PLoS Biology
May 4, 2007
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
762 citations
Intensive meditation training reduces the attentional blink—a phenomenon where a second target in a rapid stream is often missed when it appears shortly after a first target. Three months of daily mental practice led to a smaller attentional blink and decreased brain-resource allocation to the first target, measured by a smaller P3b brain potential. Individuals with the largest reduction in resource allocation to the first target showed the greatest improvement in detecting the second target. These findings indicate that mental training enhances control over limited attentional resources and supports lifelong brain plasticity.
Journal of Neuroscience
October 21, 2009
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, Nancy B. Rawlings et al.
499 citations
Three months of intensive meditation training improved the ability to sustain attention, as measured by dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography. Training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, shown by enhanced theta-band phase consistency of neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Individuals with the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behavioral response variability. Reduced variability in neural processing also occurred for unattended deviant tones, suggesting meditation affects both distracter and target processing, possibly by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2011
Heleen A. Slagter, Richard J. Davidson, Antoine Lutz
295 citations
The adult brain remains changeable through experience, but learning typically improves performance only on the trained task, not on similar new ones. This perspective argues that systematic mental training, such as meditation, can produce learning that is not specific to a particular stimulus or task but instead enhances core cognitive processes. Meditation practices are designed to improve defined mental functions, and several features of meditation regimens—including variable stimulus input, metacognitive focus, task difficulty, arousal regulation, and training duration—may foster this process-specific learning. The authors discuss key neuroimaging findings and methodological challenges in studying meditation training effects.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 29, 2008
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
135 citations
The human mind has limited information processing capacity, as shown by the attentional blink—a failure to identify the second of two targets presented close together. This deficit is thought to arise from overinvesting limited resources in processing the first target. Previous research found that intensive meditation training aimed at reducing elaborate object processing decreased brain resource allocation to the first target and improved identification of the second.
Neuropsychologia
September 28, 2023
Avijit Chowdhury, Remko Van Lutterveld, Ruben E. Laukkonen et al.
54 citations
In a single intensively sampled case, EEG spectral analysis was used to investigate advanced mindfulness meditation "cessation" experiences, revealing distinct neural signatures associated with these profound meditative states.
Psychophysiology
February 12, 2016
Ayla Kruis, Heleen A. Slagter, David R. W. Bachhuber et al.
29 citations
Long-term meditators blink less frequently and show a different eyeblink pattern than meditation-naive participants, with high consistency over three time points. This pattern may reflect differences in striatal dopamine activity, as spontaneous eyeblink rate is a peripheral correlate of such activity. An 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course did not alter eyeblink rates compared to active or waitlist controls, and a full day of two different meditation types also had no effect. These results suggest either that individual differences in dopaminergic neurotransmission predispose people to meditation, or that long-term, but not short-term, practice induces stable changes in baseline striatal dopaminergic functioning.
Mindfulness
August 1, 2024
Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Kirk Warren Brown, Shaun Gallagher et al.
22 citations
A selfless state of consciousness, reported for centuries in wisdom traditions, involves both temporary and lasting conditions. In psychology, the healthy self is typically emphasized, and the idea of selfless modes is sometimes dismissed, hindering empirical progress. This paper offers an interdisciplinary conceptual discussion grounded in the pattern theory of self (PTS), which views the self as a complex pattern of dynamically related processes. It proposes that meditative practices induce a reorganization of the self-pattern, enabling temporary or persistent selfless experience. The authors present a heuristic model, the pattern theory of selflessness (PTSL), with six nonlinear transformations: consolidating and integrating the self-pattern; cultivating concentration and present-moment awareness; cultivating mindful awareness; self-deconstruction states; self-flexibility; and self-liberation as a trait. This integrative view advances understanding of non-self experience and guides empirical research.
Frontiers in systems neuroscience
January 1, 2019
Evert A. Boonstra, Heleen A. Slagter
19 citations
The article argues that Karl Friston's free energy minimization framework, which claims to unify brain theory and apply to all living systems, aligns with Georg Hegel's dialectics. Drawing on Catherine Malabou's work, the authors demonstrate that Friston's approach reinvigorates Hegelian dialectics from a neuroscience perspective, requiring a reading through Hegel's speculative philosophy. This reading moves beyond the cognitivism-enactivism debate about whether organisms are secluded from or open to their surroundings. Instead, the tension between these positions is itself operative at the organismic level as a contradiction the organism sustains throughout life: secluded existence depends on perpetual relation with surroundings, and the condition for that relation is a secluded entity. This internalized contradiction grounds the perpetual process of free energy minimization.