Long-term meditation practice may not produce lasting changes in certain brain markers of attention. Experienced mindfulness meditators and non-meditators showed no differences in behavioral performance or in neural markers such as theta phase synchronisation, P200, and P300 during a dichotic oddball listening task when neither group meditated before or during the session. Bayes Factor analysis found evidence against group differences for P200 and P300. The findings suggest that increased activity in these attention-related neural markers does not reflect stable, trait-like changes in a community sample of mindfulness meditators, adding nuance to understanding how much meditation is needed to alter specific brain processes.
Experienced meditators exhibit distinct neural activity during performance monitoring and error-processing compared to non-meditators. Using a larger sample and more rigorous analyses than prior work, the study clarifies previously inconsistent findings, showing that long-term mindfulness practice is associated with altered brain responses when detecting and processing errors.
Experienced mindfulness meditators show altered brain reactivity to magnetic stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to non-meditators. In a sample of 15 meditators and 19 matched controls, transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with electroencephalography revealed that meditators had larger P60/N100 ratios in response to both left and right prefrontal stimulation, suggesting differences in inhibitory activity. The spatial distribution of neural activity around 300 milliseconds after stimulation also differed between groups, potentially reflecting altered connectivity between cortical and subcortical regions. These findings indicate that long-term mindfulness practice is associated with measurable neurophysiological changes in brain regions supporting attention and cognitive control.
Experienced mindfulness meditators show altered brain reactivity to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) compared to non-meditators. When TMS was applied to the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, meditators had larger P60/N100 ratios in their brain responses, suggesting differences in cortical reactivity. No differences were seen in the individual P60 or N100 amplitudes. Preliminary evidence also indicated differences in the distribution of neural activity about 300 milliseconds after stimulation, possibly reflecting greater inhibitory activity in frontal regions and differences in cortico-subcortical reverberation. These findings contribute to understanding the neurophysiology of mindfulness.