“Thinking about Not-Thinking”: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 3; no. 9; p. e3083
• Main Authors: Pagnoni, Giuseppe, Cekic, Milos, Guo, Ying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 03.09.2008; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adult; Attention; Attention - physiology; Automatic control; Behavior; Brain; Brain Mapping; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive therapy; Deactivation; Decision making; Female; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Hemodynamics; Humans; Hypotheses; Information processing; Language; Laws, regulations and rules; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Male; Medical imaging; Meditation; Mental depression; Mental Processes - physiology; Mental task performance; Nervous System; Neural Pathways - physiology; Neuroimaging; Neurology; Neurons - physiology; Neurophysiology; Neuroscience/Cognitive Neuroscience; Neuroscience/Experimental Psychology; Neuroscience/Psychology; Neuroses; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Obsessive compulsive disorder; Physiology; Posture; Semantics; Stability; Thinking; Zen Buddhism; Atlanta Georgia; United States > US; Georgia
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003083

Recent neuroimaging studies have identified a set of brain regions that are metabolically active during wakeful rest and consistently deactivate in a variety the performance of demanding tasks. This "default network" has been functionally linked to the stream of thoughts occurring automatically in the absence of goal-directed activity and which constitutes an aspect of mental behavior specifically addressed by many meditative practices. Zen meditation, in particular, is traditionally associated with a mental state of full awareness but reduced conceptual content, to be attained via a disciplined regulation of attention and bodily posture. Using fMRI and a simplified meditative condition interspersed with a lexical decision task, we investigated the neural correlates of conceptual processing during meditation in regular Zen practitioners and matched control subjects. While behavioral performance did not differ between groups, Zen practitioners displayed a reduced duration of the neural response linked to conceptual processing in regions of the default network, suggesting that meditative training may foster the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation.