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PreprintCited by 8Mindfulness and Compassion InterventionsMind wandering and attentionFunctional Brain Connectivity Studies

Focus on the breath: brain decoding reveals internal states of attention during meditation

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Weng, H.Y., Lewis-Peacock, J.A., Hecht, F.M., Uncapher, M.R., Ziegler, D.A., Farb, N.A.S., Goldman, V., Skinner, S. +3 more·2018·bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
DOI 10.1101/461590

Preprint — published as 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00336

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Abstract

Meditation practices are used to cultivate internally-oriented attention to bodily sensations, which may improve health via cognitive and emotion regulation of bodily signals. However, it remains unclear how meditation impacts internal attention states due to lack of measurement tools that can objectively assess mental states during meditation practice itself, and produce time estimates of internal focus at individual or group levels. To address these measurement gaps, we tested the feasibility of applying multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to single-subject fMRI data to (1) learn and recognize internal attentional (IA) states relevant for meditation during a directed IA task, and (2) decode or estimate the presence of those IA states during an independent meditation session. Within a mixed sample of experienced meditators and novice controls (N=16), we first used MVPA to develop single-subject brain classifiers for 5 modes of attention during an IA task in which subjects were specifically instructed to engage in one of five states (i.e., meditation-related states: breath attention, mind wandering, and self-referential processing, and control states: attention to feet and sounds). Using standard cross-validation procedures, MVPA classifiers were trained in five of six IA blocks for each subject, and predictive accuracy was tested on the independent sixth block (iterated until all block volumes were tested, N=2160). Across participants, all five IA states were significantly recognized well above chance (>41% vs. 20% chance). At the individual level, IA states were recognized in most participants (87.5%), suggesting that recognition of IA neural patterns may be generalizable for most participants, particularly experienced meditators. Next, for those who showed accurate IA neural patterns, the originally trained classifiers were then applied to a separate meditation run (10-min) to make an inference about the percentage time engaged in each IA state (breath attention, mind wandering, or self-referential processing). Preliminary group-level analyses demonstrated that during meditation practice, participants spent more time attending to breath compared to mind wandering or self-referential processing. This paradigm established the feasibility of using MVPA classifiers to objectively assess mental states during meditation at the participant level, which holds promise for improved measurement of internal attention states cultivated by meditation.

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  • Recent studies indicate that objective interoceptive measures may only partially overlap, and different sensations and body systems seem to elicit distinct neural processes.

    “Recent studies indicate that objective interoceptive measures may only partially overlap, and different sensations and body systems seem to elicit distinct neural processes (Baranauskas et al., 2017; Yeng et al., 2018).”

    From Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body: A Contemporary Perspective (2019) · cites this paper as Yeng et al., 2018

    The Discussion reports that neural signals differentiated attention to the breath from attention to the feet, supporting the claim about distinct patterns for different bodily sensations. It does not report that objective interoceptive measures only partially overlap, nor does it establish distinct neural processes across body systems. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Disengaging from self-referential thought can cultivate emotional and cognitive flexibility.

    “The interoceptive network plays a key role in disengaging from self-referential thought, which is particularly important from a clinical perspective as this ability can cultivate emotional and cognitive flexibility (Baer, 2003; Yeng et al., 2018) and is a central component for most mindfulness traditions (Mehling et al., 2012; Bornemann et al., 2015; de Jong et al., 2016).”

    From Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body: A Contemporary Perspective (2019) · cites this paper as Yeng et al., 2018

    The discussion describes returning attention to the breath after distraction and suggests that cultivating internal attention may transfer to cognitive and emotion regulation. The paper also distinguishes breath attention from self-referential processing, but it does not establish that disengaging from self-referential thought cultivates emotional and cognitive flexibility. The cited passages have no page numbers in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Different types of attention elicit different neural signatures.

    “This may be significant as several recent studies highlight that different types of attention elicit different neural signatures (Fox and Cahn, 2017; Yeng et al., 2018).”

    From Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body: A Contemporary Perspective (2019) · cites this paper as Yeng et al., 2018

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Authors
Weng, H. Y., Lewis-Peacock, J. A., Hecht, F. M., Uncapher, M. R., Ziegler, D. A., Farb, N. A. S., Goldman, V., Skinner, S., Duncan, L. G., Chao, M. T., & Gazzaley, A.
Affiliations
  • Osher Center for Integrative Medicine (US)
  • University of Toronto (CA)
  • University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
  • University of California, San Francisco (US)
ORCID
Venue
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Publisher
openRxiv
Published
2018-11-04
DOI
10.1101/461590
OpenAlex
W2898749793
Cited by
8
References
63
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
Type
posted content
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc-nd
Locations
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Osher Center for Integrative Medicine
  • National Institutes of Health
  • University of California, San Francisco
  • National Institute on Aging (R21AG041071, R01AG049424)
  • National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (K24AT007827)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
Keywords
meditation, internal focus, attentional state, mind wandering, self-referential processing, multi-voxel pattern analysis, single-subject fMRI, brain decoding, experienced meditators, neural network classifier

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