Mind wandering and attention during focused meditation: a fine-grained temporal analysis of fluctuating cognitive states.
Neuroimage January 2, 2012 Wendy Hasenkamp, Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, Erica Duncan et al.
A model of naturalistic cognitive fluctuations between mind wandering and attentional states, derived from focused attention meditation, proposes four intervals in a cognitive cycle: mind wandering, awareness of mind wandering, shifting of attention, and sustained attention. Fourteen meditation practitioners performed breath-focused meditation during fMRI scanning, pressing a button when they realized their mind had wandered. Mind wandering was associated with default mode activity, awareness of mind wandering with salience network regions, and shifting and sustained attention with executive network elements. Activations were modulated by lifetime meditation experience, supporting theories about cognitive correlates of distributed brain networks.