept, why is it in the
forefront of the mind, where do the thoughts flow from here...
It's all very Alice in Wonderland to me, how far down the rabbit
hole can we go- how much of our mental architecture can we become aware of?
Reference
(1) Lemer, I., Bentin, S., & Shriki, O. (2012).
Spreading activation in an attractor network with latching dynamics: automatic
semantic priming revisited. Cognitive
Science, 36(8), 1339-1382.