Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity.

ABSTRACT: Many philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that "living in the moment" increases happiness. However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing. We investigated brain activity in experienced meditators and matched meditation-naive controls as they performed several different meditations (Concentration, Loving-Kindness, Choiceless Awareness). We found that the main nodes of the default-mode network (medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices) were relatively deactivated in experienced meditators across all meditation types. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis revealed stronger coupling in experienced meditators betw

SUBMITTER: Brewer JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3250176 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature