“Thinking about Not-Thinking”: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation
PLoS ONE September 2, 2008 Giuseppe Pagnoni, Milos Cekic, Ying Guo 189 citations
Zen meditation practitioners show a reduced duration of neural response in default-network brain regions during conceptual processing, suggesting that meditative training may help regulate the automatic cascade of semantic associations and spontaneous thought. Using fMRI and a lexical decision task, regular Zen practitioners and matched controls performed similarly behaviorally, but practitioners' brain activity linked to conceptual processing was briefer.