Brefczynski-Lewis et al. (2007)

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 Brefczynski-Lewis et al. (2007)
Aim: To investigate the brain regions that are involved in meditation and which brain regions might show the effects of training
Procedure: The researchers compared brain activity of highly-experienced Tibetan monks during meditation with the activity of novice meditators. To see the brain activity they used fMRI scans. They also played sounds to test how distractible the participants were during the meditation.


Results: They found that meditations activated attention-related brain regions in both expert meditators and novices. Meditators with more practice showed more activity in attention regions, however the ones with the most practice had activity drop after less than half a minute, when their concentration may have settled into a tranquil but alert awareness. The most practised meditators showed the least reaction to the distracting sounds.

Conclusion: The results from this study give evidence that concentration meditation may be an effective way to train attention, with results that one can see in the brain scans.

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