Department of Psychology and Psychophysiology, Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Academician Natalya Bekhtereva Foundation, St. Petersburg, Russia.
N.P. Bekhtereva Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2022 Nov;181:112-124. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.08.011. Epub 2022 Aug 31.
Thousand-year-old Buddhist traditions have developed a wide range of methods for the subjective exploration of consciousness through meditation. Combining their subjective research with the possibilities of modern neuroscience can help us better understand the physiological mechanisms of consciousness. Therefore, we have been guided by specifically Buddhist explanations when studying the physiological mechanisms of altered states of consciousness during Buddhist meditations. In Buddhism, meditations are generally divided into two large categories: (1) one-pointed concentration and (2) analytical meditation. Maintaining both one-pointed concentration and analytical meditation on 'bodhicitta' ("the thought of awakening") and 'emptiness' is a necessary condition for transitioning into tantric practices. Tantric practices involve sophisticated visualizations of Buddhist deities, the 'energy structure' of the human body, and the visualization of the stage-by-stage process of dying accompanied with the dissolution of body elements. According to Buddhism, these meditations are characterized by the gradual withdrawal from "gross levels" of consciousness associated with the five senses. From a psychophysiological perspective, this withdrawal of sensory consciousness can be considered as the decrease of sensory stimuli recognition and attentional disengagement from the external world. We concentrated on how considered meditations affect sensory and cognitive processing of external stimuli. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in the passive oddball paradigm were studied both during meditations and in a controlled state of relaxed wakefulness. It was shown with a group of 115 Buddhist monks that during meditation, mismatch negativity amplitudes, amplitudes of N1 and P2 components of ERPs to deviant stimuli, and the amplitudes of the P3a component to novel stimuli all decrease. These outcomes suggest that the considered Buddhist meditations, compared to the control state of relaxed wakefulness, are accompanied by a decrease in physiological processes responsible for maintaining attention on the outside world and recognizing changes in the stream of sensory stimuli.
千年的佛教传统发展出了广泛的方法，通过冥想来主观探索意识。将他们的主观研究与现代神经科学的可能性相结合，可以帮助我们更好地理解意识的生理机制。因此，在研究佛教冥想时改变意识状态的生理机制时，我们一直以特定的佛教解释为指导。在佛教中，冥想通常分为两大类：（1）专注和（2）分析性冥想。对“菩提心”（“觉醒的思想”）和“空性”保持专注和分析性冥想，是进入密宗修行的必要条件。密宗修行涉及到对佛教神灵、人体的“能量结构”以及死亡阶段的复杂想象，以及身体元素的溶解。根据佛教的说法，这些冥想的特点是逐渐从与五官相关的“粗糙层面”的意识中退出。从心理生理学的角度来看，这种感官意识的退出可以被认为是对外部世界的感官刺激识别和注意力的减少。我们专注于冥想如何影响对外界刺激的感官和认知处理。在被动Oddball 范式中研究了听觉事件相关电位（ERPs），既在冥想期间，也在放松清醒的控制状态下进行了研究。我们对一组 115 名佛教僧侣进行了研究，结果表明，在冥想期间，与控制状态的放松清醒相比，错配负波幅度、对偏差刺激的 ERP 的 N1 和 P2 成分的幅度以及对新奇刺激的 P3a 成分的幅度都减小了。这些结果表明，与控制状态的放松清醒相比，所考虑的佛教冥想伴随着负责维持对外界的注意力和识别感官刺激流中变化的生理过程的减少。
