Meditation May Help Rewire the Mind by Unlearning Habitual Thought Patterns

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

In an age where our thoughts constantly race between past regrets and future worries, a growing body of research suggests meditation may offer a surprising form of mental liberation—not by adding anything new, but by unlearning deeply embedded mental habits.

Cognitive neuroscientists Heleen Slagter and Ruben Laukkonen argue that meditation helps loosen the brain’s automatic tendencies to predict and interpret the world based on past experiences. Their “many-to-one” theory, rooted in the predictive brain model, proposes that by anchoring attention in the present moment, meditation reduces the brain’s dependence on habitual thought patterns, offering a path toward greater flexibility and emotional resilience.

The Predictive Brain at Work

The human brain doesn’t perceive reality directly. Instead, it constructs an internal model of the world based on predictions shaped by past experiences. These predictions minimize cognitive load and allow us to function efficiently. However, this predictive mechanism can also become overly rigid, reinforcing anxiety, rumination, and other maladaptive patterns.

“Much of our thinking and attention is shaped by habits,” says Slagter, Director of the Cognition & Plasticity Lab at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “Meditation disrupts these patterns and gives the brain a chance to recalibrate.”

Thought Constraints and the Mental Landscape

We have over 6,000 thoughts a day, which can be categorized by how deliberate or automatic they are. For example, mind-wandering involves minimal constraints, while rumination is highly automatic and planning is deliberate. These repeated patterns form “dents” in our mental terrain—grooves that future thoughts naturally follow.

“When we rehearse mental actions like planning a trip, we reinforce certain attention patterns,” Slagter explains. “Over time, these become deeply ingrained, shaping our thoughts in predictable ways.”

But meditation interrupts this cycle.

Meditation as Mental “Un-doing”

Practices like mindfulness or open-awareness meditation train the mind to observe thoughts and sensations without judgment. This quiet observing reduces the brain’s usual engagement with its predictions, gradually flattening those habitual grooves. The result is increased openness and flexibility in how we think and feel.

Unlike goal-driven attention, mindfulness invites non-selective awareness. “This kind of attention weakens habitual responses and expands the brain’s capacity to perceive and process experience in new ways,” Slagter notes.

Pruning the “Counterfactual Tree”

Slagter and Laukkonen use the metaphor of a Pythagoras Tree to describe how the brain climbs away from raw sensory data into complex layers of meaning. For example, a simple gold ring might trigger a cascade of symbolic associations and memories. Meditation helps reverse this abstraction by returning focus to immediate sensory input—breath, sound, or bodily sensations—thus “pruning” the branches of the counterfactual tree.

By disengaging from anticipatory processes, the mind can glimpse an unconditioned awareness—prior to thought, emotion, or judgment.

Befriending the Monkey Mind

Ironically, it’s during meditation that the restless “monkey mind” becomes most visible. But instead of fighting it, meditation encourages us to approach it with curiosity and compassion.

As Tibetan teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche advises, we should learn to befriend the mind rather than battle it. Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Loch Kelly poses a simple yet profound question: “What’s here now when there is no problem to solve?”

A More Flexible Mind

Ultimately, meditation may enhance cognitive flexibility—the ability to shift perspectives and adapt to new situations. By reducing our brain’s reliance on habitual predictions, meditation allows space for more creative, adaptive, and compassionate ways of thinking.

Laukkonen and Slagter believe this practice may help refine the mind’s thought landscape, narrowing the range of thoughts to those that serve our well-being, rather than keep us trapped in loops of worry or self-judgment.

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