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Contemplative Neuroscience IEmiliana Simon-ThomasHow can we study the effects of meditation on the brain?Compare the brains of people who are expert meditators to the brains of people who never meditated.Teach people how to meditate and examine: Does meditation practice causes changes in the brain between before and after meditating?Are there differences in the brains of people that learn and practice meditation compared to people that learn and practice another skill?

What can we measure?Anatomy: cortical thickness, connectivityFunction: activity during meditation, passive background activity, reactions to stimuliBehavior (presumed to be produced by brain activation) during laboratory tasksStimulus detectionCognitive performanceEmotional experienceSocial factors: sharing, cooperationStudying the brains of meditation experts

Richie Davidson, The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, University of WisconsinAntoine Lutz, Helen WengTania Singer, The Max Planck Institute in Germany4Anatomy

Eileen Ludershttp://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/evidence-builds-that-meditation-230237

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Studying the brains of meditation expertsBrain regions that are thicker or contain greater density of cells and coonection in meditators: anterior insula and prefrontal cortex. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess brain cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula.

Reference: Lazar et al. (2005). Neuroreport, 16(17): 1893-1897. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.

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THIS IS GAELLES SLIDE ALREADY TRANSLATED IF THIS IS HELPFUL IN TRANSLATION THE PREVIOUS SLIDE.Lazar et al, 2005Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess brain cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula.

Reference: Lazar et al. (2005). Neuroreport, 16(17): 1893-1897. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.

7Vestergaard-Poulsena, P. et al. (2009). Behavior, 20: 170-174.

THIS IS GAELLEs SLIDE ALREADY TRANSLATED - I CAN USE THIS SLIDE AS IS.This study compared brain structure between experienced meditators (who have all practiced Dzogchen meditation and followed meditation instructions from the same teacher in the Dzogchen tradition) and people who have never meditated. The meditators in this study accumulated 8,000 to 35,000 hours of practice over 14 to 31 years, and practiced meditation in formal sessions for an average of 2.2 hours per day.

The researchers focused on one particular region of the brain called the brain stem. The brain stem is located at the base or lower, posterior part of the brain, between the brain and the spinal cord. The brain stem is a significant part of the brain as nerve connections (both motor and sensory) pass through the brain stem. It plays a critical role in autonomic regulation of cardiac and respiratory function through parasympathetic nerve fibers (vagus nerve).

As shown in the diagram displaying images of three different MRI views, the meditators had significantly greater gray matter density in an area of the brain stem called the medulla oblongata compared to the non-meditators. The arrows point to enlargements of the corresponding images of the brain stem on left. The colored areas on the enlargements reflect differences between meditators and controls, with meditators having greater density in the brain stem.

The findings demonstrate an association between structural changes in the brain in areas associated with heart and lung function regulation. This work supports other research showing that some forms of meditation slow down heart beat and breathing rate.

Reference: Vestergaard-Poulsena, P. et al. (2009). Behavior, 20: 170-174.8Studying the brains of meditation expertsThe brains of expert meditators show greater gyrification (cortical folding).

Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification ("folding" of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes.

They found pronounced group differences (heightened levels of gyrification in active meditation practitioners) across a wide swatch of the cortex, including the left precentral gyrus, the left and right anterior dorsal insula, the right fusiform gyrus and the right cuneus.

The insula has been suggested to function as a hub for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration," said Luders. "Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula."While Luders cautions that genetic and other environmental factors could have contributed to the effects the researchers observed, still, "The positive correlation between gyrification and the number of practice years supports the idea that meditation enhances regional gyrification.

Shown are group differences atp 0.05 (upper panel) andp 0.01 (lower panel), uncorrected for multiple comparisons. The color bar encodes significance (T). Areas with larger gyrification in meditators (MED) are depicted in yellow/orange; areas with larger gyrification in controls (CTL) are depicted in cyan. Callosal, subcallosal, and midbrain regions have been excluded on the medial surface maps. Numeric clusters indicate larger gyrification in meditators atp 0.01 within (1) left precentral gyrus; (2) left insula; (3) right insula; (4) right fusiform gyrus; (5) right cuneus. The red circle indicates the global maximum. LH, left hemisphere; RH, right hemisphere.

