Can enlightenment be traced to specific neural correlates, cognition, or behavior? No, and (a qualified) yes

Frontiers in Psychology

Volumn 4, Issue NOV, 2013, Pages

  Davis, Jake H ^a   Vago, David R ^b  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

^b BRIGHAM AND WOMEN S HOSPITAL   (United States)

Author keywords

Awareness; Consciousness; Enlightenment; Meditation; Mindfulness; Neurophenomenology

Indexed keywords

EID: 84889690852     PISSN: None     EISSN: 16641078     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00870     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Berkovich-Ohana, A., Glicksohn, J., and Goldstein, A. (2012). Mindfulness-induced changes in gamma band activity-implications for the default mode network, self-reference and attention. Clin. Neurophysiol. 123, 700-710. doi: 10.1016/j.clinph.2011.07.048
2. Brandt, M. J., and Reyna, C. (2011). The chain of being a hierarchy of morality. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 6, 428-446. doi: 10.1177/1745691611414587
3. Brefczynski-Lewis, J. A., Lutz, A., Schaefer, H. S., Levinson, D. B., and Davidson, R. J. (2007). Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 11483-11488. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0606552104
4. Cahn, B. R., Delorme, A., and Polich, J. (2010). Occipital gamma activation during Vipassana meditation. Cogn. Process. 11, 39-56. doi: 10.1007/s10339-009-0352-1
5. Cahn, B. R., Delorme, A., and Polich, J. (2013). Event-related delta, theta, alpha and gamma correlates to auditory oddball processing during Vipassana meditation. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 8, 100-111. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss060
6. Clark, D. A. (1997). Twenty years of cognitive assessment: current status and future directions. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 65, 996-1000. doi: 10.1037/0022-006X.65.6.996
7. Elliott, R., Zahn, R., Deakin, J. W., and Anderson, I. M. (2010). Affective cognition and its disruption in mood disorders. Neuropsychopharmacology 36, 153-182. doi: 10.1038/npp.2010.77
8. Ferrarelli, F., Smith, R., Dentico, D., Riedner, B. A., Zennig, C., Benca, R. M., et al. (2013). Experienced mindfulness meditators exhibit higher parietal-occipital eeg gamma activity during nrem sleep. PLoS ONE 8:e73417. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073417
9. Garrison, K. A., Santoyo, J. F., Davis, J. H., Thornhill, T.a.T., Kerr, C. E., and Brewer, J. A. (2013). Effortless awareness: using real time neurofeedback to investigate correlates of posterior cingulate cortex activity in meditators' self-report. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:440. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00440
10. Garland, E. L., Boettiger, C. A., Gaylord, S., Chanon, V. W., and Howard, M. O. (2012). Mindfulness is inversely associated with alcohol attentional bias among recovering alcohol-dependent adults. Cognit. Ther. Res. 36, 441-450. doi: 10.1007/s10608-011-9378-7
11. Griffiths, P. J. (1986). On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem. La Salle: Open Court.
12. Hagerty, M. R., Isaacs, J., Brasington, L., Shupe, L., Fetz, E. E., and Cramer, S. C. (2013). Case study of ecstatic meditation: fMRI and EEG evidence of self-stimulating a reward system. Neural Plast. 2013, 12. doi: 10.1155/2013/653572
13. Holzel, B., Lazar, S., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D., and Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness meditation work?. Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 6, 537-559. doi: 10.1177/1745691611419671
14. Janoos, F., Machiraju, R., Singh, S., and Morocz, I. A. (2011). Spatio-temporal models of mental processes from fMRI. Neuroimage 57, 362-377. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.03.047
15. Josipovic, Z. (2010). Duality and nonduality in meditation research. Conscious. Cogn. 19, 1119-1121. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.016
16. Josipovic, Z., Dinstein, I., Weber, J., and Heeger, D. J. (2012). Influence of meditation on anti-correlated networks in the brain. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 5:183. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00183
17. Kang, Y., Gray, J. R., and Dovidio, J. F. (2013). The nondiscriminating heart: lovingkindness meditation training decreases implicit intergroup bias. J. exp. psychol. Gen. doi: 10.1037/a0034150. [Epub ahead of print].
18. Kerr, C. E., Sacchet, M. D., Lazar, S. W., Moore, C. I., and Jones, S. R. (2013). Mindfulness starts with the body: somatosensory attention and top-down modulation of cortical alpha rhythms in mindfulness meditation. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:12. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00012
19. Khema, A. (1994). All of us: beset by birth, decay, and death Nun's Island, Sri Lanka. Available online at: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/khema/allofus.html
20. Knauper, B., and Turner, P. A. (2003). Measuring health: improving the validity of health assessments. Qual. Life Res. 12(Suppl. 1), 81-89. doi: 10.1023/A:1023589907955
