Abstract
Response inhibition - the ability to suppress inappropriate thoughts and actions - is a fundamental aspect of cognitive control. Recent research suggests that mental training by meditation may improve cognitive control. Yet, it is still unclear if and how, at the neural level, long-term meditation practice may affect (emotional) response inhibition. The present study aimed to address this outstanding question, and used an emotional Go/Nogo task and electroencephalography (EEG) to examine possible differences in behavioral and electrophysiological indices of response inhibition between Vipassana meditators and an experience-matched active control group (athletes). Behaviorally, meditators made significantly less errors than controls on the emotional Go/Nogo task, independent of the emotional context, while being equally fast. This improvement in response inhibition at the behavioral level was accompanied by a decrease in midfrontal theta activity in Nogo vs. Go trials in the meditators compared to controls. Yet, no changes in ERP indices of response inhibition, as indexed by the amplitude of the N2 and P3 components, were observed. Finally, the meditators subjectively evaluated the emotional pictures lower in valence and arousal. Collectively, these results suggest that meditation may improve response inhibition and control over emotional reactivity.
Highlights
The ability to inhibit responses that are inappropriate in a particular context is a core component of cognitive control and critical to successful adaptive behavior[1,2]
In the current EEG study, we examined effects of a commonly practiced style of Open Monitoring (OM) meditation, Vipassana[4,45], on emotional response inhibition, as measured on a Go/Nogo task, while controlling as much as possible for potential non-specific factors by using an active control group consisting of experience-matched athletes with no meditation background
Permutation test corrected by multiple comparisons, p < 0.05). In this EEG study, we examined the effects of a single meditation tradition, Vipassana, on emotional response inhibition and its underlying neural mechanisms
Summary
The ability to inhibit responses that are inappropriate in a particular context is a core component of cognitive control and critical to successful adaptive behavior[1,2]. In the current EEG study, we examined effects of a commonly practiced style of Open Monitoring (OM) meditation, Vipassana[4,45], on emotional response inhibition, as measured on a Go/Nogo task, while controlling as much as possible for potential non-specific factors by using an active control group consisting of experience-matched athletes with no meditation background.
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