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Zen Meditative Consciousness and Brain's Default Mode Network

Naoyuki Osaka

Transactions of the Japan Academy 2023 DOI: 10.2183/tja.77.2_117 (opens in new tab)

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Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Observational fMRI study Peer reviewed
Population Rinzai Zen monks with over seven years of meditation practice and healthy adults with no prior meditation experience
Intervention Zen meditation
Measures Stroop task, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Topics Buddhism Default mode network
Key findings The authors report that monks outperformed non-meditators on a Stroop task with fewer errors and shorter reaction times, indicating better attentional control. They also suggest that the working memory and default mode networks cooperated rather than anti-correlated over time, and that monks showed a strong inhibitory effect in functional connectivity during meditation, which they propose reflects an ability to handle conflict in the default mode network while maintaining meditative awareness.

Abstract

Meditation in Zen has received much attention in the scientific exploration of consciousness from metacognition and the social brain. Zen meditation provides effective clues to self-knowledge by providing awareness of “present self-being”. Our brains are thought to operate in dynamic equilibrium every day with two broad networks: the working memory network (WMN), which is oriented toward solving real problems (cognitive brain network), and the default mode network (DMN), which wanders in an internal imaginary and a creative world (social brain network). However, how these two cyclical networks operating in seesaw mode relate to meditation is not well understood. In this paper, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the process of meditation from a cognitive conflict situation in monks who had meditated in Rinzai Zen for over seven years and healthy adults who had not meditated before. The monks were asked to perform a Stroop task as a conflict task in the first half of the study, and were led to meditate in the second half. Behavioral experiments revealed that monks showed excellent performance under the Stroop task with fewer errors and shorter reaction times due to better control of attention, whereas healthy adults showed poor attentional control and were more affected by the conflicts. Two new findings about brain activity were found. First, it was suggested that the two networks were not in an anti-correlated relationship, as is usually claimed, on the time series, but were involved in a mutually cooperative manner. Second, in terms of functional connectivity, the monks' brains showed a strong inhibitory effect under meditation. As a result of years of Zen practice, the monks were found to be able to successfully deal with conflict situations in the DMN of the brain and maintain meditative awareness.

Comparable studies

Other experimental studies on default mode network, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
Functional connectivity of default mode network components: Correlation, anticorrelation, and causality Healthy subjects 2008 Observational study using resting-state fMRI and seed correlation analysis
Patterns of Brain Activity Supporting Autobiographical Memory, Prospection, and Theory of Mind, and Their Relationship to the Default Mode Network Healthy subjects 2009 Experimental study using fMRI
Dynamic reconfiguration of the default mode network during narrative comprehension Human subjects 2016 Experimental study
Broadband Cortical Desynchronization Underlies the Human Psychedelic State Healthy human participants 2013 Experimental study
The brain on art: intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network Human observers 2012 Observational study with fMRI and behavioral analysis

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Buddhism Default mode network Meditation Philosophy of mind