21. Koechlin, E., Basso, G., Pietrini, P., Panzer, S., and Grafman, J. (1999). The role of the anterior prefrontal cortex in human cognition. Nature 399, 148-151. doi: 10.1038/20178
22. Kozhevnikov, M., Elliott, J., Shephard, J., and Gramann, K. (2013). Neurocognitive and somatic components of temperature increases during g-tummo meditation: legend and reality. PLoS ONE 8:e58244. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058244
23. Lehmann, D., Faber, P. L., Achermann, P., Jeanmonod, D., Gianotti, L. R., and Pizzagalli, D. (2001). Brain sources of EEG gamma frequency during volitionally meditation-induced, altered states of consciousness, and experience of the self. Psychiatry Res. 108, 111-121. doi: 10.1016/S0925-4927(01)00116-0
24. Lutz, A., Dunne, J. D., Davidson, R. J. (2007). "Meditation and the neuroscience of consciousness," in Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, eds P. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, and E. Thompson (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press), 499-555.
25. Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Rawlings, N. B., Ricard, M., and Davidson, R. J. (2004). Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 101, 16369-16373. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0407401101
26. Mehling, W. E., Gopisetty, V., Daubenmier, J., Price, C. J., Hecht, F. M., and Stewart, A. (2009). Body awareness: construct and self-report measures. PLoS ONE 4:e5614. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005614
27. Olendzki, A. (2010). Vipallasa Sutta: Distortions of the Mind [Online]. Available online at: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.049.olen.html
28. Ramnani, N., and Owen, A. M. (2004). Anterior prefrontal cortex: insights into function from anatomy and neuroimaging. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 5, 184-194. doi: 10.1038/nrn1343
29. Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., and Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: a mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 76, 574-586. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.76.4.574
30. Rubik, B. (2011). Neurofeedback-enhanced gamma brainwaves from the prefrontal cortical region of meditators and non-meditators and associated subjective experiences. J. Altern. Complement. Med. 17, 109-115. doi: 10.1089/acm.2009.0191
31. Sayadaw, M. (1992). On the Nature of Nibbāna. Mayasia: Subang Jaya Buddhist Association.
32. Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G. L., and Jordan, A. H. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 34, 1096-1109. doi: 10.1177/0146167208317771
33. Schnall, S., and Roper, J. (2011). Elevation puts moral values into action. Soc. Psychol. Pers. Sci. 3, 373-378. doi: 10.1177/1948550611423595
34. Sharf, R. H. (1995). Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience. Numen 42, 228-283. doi: 10.1163/1568527952598549
35. Tang, Y. Y., Lu, Q., Geng, X., Stein, E. A., Yang, Y., and Posner, M. I. (2010). Short-term meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 15649-15652. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011043107
36. Travis, F. (2011). Comparison of coherence, amplitude, and eLORETA patterns during Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi practice. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 81, 198-202. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.06.011
37. Vago, D. R., and Nakamura, Y. (2011). Selective attentional bias towards pain-related threat in fibromyalgia: preliminary evidence for effects of mindfulness meditation training. Cogn. Ther. Res. 35, 581-594. doi: 10.1007/s10608-011-9391-x
38. Vago, D. R., Pan, H., Silbersweig, D. A., and Stern, E. (2013). "Neural substrates underlying modalities of awareness in mindfulness practice," in American Neuropsychiatric Assocation Annual Meeting (Boston, MA).
39. Vago, D. R., and Silbersweig, D. A. (2012). Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6:296. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00296
40. Van Vugt, M. K., Hitchcock, P., Shahar, B., and Britton, W. (2012). The effects of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on affective memory recall dynamics in depression: a mechanistic model of rumination. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6:257. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00257
41. Vialatte, F. B., Bakardjian, H., Prasad, R., and Cichocki, A. (2009). EEG paroxysmal gamma waves during Bhramari Pranayama: a yoga breathing technique. Conscious. Cogn. 18, 977-988. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.01.004
42. Xue, S., Tang, Y. Y., and Posner, M. I. (2011). Short-term meditation increases network efficiency of the anterior cingulate cortex. Neuroreport 22, 570-574. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e328348c750
43. Young, S. (2013). 5 Ways to Know Yourself: An Introduction to Basic Mindfulness [Online]. Available online at: http://www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/FiveWays.pdf
44. Zeidan, F., Johnson, S. K., Diamond, B. J., David, Z., and Goolkasian, P. (2010). Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: evidence of brief mental training. Conscious. Cogn. 19, 597-605. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014