Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 19, Issue 4, December 2010, Pages 1110-1118
Consciousness and Cognition

Review
Focused attention, open monitoring and automatic self-transcending: Categories to organize meditations from Vedic, Buddhist and Chinese traditions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.007Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper proposes a third meditation-category—automatic self-transcending— to extend the dichotomy of focused attention and open monitoring proposed by Lutz. Automatic self-transcending includes techniques designed to transcend their own activity. This contrasts with focused attention, which keeps attention focused on an object; and open monitoring, which keeps attention involved in the monitoring process. Each category was assigned EEG bands, based on reported brain patterns during mental tasks, and meditations were categorized based on their reported EEG. Focused attention, characterized by beta/gamma activity, included meditations from Tibetan Buddhist, Buddhist, and Chinese traditions. Open monitoring, characterized by theta activity, included meditations from Buddhist, Chinese, and Vedic traditions. Automatic self-transcending, characterized by alpha1 activity, included meditations from Vedic and Chinese traditions. Between categories, the included meditations differed in focus, subject/object relation, and procedures. These findings shed light on the common mistake of averaging meditations together to determine mechanisms or clinical effects.

Introduction

Meditation practices are embedded in different cultures, worldviews, and traditions, which confounds discussions between meditation traditions. Neuroscience provides the language of brain functioning to discuss meditation practices. Brain patterns reflect the cognitive processes used in meditation practices (attention, feeling, reasoning, visualization), the way these processes are used (minimal- to highly-controlled cognitive processing), and the objects of meditation (thoughts, images, emotions, breath) (see Shear, 2006). Thus, brain patterns could provide an objective “language” to discuss procedures and experiences resulting from different meditation practices.

Lutz has divided meditation practices into two categories: focused attention meditation, which entails voluntary and sustained attention on a chosen object, and open monitoring meditation, which involves non-reactive monitoring of the moment-to-moment content of experience (Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008). We suggest a third category of meditation practice, automatic self-transcending, which includes techniques designed to transcend their own activity.

The category of automatic self-transcending is marked by the absence of both (a) focus and (b) individual control or effort. Focus on a single object of experience and an orientation to monitoring changing objects of experience keeps the meditator involved with the procedures of the technique—these practices are not designed to transcend their activity. Focus and monitoring experience are active mental processes, which keep the brain engaged in specific processing—individual activity keeps the mind from transcending. Thus, automatic self-transcending appears to define a class of meditations distinct from both focused attention and open monitoring.

These three categories are not mutually exclusive within a single session or over the course of a life-time of meditation practice. Focused attention and open monitoring are combined in Zen, Vipassana and Tibetan Buddhism meditation traditions (Austin, 2006, Gyatso and Jinpa, 1995, Lutz et al., 2008). Also, with diligent practice over many years, focused attention meditations may lead to reduced cognitive control and could result in “effortless” concentration (Lutz et al., 2008, Wallace, 1999).

Each meditation-category can be distinguished by its associated cognitive processes. Since different cognitive processes are associated with activity in different frequency bands (von Stein & Sarnthein, 2000), each category can be assigned characteristic EEG frequency band(s). The brainwave patterns reported during each meditations technique could be used to assign meditations to categories. These grouping of meditations will allow us to understand these three categories in terms of differences in attentional control, subject/object relation, and the nature of different meditation procedures. The purpose of this categorization is to appreciate the nature of different practices and not to assign a “grade” or value judgment to each one.

Section snippets

Cognitive processing and EEG frequency bands

Different processing modules work in parallel during information processing (Varela, Lachaux, Rodriguez, & Martinerie, 2001). Low frequency rhythms (theta and alpha) reflect top-down information processing involving attention and working-memory retention, whereas high frequency rhythms (beta2 and gamma) reflect bottom-up processing of the contents of experience (Razumnikova, 2007). While all frequencies work in concert, individual frequencies can be associated with specific cognitive processes (

EEG patterns during different meditation practices

Meditation practices were assigned to a category by their reported EEG patterns. Table 1 contains the three meditation-categories and their suggested associated EEG frequency bands (left column), characteristic procedures of this meditation-category (middle band), and meditation practices that fit into each category as determined by reported EEG. Studies are listed in the table if they included a control group; if the meditation group had been meditating at least a few weeks to have begun to

Discussion

The three meditation-categories had different EEG patterns that were associated with different groups of meditation practices with distinct procedures involving different cognitive processes, different ranges of attention, and different subject/object content of experience. The meditations that were grouped under focused attention included meditations that involved voluntary sustained attention on a specific experience—creating a vivid emotion, a strong visual image, or focusing on a body area.

Conclusion

Each of the three meditation-categories—focused attention, open monitoring and automatic self-transcending— included different meditation practices with different degrees of attention control, different degree of subject/object relations, and different procedures. Each category appears orthogonal to the others, and together they appear to reflect the wide range of possible meditation practices. These explicit differences between meditation techniques need to be respected when researching

Acknowledgment

We thank Steve Guich for his comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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