title: Follow your breath: respiratory interoceptive accuracy in experienced meditators.
abstract: Attention to internal bodily sensations is a core feature of mindfulness meditation. Previous studies have not detected differences in interoceptive accuracy between meditators and nonmeditators on heartbeat detection and perception tasks. We compared differences in respiratory interoceptive accuracy between meditators and nonmeditators in the ability to detect and discriminate respiratory resistive loads and sustain accurate perception of respiratory tidal volume during nondistracted and distracted conditions. Groups did not differ in overall performance on the detection and discrimination tasks; however, meditators were more accurate in discriminating the resistive load with the lowest ceiling effect. Meditators were also more accurate during the nondistracted tracking task at a lag time of 1 s following the breath. Results provide initial support for the notion that meditators have greater respiratory interoceptive accuracy compared to nonmeditators.
authors.affiliation: Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94115, USA. jjdaubenmier@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Daubenmier
authors.forename: Jocelyn
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sze
authors.forename: Catherine E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Kerr
authors.forename: Margaret E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Kemeny
authors.forename: Wolf
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Mehling
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000403:Airway Resistance / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019122:Meditation / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D064866:Mindfulness; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D015656:Respiratory Mechanics / Q000502:physiology*; D012649:Self Concept; D013990:Tidal Volume / Q000502:physiology
keywords: Anxiety; Interoceptive accuracy; Interoceptive awareness; Meditation; Mindfulness; Respiration