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Studying the brains of meditation expertsBrain regions that are have more gray matter or more neural cell bodies in meditators: the hippocampusThis study examined gray matter characteristics in a large sample of 100 subjects. The study included 50 meditation practitioners (28 men, 22 women) and 50 control subjects (28 men, 22 women). Their ages ranged from 24 to 77 years, where groups were closely matched for age [mean SD: 51.4 12.8 years (meditators) vs. 50.4 11.8 years (controls)]. Meditators were newly recruited from various meditation venues in the greater Los Angeles area. Years of meditation experience ranged between 4 and 46 years (mean SD: 19.8 11.4 years).

Source: Luders E, Kurth F, Toga AW, Narr KL and Gaser C (2013) Meditation effects within the hippocampal complex revealed by voxel-based morphometry and cytoarchitectonic probabilistic mapping. Front. Psychol. 4:398. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00398

This study examined gray matter characteristics in a large sample of 100 subjects. The study included 50 meditation practitioners (28 men, 22 women) and 50 control subjects (28 men, 22 women). Their ages ranged from 24 to 77 years, where groups were closely matched for age [mean SD: 51.4 12.8 years (meditators) vs. 50.4 11.8 years (controls)]. Meditators were newly recruited from various meditation venues in the greater Los Angeles area. Years of meditation experience ranged between 4 and 46 years (mean SD: 19.8 11.4 years).

Source: Luders E, Kurth F, Toga AW, Narr KL and Gaser C (2013) Meditation effects within the hippocampal complex revealed by voxel-based morphometry and cytoarchitectonic probabilistic mapping. Front. Psychol. 4:398. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00398

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To quantify just how happy Ricard is, neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin attached 256 sensors to the monks skull. When he meditated on compassion, the Ricards brian produced a level of gamma waves off the charts, and demonstrated much greater activity in his brains left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, meaning he has an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reducedpropensitytowards negativity, the researchers say.During the same study, the neuroscientists also peeked into the minds of other monks. They found that long-term practitionersthose who have engaged in more than 50,000 rounds of meditationshowed significant changes in their brain function, although that those with only three weeks of 20-minute meditation per day also demonstrated some change.

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Electroencephalography (EEG)

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)FunctionTo quantify just how happy Ricard is, neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin attached 256 sensors to the monks skull. When he meditated on compassion, the Ricards brian produced a level of gamma waves off the charts, and demonstrated much greater activity in his brains left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, meaning he has an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reducedpropensitytowards negativity, the researchers say.During the same study, the neuroscientists also peeked into the minds of other monks. They found that long-term practitionersthose who have engaged in more than 50,000 rounds of meditationshowed significant changes in their brain function, although that those with only three weeks of 20-minute meditation per day also demonstrated some change.

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Studying the brains of meditation experts: focused attention and open monitoringhttp://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/dalai.html

Lutz, Trends in Cg Sci, 2008Previous studies show the general role of neural synchrony, in particular in the gamma-band frequencies (25-70Hz), in mental processes such as attention, working-memory, learning, or conscious perception (3-7). Such synchronizations of oscillatory neural discharges are thought to play a crucial role in the constitution of transient networks that integrate distributed neural processes into highly ordered cognitive and affective functions (8,9) and could induce synaptic changes (10,11). Neural synchrony thus appears as a promising mechanism for the study of brain processes underlining mental training.

