Neuroplasticity, Meditation & the Predictive Brain - Ruben Laukkonen, PhD | The FitMind Podcast

What's the relationship between neuroplasticity, meditation and the predictive brain?
How does the brain work at its deepest levels? And to what extent can we radically upgrade it, creating neuroplastic changes?
Ruben Laukkonen, PhD is a cognitive neuroscientist, contemplative, speaker, and poet.
His eclectic background includes competing semi-professionally in Muay Thai Kickboxing, founding two businesses (including the first online market for bitcoin in Australia), and intensive meditation training.
Dr. Laukkonen is currently a principal investigator and lecturer at Southern Cross University and holds honorary fellowships at VU Amsterdam and The University of Queensland. He uses methods such as behavior, neuroimaging, machine learning, and phenomenology to empirically investigate some of the rarest states of human consciousness.
This episode is a full tour of the mind, including a deep dive into some of those rare states of consciousness and what they reveal about achieving the highest levels of human happiness.
For the full list of FitMind Podcast episodes, visit www.fitmind.com/podcast.
ABOUT FITMIND
FitMind provides mental fitness training based on the latest neuroscience. We created a mobile app that teaches 50+ science-based methods adapted from various traditions (i.e., Loving-kindness, Stoicism, Yoga, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, Indo-Tibetan Bön, etc.). Check it out here: bit.ly/fitmindtraining
Website: www.fitmind.com
Podcast: ​pod.link/fitmind
Instagram: bit.ly/IGfitmind
SHOW NOTES
0:00 | Introduction to Ruben Laukkonen, PhD
2:02 | Early Experience
11:15 | How the Mind Makes Itself
23:08 | Predictive Processing & Agitation
28:00 | Why There's Always Something Wrong
34:45 | Chain of Causality in the Mind
39:00 | The Mind Rebuilding After Deepest Levels of Meditation
43:28 | Meditation for Reconditioning the Mind
56:52 | Doing Nothing Very Well
58:08 | Stages of Meditation & Predictive Processing
1:11:52 | Cessation & Awakening Research
1:24:03 | Jhanas - Stages of Deconstruction
1:33:12 | Rapid Fire Questions
LINKS
rubenlaukkonen.com
fitmind.com/give

[@suhtetko5915]

Fit mind is the only app I paid for. Thank you so much. I feel like paying in return for the benefits I get from you. Worth it😊

[@GalenSchultzSA]

Just by observing your facial body language, is enough to know that you guys are truly sharing some amazing insights for all of us. Thank you. I smiled the whole way through :)

[@SladkaPritomnost]

yeah it's catchy.

[@soldatnerd]

Now I understand why I wasn't entering in the jhanas. I did do nothing/choiceless awareness wherein even jhanic states seemed like too much effort or doing something. The problem is that it seems like doing nothing didn't provide that much insight or change in me. The habitual patterns still persisted because I didn't take the time to deconstruct them and replace them with something wholesome. It's interesting because on the spectrum of awareness and attention, both extremes of doing nothing and concentration are rather similar. In doing nothing practice you don't even have enough attention to see directly what the mind is doing, so the habitual tendencies don't really change unless you get really invested and deep into the practice to the point that those habitual tendencies also take too much effort. With concentration you are so one pointed into the object that you lose awareness of everything else, leading to the same deal, you are not actually directly seeing the workings of the mind. I think both will eventually lead to cessation but the more sensible and practical option is to find the middle of these extremes, enough attention to see things arise and pass away but not so much that you lose awareness of everything else. I assume this is what is meant by yoking samatha and vipassana, letting go of the unwholesome and replacing it with the wholesome, you can see the arising and passing away directly while also changing the deeply held patterns that perpetuate your craving.

[@VeritableVagabond]

I appreciate your interviews. Ruben mentions self-inquiry. If you're taking guest requests, I can totally recommend Dr. Angelo Dillulo. He'd be cool to have on the podcast.

[@meditation-music-tv]

*"Meditation is the journey of self-discovery."* - Dalai Lama

[@titussteenhuisen8864]

Predictive mind - I experience a most likely future, access it involuntarily often dependent the presence of another person, it will be something that happens in my and or in the other persons future.

[@NurseLackey]

Appreciate the conversation on impermanence

[@John_Smith0]

very interesting, thank you!

[@titussteenhuisen8864]

Origin Thoughts are like invisible physical particles.They exist from the past can come from others made by the body and created and controlled by the mind. - my idea Do you have a quantum model like orchestrated objective reduction? Rodger Penrose and Stuart Hamerhoff.

[@leochiang6659]

Will there be new podcast episodes? It’s been a full year since the last one

[@MPans]

I know ! 😢

[@paulwyrough2765]

Liam! Where did you go? 😢

[@MPans]

😢

[@dharmayogaashram979]

In what religion is one practicing this meditation? Not honest to distort the meditation practices of specific religions.

[@tuanvunguyen906]

Tập trung nói luôn chủ đề chính là làm sao não bộ tốt như Tonystarr trong marvel. Cứ lan man. Mấy ông bạn này. Xóa nghèo từ mỗi bộ não. Sống để nhân loại trở nên ăn uống ngon, hạnh phúc nữa. Hết

[@charlemagne5764]

Psalms 82 :6 🪔I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. John 10:34-36.🤷‍♂️ Maybe if you realize you are a part of God you would realize it's not religion it's life. A beautiful tapestry of darks and contrasting colors.🌄🎨 . Bob Ross moment.