Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Helen Y. Weng, Mushim P. Ikeda, Jarrod A Lewis-Peacock et al.
Mindfulness and compassion meditation are thought to promote prosocial behavior, but prior research has lacked diversity, limiting generalizability. To address this, researchers propose Intersectional Neuroscience, a framework that adapts research procedures to be inclusive of underrepresented groups through community engagement and individualized multivariate methods. Partnering with a diverse U.S. meditation center, they adapted fMRI screening and recruitment to include racial/ethnic minorities, gender and sexual minorities, people with disabilities, neuropsychiatric disorders, and lower-income individuals. They scanned 15 diverse meditators (80% racial/ethnic minorities, 53% gender and sexual minorities) and used individualized machine learning on fMRI data to decode mental states during breath-focused meditation. All participants' unique brain patterns were recognized significantly above chance. This demonstrates feasibility of inclusive neuroscience to develop individualized neural metrics of meditation.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2020
Helen Y. Weng, Jarrod A Lewis-Peacock, Frederick M Hecht et al.
Multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI data can recognize five internal attentional states—breath attention, mind wandering, self-referential processing, attention to feet, and attention to sounds—in individual participants with accuracy well above chance (over 41% vs. 20% chance). In a mixed sample of 16 experienced meditators and novices, classifiers trained on a directed attention task successfully identified these states in 87.5% of participants. When applied to a separate 10-minute meditation session, the classifiers indicated that participants spent more time attending to breath than mind wandering or self-referential processing. The findings suggest that objective, participant-level measurement of mental states during meditation is feasible, potentially improving assessment of internally-oriented attention cultivated by meditation.
Nature Human Behaviour
June 3, 2019
David A Ziegler, Alexander J. Simon, C. Gallen et al.
Six weeks of using a meditation-inspired, closed-loop mobile app called MediTrain improved sustained attention and working memory in healthy young adults. These cognitive gains were accompanied by positive changes in neural signatures of attentional control, specifically frontal theta inter-trial coherence and parietal P3b latency, as measured by electroencephalography. The findings suggest that delivering aspects of focused-attention meditation through a modern technology-based approach can enhance attention in a population where such improvement has proven difficult.
Helen Weng, Mushim P. Ikeda, Jarrod Lewis-Peacock et al.
A research framework called Intersectional Neuroscience, which adapts research procedures to be more inclusive of underrepresented groups, was tested in partnership with a diverse U.S. meditation center. The approach used community engagement and individualized multivariate neuroscience methods. With person-centered screening, 15 diverse meditators (80% racial/ethnic minorities, 53% gender and sexual minorities) were recruited and scanned. Machine learning algorithms recognized each meditator's unique brain patterns during breath-focused meditation significantly above chance levels, allowing individual-level attention profiles to be compiled. The study demonstrates feasibility of including diverse participants and developing individualized neural metrics of meditation practice.