[quote author=whitecoast]
Dr Jian Xu, of St Olavs, said: ‘I was surprised the activity of the brain was greatest when the person’s thoughts wandered freely on their own, rather than when the brain worked to be more strongly focused.
‘When the subjects stopped doing a specific task and were not really doing anything special, there was an increase in activity in the area of the brain where we process thoughts and feelings.
‘It is described as a kind of resting network. And it was this area that was most active during nondirective meditation.’
Professor Svend Davanger, of the University of Oslo, said: ‘The study indicates nondirective meditation allows for more room to process memories and emotions than during concentrated meditation.
‘This area of the brain has its highest activity when we rest. It represents a kind of basic operating system; a resting network that takes over when external tasks do not require our attention.
‘It is remarkable a mental task like nondirective meditation results in even higher activity in this network than regular rest.’
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This resting network is sometimes called the default mode network (DMN). Some previous studies have looked at the link between meditation and the state of the DMN. Here is a brief abstract.
Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/11/22/1112029108.abstract
Many 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.
So experienced meditators showed less mind-wandering than non-meditators. It is generally agreed that uncontrolled mind wandering, which is the default state of most humans when we are not engaged in any directed specific task, is not useful.
In
this article , the author goes on to say
Scientists have previously shown that being in a mind-wandering state - instead of aware of present moment activities - is not such a happy state. We are generally happier when we are not mind-wandering. The exception to this is when we mind-wander to happy thoughts but we only do that about one third of the time; two-thirds of our mind-wandering thought content is stressful or neutral and that puts us in less happy moods.
The goal here for meditation is more peace and happiness.
1. The DMN was less activated in meditators and they reported less mind wandering. The finding seems to extend to the meditators whether they were meditating or just lying still (resting state). Given other evidence that mindfulness improves mood, this finding suggests that reducing activation of DMN may be part of the reason mindfulness increases happiness.
2. There was increased connectivity of different parts of the DMN in meditators than controls. This means that the wiring between regions that make up the DMN look different between the two groups. It suggests that mindfulness practice increases connections between important DMN regions, perhaps making the system better in communication. It is analogous to an orchestra with the different sections - string, horn, etc. - being more in tune with one another.
So, the brain images of experienced meditators look different from others irrespective of whether they are meditating in the moment or just lying still. There is less noise and more functional connectedness between brain areas for the meditators.
With this in mind, from the original paper
All the participants in the study had experience with a nondirective form of meditation practiced in Norway called Acem.
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When test subjects performed concentrative meditation, the activity in this part of the brain was almost the same as when they were just resting.
There is no mention of these people having trained in concentrative meditation. The results they had while doing concentrative meditation matched their resting state - which by itself does not tell us much imo. The increased activity in the DMN for the type of non-directive meditation that the meditators were already trained in is interesting - but I am not sure what that is telling us. At least, it does not seem like there is evidence here that one form is better or different in practical terms.
[quote author=herondancer]
Just because parts the brain is more active doesn't necessarily mean there is more value coming out of the meditation.
[/quote]
Indeed. And a lot depends on what is the value sought from the meditation practice? Is it experience oriented - like looking for a calm peaceful state of mind? Is it change oriented like bringing up contents of the unconscious to process and learn from or getting more insight about the self?
