title: Neural correlates of focused attention and cognitive monitoring in meditation.
abstract: Meditation refers to a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory practices, which can be classified into two main styles - focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM) - involving different attentional, cognitive monitoring and awareness processes. In a functional magnetic resonance study we originally characterized and contrasted FA and OM meditation forms within the same experiment, by an integrated FA-OM design. Theravada Buddhist monks, expert in both FA and OM meditation forms, and lay novices with 10 days of meditation practice, participated in the experiment. Our evidence suggests that expert meditators control cognitive engagement in conscious processing of sensory-related, thought and emotion contents, by massive self-regulation of fronto-parietal and insular areas in the left hemisphere, in a meditation state-dependent fashion. We also found that anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices play antagonist roles in the executive control of the attention setting in meditation tasks. Our findings resolve the controversy between the hypothesis that meditative states are associated to transient hypofrontality or deactivation of executive brain areas, and evidence about the activation of executive brain areas in meditation. Finally, our study suggests that a functional reorganization of brain activity patterns for focused attention and cognitive monitoring takes place with mental practice, and that meditation-related neuroplasticity is crucially associated to a functional reorganization of activity patterns in prefrontal cortex and in the insula.
authors.affiliation: ITAB, Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies, G. D'Annunzio University Foundation, Chieti, Italy. amanna@unich.it
authors.forename: Antonietta
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Manna
authors.forename: Antonino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Raffone
authors.forename: Mauro Gianni
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Perrucci
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nardo
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ferretti
authors.forename: Armando
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tartaro
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Londei
authors.forename: Cosimo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Del Gratta
authors.forename: Marta Olivetti
authors.initials: MO
authors.lastname: Belardinelli
authors.forename: Gian Luca
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Romani
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D002016:Buddhism / Q000523:psychology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D019122:Meditation / Q000523:psychology; D008875:Middle Aged; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology