Shields Grant S, Skwara Alea C, King Brandon G, Zanesco Anthony P, Dhabhar Firdaus S, Saron Clifford D
Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA.
Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, CA, USA; Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
Brain Behav Immun. 2020 Oct;89:256-267. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.06.034. Epub 2020 Jul 5.
Prior work has linked meditation practice to improvements in interference control. However, the mechanisms underlying these improvements are relatively unknown. In the context of meditation training, improvements in interference control could result eitherfrom increases in controlled attention to goal-relevant stimuli, or from reductions in automatic capture by goal-irrelevant stimuli. Moreover, few studies have linked training-related changes in attention to physiological processes, such as inflammatory activity, that are thought to influence cognitive function. This study addresses these gaps by examining associations between cognitive performance and cytokines in the context of an intensive meditation retreat. Participants were randomly assigned to complete 3 months of meditation training first, or to serve as waitlist controls. The waitlist-control participants then later completed a separate 3-month training intervention. We assessed participants' interference control with a flanker task and used computational modeling to derive component processes of controlled and automatic attention. We also collected blood samples at the beginning, middle, and end of training to quantify changes in cytokine activity. Participants who completed training evidenced better controlled attention than waitlist controls during the first retreat intervention, and controls showed significant improvements in controlled attention when they completed their own, second retreat. Importantly, inflammatory activity was inversely associated with controlled attention during both interventions. Our results suggest that practice of concentration meditation influences interference control by enhancing controlled attention to goal-relevant task elements, and that inflammatory activity relates to individual differences in controlled attention.
先前的研究已将冥想练习与干扰控制能力的提升联系起来。然而，这些提升背后的机制相对尚不明确。在冥想训练的背景下，干扰控制能力的提升可能源于对与目标相关刺激的控制性注意力增加，或者源于对与目标无关刺激的自动捕捉减少。此外，很少有研究将训练引起的注意力变化与被认为会影响认知功能的生理过程（如炎症活动）联系起来。本研究通过在密集冥想静修期间考察认知表现与细胞因子之间的关联来填补这些空白。参与者被随机分配，要么先完成3个月的冥想训练，要么作为候补对照组。候补对照组随后完成一个单独的3个月训练干预。我们用一项侧翼干扰任务评估参与者的干扰控制能力，并使用计算模型来推导控制性注意力和自动注意力的组成过程。我们还在训练开始、中间和结束时采集血样，以量化细胞因子活性的变化。在第一次静修干预期间，完成训练的参与者表现出比候补对照组更好的控制性注意力，而对照组在完成自己的第二次静修时，控制性注意力有显著改善。重要的是，在两次干预期间，炎症活动与控制性注意力呈负相关。我们的结果表明，专注冥想练习通过增强对与目标相关任务元素的控制性注意力来影响干扰控制，并且炎症活动与控制性注意力的个体差异有关。
