Abstract
Focused attention meditation (FAM) practices are cognitive control exercises where meditators learn to maintain focus and attention in the face of distracting stimuli. Previous studies have shown that FAM is both activating and causing plastic changes to the mesolimbic dopamine system and some of its target structures, particularly the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and striatum. Feedback-based learning also depends on these systems and is known to be modulated by tonic dopamine levels. Capitalizing on previous findings that FAM practices seem to cause dopamine release, the present study shows that FAM experience predicts learning from negative feedback on a probabilistic selection task. Furthermore, meditators exhibited attenuated feedback-related negativity (FRN) as compared with nonmeditators and this effect scales with meditation experience. Given that reinforcement learning and FRN are modulated by dopamine levels, a possible explanation for our findings is that FAM practice causes persistent increases in tonic dopamine levels which scale with amount of practice, thus altering feedback processing.
Highlights
Focused attention meditation (FAM) practices are cognitive control exercises where meditators learn to maintain focus and attention in the face of distracting stimuli
Others have hypothesized that the continual establishment, monitoring, and reestablishment of attention on an object of meditation during FAM should elicit activity in those brain areas already associated with conflict monitoring and sustained attention, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC; Lutz et al, 2008)
Meditation experience did predict Avoid B performance, F(1, 33) = 5.23, p = .029, R2 = .14, indicating that as meditation experience increases, participants do not learn as well from negative feedback trials. These results indicate that feedback-learning bias becomes more positive with meditation experience and that this cannot be explained by age
Summary
Focused attention meditation (FAM) practices are cognitive control exercises where meditators learn to maintain focus and attention in the face of distracting stimuli. As this review predates Lutz et al.’s (2008) operationalization, it does not directly specify what kind of meditation may be involved (FAM, OMM, LKM, etc.), even including some studies of Christian prayer. This inclusion of a wide range of practices involved in the reviewed studies may account for the diverse brain areas reportedly active in meditators. Studies looking only at practices having a clear FA component (e.g., Buddhist and secular mindfulness) consistently report brain areas involved in attention and conflict monitoring, including the dlPFC and the ACC, to be reliably active in meditators (for a review, see Tang et al, 2015)
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