Meditation can reduce self-interested behaviors by quieting the defensive ego when the self is threatened. Three experiments tested this ego-quieting principle against the self-centrality principle. The first experiment (400 participants) examined meditation's effect on a salient self facing a proximal physical threat. The second (200 participants) tested distal defensiveness under physical threat. The third (200 participants) evaluated proximal defensiveness when self-concept was threatened. Results provide evidence that practicing meditation quiets the ego, or tends to do so, when attention focuses on a self threatened by a thought-based context.
Forty days of mindfulness meditation training in novices produced overlapping structural and functional changes in the precuneus, a posterior region of the default mode network. Cortical thickness increased while low-frequency brain activity (ALFF) decreased in that area. Reduced activity in the left precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex correlated with lower depression scores on the CES-D scale. The findings suggest that regional overlap of structural and functional plasticity may reflect different components of the complex neural changes induced by mindfulness meditation training.