Neuroimaging and neurodynamic correlates of FA (focused attention) and OM (open monitoring) meditations. (a) Relationship between degree of meditation training (in years) and hemodynamic response in the amygdala (depicted in blue) to negative distractor sounds during FA meditation in long-term Buddhist practitioners. Individual responses in the right amygdala are plotted. One outlier (orange) was not included in the correlation. Adapted, with permission, from Ref. [24]. (b) The reduction in P3b amplitude, a brainpotential index of resource allocation, to the first of two target stimuli (T1 and T2) presented in a rapid stream of distracter stimuli after three months of intensive Vipassana meditation [45]. Shown are scalp-recorded brain potentials from electrode Pz, time-locked to T1 onset as a function of T2 accuracy [detected (no-blink) versus not detected (blink)], time (before or after three months) and group (practitioners versus novices). The scalp map shows electrode sites where this three-way interaction was significant between 420 and 440 ms. (c) shows that, generally, the greater the reduction in brain-resource allocation to T1 was over time, the better able an individual became at accurately identifying T2. Adapted, with permission, from Ref. [45]. (d,e) Example of high-amplitude g activity during a form of OM meditation (non-referential compassion meditation) in long-term Buddhist practitioners [50]. (d) Raw electroencephalographic signals. At t = 45 seconds, practitioner S4 started meditating. (e) Time course of g (25 42 Hz) activity power over the electrodes displayed in (d) during four blocks, computed in a 20-second sliding window every two seconds and then averaged over electrodes. (f) Intra-individual analysis on the ratio of g- to slow oscillations (413 Hz), averaged across all electrodes during compassion meditation. The abscissa represents the subject numbers, the ordinate represents the difference in the mean ratio between the initial state and meditative state, and the black and red stars indicate that this increase is greater than two and three times, respectively, the baseline standard deviation. (g) The significant interaction between group (practitioner, control) and state (initial baseline, ongoing baseline and meditation state) for this ratio. The relative g increase during meditation was higher in the post-meditation session. In the initial baseline, the relative g was already higher for the practitioners than for the controls, and correlated with the length of the meditation training of the long-term practitioners through life Adapted, with permission, from Ref. [50].13Studying the brains of meditation experts: focused attention and open monitoringExpert meditators brains:Show reduced amygdala activation (vigilant orientation) to negative distractor sounds.& (c) Greater discrimination for allocating attentional resources towards important vs. distractor stimuli.(e) (f) & (g) Greater high frequency, gamma band (40Hz), frequency activation.

Studying the brains of meditation experts: focused attentionLutz, 2010

12 long-term meditators (10,000 54,000 hours) vs. 12 novice meditatorslong-term meditators had at least 10,000 hours of formal meditation practice in the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.low experience meditators were given instructions for how to meditate, and given guided meditations on tape, and asked to practice at home for 7 days, 30 minutes per day.

All subjects were asked to do focused attention meditation on a dot in the center of view in the fMRI scanner

15Studying the brains of meditation experts: focused attentionExpert meditators brains:(b) & (c) Engage brain regions that support attention control more robustly during FA meditation.

Studying the brains of meditation experts: open presence

Pain signal across all: yellow

During pain, med>novice: orange

Before pain, novice>med: green

Fig. 2. Expertise in Open Presence meditation modulates the temporal processing of painful stimuli: a. Meditation experts had greater activity in primary pain regions during pain and decreased activity during the anticipatory period prior to pain. This is revealed by a voxel-wise group comparison of the response during (orange clusters) and prior to (green clusters) the pain stimulus (corrected, pb0.005). These maps are overlaid on the pain-related regions defined by the contrast heat vs. warm across groups (yellow clusters, t-test, corrected, pb2~105). Talairach coordinates of axial views z=2, 8, 31 and 42 mm. b. Experts differed more from novices in the anterior part of the pain-related regions than its sensory part during pain processing. The graph displays the response in sensory part of the pain-related regions, including posterior insula and secondary sensory cortex (labeled pI/S2), and in left aI (peak at (38, 13, 7)) and aMCC (peak at (8, 20, 39)) regions (in orange in panel a). Error bars are SEM. c. Experts had less anticipatory activity than novices in aI, aMCC but not in pI/S2.. d. Average BOLD activity across time in pI/S2 and in left aI (baseline set to 0 at the onset of a1 for display purpose). e. Anticipatory activity in left aI predicted the pain-evoked response therein during pain controlling for Group factor and sensory activity in pI/S2 (Partial correlation r=0.43, pb0.05). f. The amount of meditation practice in life for experts was negatively correlated to anticipatory activity in left aI (r=0.63, pb0.05). * indicates pb0.05.

18Studying the brains of meditation experts: open monitoringExpert meditators brains:(b), (c) & (d) Show greater signal (sensory & physiological) during pain, lesser pain signal during period before (e.g. anticipating pain).& (f) Less anticipation-of-pain signal predicted more robust change in signal during pain, and more meditation practice predicted less anticipation of pain.

