Department of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2020 Mar 21;30(2):439-450. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhz095.
Despite accumulating evidence suggesting improvement in one's well-being as a result of meditation, little is known about if or how the brain and the periphery interact to produce these behavioral and mental changes. We hypothesize that meditation reflects changes in the neural representations of visceral activity, such as cardiac behavior, and investigated the integration of neural and visceral systems and the spontaneous whole brain spatiotemporal dynamics underlying traditional Tibetan Buddhist meditation. In a large cohort of long-term Tibetan Buddhist monk meditation practitioners, we found distinct transient modulations of the neural response to heartbeats in the default mode network (DMN), along with large-scale network reconfigurations in the gamma and theta bands of electroencephalography (EEG) activity induced by meditation. Additionally, temporal-frontal network connectivity in the EEG theta band was negatively correlated with the duration of meditation experience, and gamma oscillations were uniquely, directionally coupled to theta oscillations during meditation. Overall, these data suggest that the neural representation of cardiac activity in the DMN and large-scale spatiotemporal network integrations underlie the fundamental neural mechanism of meditation and further imply that meditation may utilize cortical plasticity, inducing both immediate and long-lasting changes in the intrinsic organization and activity of brain networks.
尽管越来越多的证据表明冥想可以改善人们的幸福感，但人们对于大脑和外周系统如何相互作用以产生这些行为和心理变化知之甚少。我们假设冥想反映了内脏活动（如心脏活动）的神经表征的变化，并研究了传统藏传佛教冥想所涉及的神经和内脏系统的整合以及自发的全脑时空动力学。在一个由长期藏传佛教僧侣冥想修行者组成的大样本中，我们发现默认模式网络（DMN）中对心跳的神经反应存在明显的瞬态调制，同时脑电图（EEG）活动的伽马和 theta 波段也发生了大规模的网络重新配置。此外，EEG 中 theta 波段的时间-额网络连接与冥想经验的持续时间呈负相关，而在冥想过程中，伽马振荡与 theta 振荡呈独特的、定向耦合。总的来说，这些数据表明，DMN 中心血管活动的神经表示以及大规模时空网络整合是冥想的基本神经机制的基础，并进一步表明冥想可能利用皮质可塑性，在大脑网络的内在组织和活动中引起即时和持久的变化。
