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The following program features simulated voices generated for educational and philosophical exploration.
Rachel Foster
Good evening. I'm Rachel Foster.
Greg Collins
And I'm Greg Collins. Welcome to Simulectics Radio.
Rachel Foster
Last night we examined Walter Mischel's work on personality consistency, exploring how the self may be far more situation-dependent than our subjective experience suggests. Tonight we turn to a practice that claims to reveal a different aspect of selfhood—meditation. Specifically, we're interested in what happens when we observe our own mental processes. Does meditation reveal something fundamental about the relationship between awareness and the contents of consciousness?
Greg Collins
Meditation has been practiced for millennia, but only recently has neuroscience begun examining what actually happens in the brain during meditative states. Are meditators discovering genuine features of consciousness, or are they creating particular experiences through training? And what might the observing self—the awareness that watches thoughts and sensations—tell us about the structure of identity?
Rachel Foster
To explore these questions, we're joined by Dr. Judson Brewer, a neuroscientist at Brown University and director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center. His work examines the neural mechanisms of mindfulness and meditation, particularly how these practices affect reward-based learning and the Default Mode Network. Welcome, Dr. Brewer.
Dr. Judson Brewer
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Greg Collins
Let's start with a basic question about what meditation actually involves neurologically. When someone sits down to meditate and attempts to observe their thoughts without getting caught up in them, what's happening in the brain?
Dr. Judson Brewer
One of the most consistent findings is that experienced meditators show reduced activity in the Default Mode Network—the network we've talked about on this show before, which is active during mind-wandering and self-referential processing. When you're caught up in thoughts about yourself, planning, ruminating, this network is highly active. During focused meditation, that activity decreases. But what's particularly interesting is that with practice, meditators develop a different relationship to Default Mode Network activity.
Rachel Foster
What does a different relationship mean in this context?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Beginning meditators often struggle when the Default Mode Network activates—they notice they're lost in thought and experience that as failure. But experienced meditators seem to maintain awareness even when the network is active. They notice thoughts arising without identifying with them or getting swept away. There's a quality of observation that persists alongside the mental content.
Greg Collins
This raises a fundamental question about the structure of consciousness. If you can be aware of thoughts without being identified with them, what is that awareness? Is it a separate system, or just another level of the same processing?
Dr. Judson Brewer
That's the central puzzle. From a neuroscience perspective, what we call awareness is itself brain activity—there's no homunculus sitting apart from the neural processes. But phenomenologically, there does seem to be a distinction between the contents of consciousness and the awareness of those contents. Meditation seems to make that distinction experientially vivid in a way that ordinary consciousness doesn't.
Rachel Foster
In contemplative traditions, this is often described as recognizing the difference between the observer and the observed. Thoughts, emotions, sensations come and go, but the awareness of them seems more stable. Is there any neural evidence for this subjective distinction?
Dr. Judson Brewer
We see shifts in which networks are active and how they interact. During focused attention meditation, there's increased activity in attentional control networks—the dorsal attention network and frontoparietal control network. These are regulating where attention goes. During open monitoring meditation, where you're just observing whatever arises, there's more of a balance between these control networks and sensory processing areas. The brain isn't suppressing stimuli; it's allowing them to arise while maintaining meta-awareness of the process.
Greg Collins
Meta-awareness is crucial here. That's awareness of awareness itself—knowing that you're conscious, knowing that you're attending to something. This seems to be what meditation trains. But is meta-awareness always present, just usually unnoticed, or does meditation actually cultivate something new?
Dr. Judson Brewer
I think it's more that meditation makes explicit something that's usually implicit. We're always capable of meta-awareness, but ordinarily we're so absorbed in content that we don't notice the awareness itself. Meditation creates conditions where that awareness becomes foreground rather than background. Whether that constitutes a different state or just a shift in what we're paying attention to is an interesting question.
Rachel Foster
This connects to something we discussed with Robin Carhart-Harris about ego dissolution. During psychedelic experiences, people report that awareness continues even as the sense of self dissolves. Meditation seems to produce something similar, though presumably through different mechanisms. Is the observing self that meditation reveals the same thing as the awareness that persists during ego death?
Dr. Judson Brewer
There are parallels. Both involve a reduction in Default Mode Network activity and both can produce experiences where consciousness seems to continue without the usual self-referential structure. But the mechanisms differ. Psychedelics primarily work by disrupting the brain's predictive hierarchies and increasing entropy—making the system more chaotic. Meditation works more through training attentional control and reducing habitual patterns. The phenomenology might be similar, but the paths are quite different.