Studying the brains of meditation experts: compassionAntioine Lutz & Richie Davidson at Universtiy of Wisconsin

Figure 1. State by Group by valence Interaction: A. (AI) and (Ins.) stand for anterior insula and insula, respectively (z = 12 and z = 19, 15 experts and 15 novices, color codes: orange, p,5.10 -2, yellow, p,2.10 -2). B, C. Impulse response from rest to compassion in response to emotional sounds in AI (B) and Ins. (C). DE. Responses in AI (D) and Ins. (E) during poor and good blocks of compassion, as verbally reported, for 12 experts (red) and 10 novices (blue).

Lutz compassion meditation is associated with greater insular response to others expressions of suffering(confirmed by recent work from Eileen Luders from UCLA, who has reported, among other things (e.g. white matter connectivity, anterior corpus callosal connectivity), that meditators have greater gyrification of their insulas)

20Studying the brains of meditation experts: compassionExpert meditators brains:(b), (c), (d) & (e) Show greater activity in brain regions associated with affective empathy (feeling moved by emotional expressions from others) in response to emotional sounds, especially sad sounds.

Studying the brains of meditation experts: loving kindness

Brain regions that show LOWER activity in meditators than novices.Brewer researchMany philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that "living in the moment" increases happiness. However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing. We investigated brain activity in experienced meditators and matched meditation-naive controls as they performed several different meditations (Concentration, Loving-Kindness, Choiceless Awareness). We found that the main nodes of the default-mode network (medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices) were relatively deactivated in experienced meditators across all meditation types. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis revealed stronger coupling in experienced meditators between the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (regions previously implicated in self-monitoring and cognitive control), both at baseline and during meditation. Our findings demonstrate differences in the default-mode network that are consistent with decreased mind-wandering. As such, these provide a unique understanding of possible neural mechanisms of meditation.22Studying the brains of meditation experts: loving kindnessBrain regions that show GREATER activation in meditators than novices.

23Studying the brains of meditation experts: loving kindnessBrain regions that show LOWER interconnectedness in meditators than novices.

24Studying the brains of meditation experts: loving kindnessBrain regions that show GREATER interconnectedness in meditators than novices.

25Studying the brains of meditation experts: non dual awareness

Differences in inter-area correlation for focused attention, fixation and NDA meditation.Intrinsic (endogenous) vs. extrinsic (exogenous) awareness: Research on FA and OM meditations has found in- creased anticorrelations between nodes of intrinsic and extrinsic networks.

Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation Zoran Josipovic As hypothesized, NDA medi- tation resulted in a significant decrease in the anti- correlation between intrinsic and extrinsic networks compared to rest. In other words, its effect was to in- crease functional connectivity between the two net- works. In contrast, FA meditation resulted in the op- posite effect, significantly increasing the anticorrela- tion between the two networks (P < 0.001, paired t- tests; P < 0.005, phase-randomization test; Fig. 1).87

Our results indicate that anticorrelation between intrinsic and extrinsic networks can be in- fluenced in profoundly different ways through med- itation, and that NDA meditation is different from FA and OM meditations in that it enables a state of mind in which extrinsic and intrinsic experiences are increasingly synergistic rather than competing.

The results of our study of NDA meditation support the intuitive, but speculative, idea that the typical anticorrelations between the intrinsic and extrin- sic networks might reflect the duality of internal Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. xxxx (2013) 110 C 2013 New York Academy of Sciences. 7 Neural correlates and nondual awareness Josipovic self-related and external other-related mentation, and that the higher degree of functional integra- tion between these two networks observed during NDA meditation may be related to the reported decrease of fragmentation of experience into sub- jective versus objective, or self versus other, poles encountered in mystical states of union or nond- uality.

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http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2013/08/05/using-meditation-to-train-the-brain/Research at Stanford Universitys Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education made some incredible findings last year. Neuroeconomist Brian Knutson hooked up several monks brains to MRI scanners to examine their risk and reward systems. Ordinarily, the brains nucleus accumbens experiences a dopamine rush when you experience something pleasant like having sex, eating a slice of chocolate cake, or finding a $20 bill in your pocket. But Knutsons research, still in the early stages, is showing that in Tibetan Buddhist monks, this area of the brain may be able to light up for altruistic reasons.There are many neuroscientists out there looking at mindfulness, but not a lot who are studying compassion, Knutson told the San Francisco Chronicle. The Buddhist view of the world can provide some potentially interesting information about the subcortical reward circuits involved in motivation.

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