No effect of focused attention and open monitoring meditation on EEG auditory mismatch negativity in expert and novice practitioners

Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) is a brain response linked to attention and perception, and recent theories suggest mindfulness meditation may alter it. This study attempted to replicate earlier findings that meditation states and expertise modulate MMN amplitude, using a larger sample for greater statistical power. Traditional analysis found no effects of meditation states or expertise on MMN amplitude, failing to replicate prior work. Bayesian analysis provided strong evidence against an interaction between expertise and meditation states, and only moderate evidence for a weak expertise effect during focused attention. However, increased alpha brainwave power during meditation was replicated. The null findings are discussed in light of low statistical power, flexible analysis methods, and possible publication bias in previous research.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) is a well characterized event-related potential component which has gained recent attention in theoretical models describing the impact of various styles of mindfulness meditation on attentional processes and perceptual inference. Previous findings highlighted a differential modulation of the MMN amplitude by meditation states and degrees of expertise. In the present study, we attempted to replicate results from the recent literature with a data sample that allowed for increased statistical power compared to previous experiments. Relying on traditional frequentist analysis, we found no effects of meditation states and expertise on the auditory MMN amplitude, non-replicating our previous work (Fucci et al., 2018). Using a Bayesian approach, we found strong evidence against an interaction effect on the MMN amplitude between expertise groups and meditation states and only moderate evidence in favour of a weak effect of expertise during focused attention practice. On the other hand, we replicated previous evidence of increased alpha oscillatory power during meditation practices compared to a control state. We discuss our null findings in relation to factors that could undermine the replicability of previous research on this subject, namely low statistical power, use of flexible analysis methods and a possible publication bias leading to a misrepresentation of the available evidence.