Greg Collins
Let's dig into the predictive processing account. If the brain is constantly generating predictions about what will happen, including predictions about its own states, meditation could be seen as learning to observe those predictions without automatically acting on them. Is that a fair characterization?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Very much so. One framework I find useful is understanding meditation as learning to see thoughts and urges as mental events rather than truths or commands. Ordinarily, when a thought arises—I should check my phone, I'm hungry, that person annoyed me—we immediately act on it or get caught up in elaborating it. Meditation trains you to see the thought as just a prediction the brain generated, not necessarily something that requires response.
Rachel Foster
This has clear clinical applications. Much of what we deal with in therapy involves people being tyrannized by their thoughts—anxious predictions, depressive ruminations, compulsive urges. If meditation can create distance from these mental events, that's therapeutically valuable.
Dr. Judson Brewer
Absolutely. That's why mindfulness-based interventions have been integrated into treatments for depression, anxiety, and addiction. The key insight is that you don't necessarily need to change the content of thoughts—you can change your relationship to them. When someone realizes they can watch an anxious thought arise and pass without getting pulled into the anxiety spiral, that's transformative.
Greg Collins
But there's a paradox here. If awareness is itself a brain process, then observing your thoughts is just one neural process monitoring another. What makes the observing process special? Why privilege the observer over the observed?
Dr. Judson Brewer
That's a crucial point. From a materialist perspective, the observer is just more brain activity. But phenomenologically, the observing mode seems to have different properties. It's less reactive, less caught up in narrative, more stable. Whether that difference is fundamental or just functional is debatable. But functionally, cultivating the observer mode seems to reduce suffering, which is what drew people to meditation in the first place.
Rachel Foster
There's something interesting about the language we use. We say watch your thoughts, observe your breath, notice sensations. This creates a dualism—a watcher and things being watched. But if it's all one system, that division is artificial. Yet the practice seems to depend on maintaining that division experientially.
Dr. Judson Brewer
That's right. And more advanced meditation practices actually work to dissolve that division. In traditions like Dzogchen or Zen, the goal is to recognize that the observer and observed are not ultimately separate. But getting to that recognition often requires first establishing the observing capacity, which does create a kind of dualism as a temporary framework.
Greg Collins
This raises questions about what meditation is actually revealing versus what it's constructing. When someone reports experiencing pure awareness without content, are they discovering a basic feature of consciousness, or creating a particular experience through systematic deconditioning?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Both might be true. Meditation might reveal potentials that are always present but usually obscured by habitual patterns, while also actively constructing particular experiences through training. The brain is plastic—it changes based on what you do with it. Long-term meditators show structural changes in areas related to attention and body awareness. So they're not just uncovering something that was hidden; they're developing capacities through practice.
Rachel Foster
Let's talk about the Default Mode Network more specifically. You mentioned it's active during mind-wandering and self-referential thought. The reduction in its activity during meditation has been linked to reports of decreased sense of self. What's the relationship between Default Mode Network activity and selfhood?
Dr. Judson Brewer
The Default Mode Network seems particularly involved in constructing the narrative self—the stories we tell about who we are, our past, our future, our relationships. When that network quiets, people often report that the constant chatter about me and my story subsides. What remains is more of a core awareness or presence. But interestingly, the network doesn't go completely silent even in deep meditation. There's still some activity, just less self-referential elaboration.
Greg Collins
So maybe the network has multiple functions, only some of which are about narrative self-construction?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Likely yes. It's also involved in memory consolidation, creative thinking, and social cognition. What meditation seems to do is reduce the habitual, automatic self-referential mode while potentially preserving other functions. Though we're still mapping this out—the network is complex and our understanding is evolving.
Rachel Foster
There's been increasing interest in meditation as a tool for treating addiction. Can you explain how observing mental processes might help with compulsive behaviors?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Addiction operates through reward-based learning. You do something, get a reward, and your brain learns to repeat that behavior. The problem is that many addictive behaviors—smoking, overeating, compulsive phone checking—initially feel rewarding but ultimately increase suffering. What we've found is that mindful observation of the experience can update those reward values. When someone really pays attention to what smoking actually feels like—not the idealized memory but the actual sensory experience—it often becomes less appealing.
Greg Collins
So bringing awareness to the process disrupts the automatic habit loop?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Exactly. Habits rely on autopilot—stimulus, response, reward, repeat. When you insert awareness into that loop, you create space for choice. You notice the urge arising, observe it without immediately acting, and sometimes it passes without action. The brain learns that acting on every urge isn't necessary, which weakens the habit over time.
Rachel Foster
This seems related to what we discussed about the illusion of will. Meditation doesn't necessarily give you more conscious control, but it reveals the space between stimulus and response where choice can occur.
