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Articles and News

MindScience Academy curates a series of articles with the intention to gloss and approach the ongoing exchange between scientific research and contemplative traditions. Through such endeavor, we shall try to expand the tools at the disposal of the critical reader and researcher, without the pretense of exhausting debate, on the contrary, multiplying and hybridizing its languages. This way, our column resembles the laboratory itself; critical, enzymatic, open to surprise and transformative experience.
Mind consciousness Robina Courtin
FOCUS ON JANUARY 2024

"Our mind, or consciousness, is not the handiwork of anyone else", by Ven Robina Courtin

The job of the mind is cognition, and clearly Buddhism asserts subtler levels of cognition not posited by neuroscience. Our potential – the enlightenment of buddhahood – it’s the very nature of our mind.
Mind in Buddhism Berzin
FOCUS ON JANUARY 2024

"Mind According to Buddhism", by Alexander Berzin

Understanding the components that comprise a moment of our subjective experience enables us to deconstruct the moment. Such deconstruction methods also help us to understand what others are experiencing and to interact with them in a compassionate way.
Cervello trino mappare emozioni
Body, Mind and Emotions

Mapping Emotions (4): Triune Brain

The trine model of the human brain first introduced by MacLean — seeing the human brain as evolved in three main waves, the first of which has created a reptilian complex at the core, the second a paleo-mammal limbic system and lastly the recent structures of the neo-cortex — is now considered anatomically obsolete and Damasio's work has clearly shown the most "primitive" structures to be vital to superior cognition. How much of this layered conception, made of levels, ancient and recent, primitive or cognitively superior, with interactions flowing in both senses (top-down or bottom-up), still survives in the debate?
"Come il respiro modula la coscienza e stati non ordinari di coscienza" di Gemignani respiro
FOCUS ON JANUARY 2024

"Breath and Consciousness: from ancient practices to neuroscientific discoveries", by UniPi

Slow breathing techniques seem to enhance autonomic, cerebral, emotional, and behavioral flexibility, leading to a range of benefits for the individual who practices them.
MSA Attenzione
Consciousness and Inner Reality

Technologies of attention (2): between mental and collective

Bernard Stiegler's philosophical reflection on attention (2010; 2014) illustrates how attention is more than just concentration or vigilance. Attention also concerns desire, waiting, active participation, interest.
Relazioni e narrazione
Relationships and Society

Values, relationships, and awareness. When reality is a matter of narrative

In an uncertain and complex world, human beings have a natural inclination to construct narratives: stories that weave together the most different threads of their experiences into a coherent puzzle of meaning.
MSA tecnologia attenzione
Consciousness and Inner Reality

Attention technology (1): introduction

In this series of articles we discuss some of the key reflections of Bernard Stiegler's analysis on the link between digital technologies and the destruction of attention; on its consequences for individual and collective life.
Mappare emozioni
Body, Mind and Emotions

Mapping emotions (3): body budgeting

The debate confronting the two paradigms partly relates to how we define that which is shared or universal. Even within its constructivist perspective, Barrett accepts the existence of universals. Indeed, his model envisages affects that are constantly fluctuating in valence (positive or negative).
MSA Mappare Emozioni
Body, Mind and Emotions

Mapping emotions (2): basic emotions versus constructivism

The field of affective neuroscience has recently witnessed a vigorous debate between two different approaches to understanding emotions. The first, Basic Emotion Theories, also referred to by various names such as the mechanisms underlying them (emotion circuits, somatic markersand so on), or their supposed nature (nativism vs essentialism)
Nucleo buddhismo
Consciousness and Inner Reality

Preserving the spiritual nexus of Buddhist thought

Now that the Buddhist traditions confront themselves with cognitive neuroscience and other natural sciences, trying to build up or expand an edifice for studying the mind and conscious experience, it seems vital to stand for the legitimacy and self-sufficiency of Buddhist traditional thought, maintaining critical distance from the prestige (and thus privilege) the scientific apparatus holds in modern western society.
MSA buddhismo scientifico
Focus on November 2023

Scientific Buddhism in the XIX century

From the XIX century on, Buddhism has been called to confront challenges and opportunities collateral to the religious and cultural structure that characterized it in the pre-modern period.
MSA Mappare Emozioni
Body, Mind and Emotions

Mapping emotions (1): introduction

Charles Hampden-Turner's classic Mapping the Mind (1982) includes sixty mapping models of the human being, of his psyche. His map categories range from historical to religious, to psychoanalytic, existentialist, psychosocial, creative, linguistic-symbolic, cybernetic, structural and “paradigmatic” perspectives. From Taoism, St. Augustine, Blake, Darwin, Marx, Weber and Freud, up to Lacan, Bateson, Chomsky and Varela. For the time, Hampden-Turner's text is extremely sophisticated, rich, and accessible; today his approach desperately needs an update.

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