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. As such, these provide a unique understanding of possible neural mechanisms of meditation.

中文翻译：

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冥想体验与默认模式网络活动和连接的差异有关。

许多哲学和沉思传统都教导说“活在当下”会增加幸福感。然而，人类的默认模式似乎是走神，这与不快乐以及与自我参照处理相关的大脑区域网络的激活有关。我们调查了有经验的冥想者的大脑活动，并在他们进行了几种不同的冥想（专注、慈爱、无选择的意识）时进行了匹配的冥想天真对照。我们发现，在所有冥想类型的有经验的冥想者中，默认模式网络的主要节点（内侧前额叶和后扣带皮层）相对停用。此外，功能连接分析显示，经验丰富的冥想者在后扣带回、在基线和冥想期间，背侧前扣带回和背外侧前额叶皮质（先前涉及自我监控和认知控制的区域）。我们的研究结果表明，默认模式网络的差异与减少走神一致。因此，这些提供了对冥想可能的神经机制的独特理解。