Mind wandering and attention during focused meditation: A fine-grained temporal analysis of fluctuating cognitive states

By Wendy Hasenkamp, Christine D. Wilson-Mendenhall, Erica Duncan, Lawrence W. Barsalou. NeuroImage, 2012

636 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Studies have suggested that the default mode network is active during mind wandering, which is often experienced intermittently during sustained attention tasks. Conversely, an anticorrelated task-positive network is thought to subserve various forms of attentional processing. Understanding how these two systems work together is central for understanding many forms of optimal and sub-optimal task performance. Here we present a basic model of naturalistic cognitive fluctuations between mind wandering and attentional states derived from the practice of focused attention meditation. This model proposes four intervals in a cognitive cycle: mind wandering, awareness of mind wandering, shifting of attention, and sustained attention. People who train in this style of meditation cultivate their abilities to monitor cognitive processes related to attention and distraction, making them well suited to report on these mental events. Fourteen meditation practitioners performed breath-focused meditation while undergoing fMRI scanning. When participants realized their mind had wandered, they pressed a button and returned their focus to the breath. The four intervals above were then constructed around these button presses. We hypothesized that periods of mind wandering would be associated with default mode activity, whereas cognitive processes engaged during awareness of mind wandering, shifting of attention and sustained attention would engage attentional subnetworks. Analyses revealed activity in brain regions associated with the default mode during mind wandering, and in salience network regions during awareness of mind wandering. Elements of the executive network were active during shifting and sustained attention. Furthermore, activations during these cognitive phases were modulated by lifetime meditation experience. These findings support and extend theories about cognitive correlates of distributed brain networks.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd502282af096df92a6ac10c0cd1403b17de0d20

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Difficulty of Defining Mindfulness: Current Thought and Critical Issues (2013, background): “An increasing number of studies have recently shown that meditators engaged in both concentration and mindfulness meditation practices showed reduced activation of the DMN while meditating (e.g. Brewer et al. 2011; Hasenkamp et al. 2012; Pagnoni et al. 2008).”
The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs (2014, background): “…et al., 2012a; Carhart-Harris et al., 2012b), a number of studies have found decreased DMN activity (Farb et al., 2007; Brewer et al., 2011; Hasenkamp et al., 2012) as well as decreased DMN-TPN inverse coupling in meditation (Brewer et al., 2011; Josipovic et al., 2011; Froeliger et al.,…”
A Conservation of Resources Perspective on Negative Affect and Innovative Work Behaviour: the Role of Affect Activation and Mindfulness (2016, neutral): “…as mindfulness-based theory and research have consistently documented, mindfulness stabilizes individual attention in the present, directs it among competing demands and allows people to make an efficient use of their cognitive resources (Good et al. 2016; Hasenkamp et al. 2012; Tang et al. 2007).”