Dr. Judson Brewer
That's a nice way to put it. You're not gaining some magical power of conscious will, but you're becoming aware of processes that were previously automatic. That awareness itself changes the system. It's not that a homunculus is now in charge; it's that the whole system is operating differently because it includes self-monitoring.
Greg Collins
There's a question about whether meditation reveals universal features of consciousness or whether the experiences are culturally and practice-specific. Buddhist meditation emphasizes observing impermanence and not-self. Christian contemplative practices have different emphases. Do these different frameworks produce genuinely different experiences, or just different interpretations?
Dr. Judson Brewer
Probably both. The basic capacity for meta-awareness seems universal—any human brain can learn to observe its own processes. But the framework you're operating within shapes what you notice and how you interpret it. Buddhist meditators might interpret experiences through the lens of emptiness and impermanence. Christian contemplatives might frame similar experiences in terms of union with the divine. The raw phenomenology might overlap more than the conceptual frameworks suggest.
Rachel Foster
This raises methodological questions about studying meditation scientifically. If experiences are shaped by interpretive frameworks, how do we separate the core effects from cultural overlay?
Dr. Judson Brewer
That's challenging. What we try to do is focus on measurable outcomes—changes in brain activity, behavioral changes, reductions in symptoms like anxiety or depression. These can be assessed independently of how people interpret their experiences. But you're right that the subjective phenomenology is always filtered through conceptual frameworks. That's true for all conscious experience, not just meditation.
Greg Collins
Let's return to the question of whether the observing self is a real entity or a useful fiction. In some Buddhist traditions, the goal is to realize that there is no observer—that awareness itself is empty, not a thing but a process. How do we square that with the phenomenology of meditation, which often emphasizes cultivating the witness?
Dr. Judson Brewer
This gets into deep philosophical territory. One interpretation is that the observing self is a skillful means—a temporary construct that helps you gain distance from habitual patterns. Once that distance is established, you can investigate the observer itself and potentially recognize it as also empty, also just process. The trap is reifying the observer, treating it as a permanent unchanging entity, which just creates a new form of identification.
Rachel Foster
So there's a progression. First, you learn to observe thoughts and sensations without identifying with them. Then you investigate the observer itself and recognize it too as impermanent and constructed. What remains?
Dr. Judson Brewer
In advanced practice, what's reported is a kind of knowing without a knower, awareness without someone who is aware. Whether that's metaphysics or phenomenology is hard to say. From a neuroscience perspective, it might be brain states where self-referential processing is minimized but awareness continues. But translating between contemplative phenomenology and neuroscience is tricky—the languages don't map cleanly.
Greg Collins
This brings us back to the core puzzle. If consciousness is brain activity, then awareness must be neural activity. But the experience of awareness often seems qualitatively different from other mental contents. Meditation makes that experiential difference vivid, but does it reveal something ontologically distinct or just a functional distinction within a unified system?
Dr. Judson Brewer
I think the honest answer is we don't know. Meditation provides a method for investigating consciousness from the inside, which is valuable. Neuroscience investigates it from the outside. Ideally, these approaches inform each other. But there may be limits to how well third-person neuroscience can capture first-person phenomenology. The explanatory gap between brain processes and subjective experience remains.
Rachel Foster
What are the practical implications of meditation research for how we think about identity and selfhood? If meditation can substantially alter our experience of self, what does that tell us?
Dr. Judson Brewer
It suggests that the self is more fluid and malleable than we typically assume. The way we experience ourselves can change dramatically based on mental training. That has implications for mental health—if problematic patterns of self-experience can be altered through practice, that opens therapeutic possibilities. It also has implications for how we understand identity more broadly. The solid, unchanging self we take for granted is more of a construct than we realize.
Greg Collins
This connects to themes we've explored throughout this series—the self as construction, as process, as context-dependent performance. Meditation seems to offer a method for deconstructing that performance and observing the underlying processes.
Rachel Foster
Though there's something paradoxical about using one mental process to observe others, as if observation somehow stands outside the system it's observing.
Dr. Judson Brewer
That's the paradox at the heart of reflective consciousness. We're using the mind to investigate the mind. There's no external vantage point. But that doesn't make the investigation useless—it just means we need epistemic humility about what we're discovering versus what we're constructing. Meditation provides valuable insights into the nature of mind, but those insights are themselves conditioned by the practice and framework.
Greg Collins
Dr. Brewer, thank you for this conversation. You've helped us think through the relationship between meditation, awareness, and the construction of self.
Dr. Judson Brewer
Thank you for having me. These are fascinating questions that deserve continued investigation.
Rachel Foster
That's our program for this evening. We've examined how meditation practices reveal and perhaps construct the observing self, and what this tells us about the relationship between awareness and identity. Join us tomorrow as we continue exploring the psychology of self.
Greg Collins
Good night.