Learning to Attenuate Myself: A Predictive Processing Account of the Body-Scan Meditation

The practice of meditation consists in allocating attention on sensory stimuli. As it is commonly known, attention allocation tends to increase both the cortical and the phenomenal response to the target. Yet, in deep contemplative states practitioners often report to feel a complete dissolution of body boundaries, i.e. the state of banga (in Pali). This phenomenon creates a tension with existing literature on attention: How does attention decrease the perception of the sensory target instead of increasing it? This paper aims at solving the tension by examining computational, phenomenological, and embodied approaches to contemplative practices. The body-scan technique (Vipassana tradition) is taken as an exemplary practice that leads to the state of bhanga. Through a predictive processing account of the attentional processes of the body-scan, I propose an “overly attenuated” body of the practitioner may render the phenomenology of the state of bhanga. For this purpose, I first present the body-scan technique and its phenomenology (section 1, 2). Then, I present relevant concepts in the Predictive Processing framework (section 3), and propose a predictive processing analysis of attentional processes of the body-scan (section 4). I claim that the body-scan enhances the accuracy of (low-level) predictions on somatosensory cues, which in turn attenuate them. This mechanism, I suggest, may underlie the short-term phenomenology of the body-scan. Finally, implications of linking attention to body perception and future outlooks are examined (section 5).