No effect of focused attention and open monitoring meditation on EEG auditory mismatch negativity in expert and novice practitioners.
Enrico Fucci, Arnaud Poublan-Couzardot, Oussama Abdoun, Antoine Lutz
International Journal of Psychophysiology March 28, 2022 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.03.010 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Controlled experiment Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Expert and novice practitioners of meditation |
| Intervention | Open monitoring meditation |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key findings | No effect of focused attention or open monitoring meditation on auditory MMN amplitude was found, providing a non-replication of previous work. |
Abstract
The auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) is a well characterized event-related potential component which has gained recent attention in theoretical models describing the impact of various styles of mindfulness meditation on attentional processes and perceptual inference. Previous findings highlighted a distinct modulation of the MMN amplitude by different meditation practices and degrees of expertise. In the present study, we attempted to replicate results from the recent literature with a data sample that allowed for increased statistical power compared to previous experiments. Relying on traditional frequentist analysis, we found no effect of focused attention and open monitoring meditation on the auditory MMN amplitude compared to a control condition (silent movie) in expert or novice practitioners (all p > 0.17), providing a non-replication of our previous work (Fucci et al. 2018). Using a Bayesian approach, we found strong evidence against an interaction effect on the MMN amplitude between expertise groups and meditation practices (BF01 = 11.0), strong evidence against effects of either meditation practices compared to the control condition (BF01 between 11.9 and 16.1) and moderate evidence against an effect of expertise during meditation (BF01 between 5.3 and 7.9). On the other hand, we replicated previous evidence of increased alpha oscillatory power during meditation practices compared to a control state (p < 0.001). We discuss our null findings in relation to factors that could undermine the replicability of previous research on this subject, namely low statistical power, use of flexible analysis methods and a possible publication bias leading to a misrepresentation of the available evidence.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |
Citations in the library
Cited by 6
- Neurophysiological mechanisms of focused attention meditation: A scoping systematic review Imaging Neuroscience 2025
- Investigating the effects of focused attention (mantra) meditation on mismatch negativity: Insights into sensory and cognitive processing using an intensity oddball paradigm. Neuroscience April 6, 2025
- Neural Differences in Conflict Monitoring, Stimulus Expectancy, and Attention-Related Processes in Experienced Meditators Mindfulness July 3, 2026
- The Role of Meditation in Shaping Resilience. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences May 1, 2026
- Variation of Meditation Effects in Human Brain Depending on Different Meditative Forms using Band Power Features of EEG Signal 2024 IEEE Calcutta Conference December 14, 2024
and 1 more in the library
Cites 31
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- Conceptual and methodological issues in research on mindfulness and meditation. American Psychologist October 1, 2015
- Investigating the phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices from a neurocognitive perspective. American Psychologist October 1, 2015
- A systematic review of the neurophysiology of mindfulness on EEG oscillations Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 2015
- Mindfulness starts with the body: somatosensory attention and top-down modulation of cortical alpha rhythms in mindfulness meditation Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013
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