[Buddha-l] Meditation training can enhance the stability of our attention through reducing cortical "noise"

[S. A. Feite]

 From The Journal of Neuroscience

Meditation training can enhance the stability of our attention  
through reducing cortical "noise"
Several groups collaborate to show that meditation training can can  
significantly affect attention and brain function.

The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies  
among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental  
illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with  
attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to- 
trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential  
deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether  
the ability to sustain attention and its underlying brain circuitry  
are transformable through training. Here, we show, with dichotic  
listening task performance and electroencephalography, that training  
attention, as cultivated by meditation, can improve the ability to  
sustain attention. Three months of intensive meditation training  
reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, as  
indicated by both enhanced theta-band phase consistency of  
oscillatory neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced  
reaction time variability. Furthermore, those individuals who showed  
the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the  
largest decrease in behavioral response variability. Notably, we also  
observed reduced variability in neural processing, in particular in  
low-frequency bands, regardless of whether the deviant tone was  
attended or unattended. Focused attention meditation may thus affect  
both distracter and target processing, perhaps by enhancing  
entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms, a  
mechanism important for controlling the content of attention. These  
novel findings highlight the mechanisms underlying focused attention  
meditation and support the notion that mental training can  
significantly affect attention and brain function.

The Journal of Neuroscience, October 21, 2009, 29(42):13418-13427;  
doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1614-09.2009

_Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and  
Behavioral Evidence_

Antoine Lutz,1 Heleen A. Slagter,1,3 Nancy B. Rawlings,2 Andrew D.  
Francis,1 Lawrence L. Greischar,1 and Richard J. Davidson1

1Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of  
Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53705, 2University Department  
of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom,  
and 3Cognitive Neuroscience Group, Department of Psychology,  
University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Lutz A, Slagter HA, Rawling, BN., Francis, DA., Greischar LL,  
Davidson RJ, (2009) Mental training enhances stability of attention  
by reducing cortical noise (J. of Neuroscience).
http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/~lutz/ 
Lutz_et_al_2009_JN_attention_stability.pdf