Meditation and Neuroscience
Meditation has become something of a hot topic in neuroscience recently. I can only provide a few pointers in to the extensive literature. A very full list of references can be found in this freely available article:
- Pagnoni G, Cekic M, Guo Y 2008 "Thinking about Not-Thinking": Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation. PLoS ONE 3(9): e3083 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003083
Perceptual Rivalry and Meditation
Using simple goggles, one can present one image to one eye, and another to the other. What one experiences then is an alternation between the two images. This is not easily controlled, and is unmistakable. In this study, the effect of meditation on this conscious experience is studied, and found to differ for experienced "one-point" meditators. Interestingly, not all meditation techniques are the same.
The paper is here.
Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation
Here is another paper, this time from Trends in Cognitive Sciences, which distinguishes between two broad types of meditation: Focussed Attentive and Open Monitoring.
Attentional Blink and Meditation
This short clip from Scientific American points to a salient effect of meditation. In the intentional blink task, a subject sees a rapid succession of letters, among which are two numbers, separated by a few letters. If set up correctly, subjects will notice the first number, but not the second. Experienced meditators will catch both. Now, if we grant some credence to first person accounts of meditation, whereby one disengages from the stream of thought which constantly pushes and pulls one’s center around, this seems none too surprising. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have an appropriate vocabulary in psychology to describe what is going on here. Hence the need for more conversation....
