Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences June 28, 2007 Julie A. Brefczynski‐Lewis, Antoine Lutz, Hillary S. Schaefer et al. 988 citations
Meditation is a family of mental training practices that familiarize practitioners with specific mental processes. In age-matched participants, using functional MRI, activation in brain regions involved in sustained attention showed an inverted u-shaped curve: expert meditators with an average of 19,000 hours of practice had more activation than novices, but experts with an average of 44,000 hours had less activation. In response to distracter sounds, experts versus novices had less brain activation in regions related to discursive thoughts and emotions and more activation in regions related to response inhibition and attention. Correlation with hours of practice suggests possible plasticity in these mechanisms.