Adam . .:
hey nick,
I know you have had some experience with the brain scan stuff, does there seem to be evidence that neuroplasticity has something to do with mental behaviors (sankharas)? I know that there is evidence that it has something to do with concentration, as shown in the yale study, but perhaps fabricating/not fabricating is something not picked up, as that is a change in mental behavior not necessarily structure of the brain.
An analogy is that if someone lifted lots of weights you could clearly tell by looking at their body, but it would be way harder to see that they were good at piano.
just a random thought
Disclaimer: This is my own experience.
While in the machine I saw in real time with feedback when awareness moved to just the seen and just the heard. In hindsight, I saw that I did perhaps recognize the absence of mental movements to fabricate 'objects' of consciousness. I had become more aware of the absence of such tendencies from past (what I considered full blown) PCE experiences and had begun to refer to such experiences as just seen in the seen, heard in the heard. So I was familiar with that absence.
The fmri machine was quite loud and I was with eyes open so when all intention to manipulate awareness and overlay it with a mental representation dropped, heard in the heard and just seen in the seen was the experience. The realtime feedback the research team gave (via computer screen) showed when awareness was like so versus when it flipped back to a movement of mind which was not 'seen in the seen' which gave off the what I called the 'shadow-being' experience and all the mental proliferation and vedana arising that accompanied it. In other words what I now term 'fabrications' of mind; aspects of experience overlayed and given 'shape' by the fashioning mind and its created 'mental overlays' i.e. 'objects' and a subjective reaction to said objects.
The feedback was delayed a few seconds but enough for me to be able to quickly shift back and forth from what I was calling 'seen in the seen' versus the unsatisfactory mental movement (which was related to the self narratives). This shifting back and forth and the real time feedback showing this back and forth shed light on exactly what I could do to train the mind to relinquish that which i saw as unsatisfactory (the mental movements and mental proliferation). In hindsight, what I now term 'sankhara' or fabrications (compounded phenomena giving rise to the self-narratives) was seen to be represented in the realtime feedback I received. This had a very profound effect on my practice afterwards as I simply kept doing what I did in the machine in daily life. The feedback was enough to confirm what I was doing originally was actually changing the way the brain operated. And it has since gone through further changes due to the angle and approach gained form my experience there.
Disclaimer: this is my own take on my own experience. No absolutes.