title: Focused attention, open monitoring and loving kindness meditation: effects on attention, conflict monitoring, and creativity - A review.
abstract: Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a topic for scientific research and theories on meditation are becoming ever more specific. We distinguish between what is called focused Attention meditation, open Monitoring meditation, and loving kindness (or compassion) meditation. Research suggests that these meditations have differential, dissociable effects on a wide range of cognitive (control) processes, such as attentional selection, conflict monitoring, divergent, and convergent thinking. Although research on exactly how the various meditations operate on these processes is still missing, different kinds of meditations are associated with different neural structures and different patterns of electroencephalographic activity. In this review we discuss recent findings on meditation and suggest how the different meditations may affect cognitive processes, and we give suggestions for directions of future research.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute for Psychological Research and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Dominique P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Lippelt
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute for Psychological Research and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hommel
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute for Psychological Research and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Lorenza S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Colzato
keywords: ACC; attention; conflict monitoring; focused attention; open monitoring; vipassana