Focused-attention meditation (FAM) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM) produce distinct patterns of brain activity during cognitive and emotional tasks. In a study of 44 male Chinese meditators, FAM practice was linked to expertise-related improvements in attention task performance and corresponding neural activation differences, while LKM did not carry over to attention performance. Both forms of meditation affected neural responses to affective pictures: during viewing of sad faces, FAM practitioners showed activation consistent with attention-related processing, whereas LKM experts showed responses more aligned with differentiating emotional contagion from compassion or emotional regulation. These findings provide the first report of distinct neural activity associated with these meditation forms during sustained attention and emotion processing.
Long-term practice of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is linked to greater gray matter volume in specific brain regions involved in emotional regulation and empathy. Using magnetic resonance imaging, experts who had practiced LKM for at least five years showed more gray matter in the right angular gyrus and posterior parahippocampal gyrus compared to novices. The right angular gyrus finding is novel for meditation research and may relate to cognitive empathy. Greater gray matter also appeared in the left temporal lobe, consistent with studies of other meditation styles. These results suggest that LKM may influence brain structures underlying affective regulation, empathic response, anxiety, and mood.