Zen meditation practitioners show a reduced duration of neural response in default-network brain regions during conceptual processing, suggesting that meditative training may help regulate the automatic cascade of semantic associations and spontaneous thought. Using fMRI and a lexical decision task, regular Zen practitioners and matched controls performed similarly behaviorally, but practitioners' brain activity linked to conceptual processing was briefer.
Regular Zen meditation practice may protect against age-related declines in brain structure and attention. In a comparison of 13 regular Zen meditators and 13 matched controls, only the control group showed the typical loss of gray matter volume and reduced attentional performance with age. Meditators showed no significant correlation of either measure with age. The protective effect on gray matter was strongest in the putamen, a brain area involved in attention. The findings suggest that regular meditation practice may have neuroprotective effects that reduce cognitive decline during normal aging.