A former classmate from graduate school sent me a nifty neuroimaging study by a group of researchers in Italy. The article compared 8 Buddhist monks against 8 novice meditators. The monks were part of the Thai Forest Tradition founded by Ajahn Chah. They averaged 15,750 hours of meditation experience! By contrast, the novice sample were people who expressed an interest in meditation but had no prior meditative experience. They were given 10 days of meditation practice prior to the study.
Using an fMRI (e.g., functional brain scans), the researchers recorded brain patterns during an hour block involving alternating periods of focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM). For those familiar with Buddhist practices, FA corresponded to Samatha meditation (Pali: calm abiding) and OM was a form of Vipassana (Pali: clear seeing or insight), according the researchers. (Our garden variety mindfulness meditation is more or less based on Vipassana meditation.) Participants alternated between 6 minutes of Samatha and Vipassana with 3 minutes of non-meditative rest preceding and following these conditions.
The article is pretty technical. Since I can't really do it justice, I won't parrot back the specific results (e.g., which parts of neuroanatomy relate to which forms of attention). Overall, results suggest that meditation practice reorganizes brain activity. More simply, experienced meditators showed a different pattern of brain activity than novices on these tasks.
Reorganization of brain processes is called neuroplasticity. Previously researchers believed the brain doesn't change much after we're born. Recent research has shown that this isn't so--the brain can and does change--and regular meditation practice can re-map the way the brain processes stuff.
For the full citation:
Manna, A., Raffone, A., Perrucci, M.G., Nardo, D., Ferretti, A., et al. (2010). Neural Correlates of Focused Attention and Cognitive Monitoring in Meditation. Brain Research Bulletin, 82, 46-56.
Showing posts with label Vipassana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vipassana. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Vipassana Meditation: Systematic Review of Current Evidence
In the 1980-1990's Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) helped kick off the recent wave of mindfulness research. Prior to that, there had been an accumulating body of research on the usefulness of Buddhist meditation in the 1970's and 80's, which had begun to trickle in as early as the 50's.
Although research of mindfulness-based treatments such as MBSR and DBT make up the majority of the currently published literature, there remains an interest in particular Buddhist meditative traditions. Dr. Chiesa of the University of Bologna, Italy, who also authored a review of neuroimaging studies of mindfulness meditation, recently reviewed research on Vipassana Meditation. Vipassana is a Pali word commonly translated as "insight" or "clear seeing." It is a mindfulness meditation, and is distinguished from meditative practices that emphasize concentration. The counterpart to Vipassana is Samatha ("calm abiding"in Pali), which is a way to calm the mind and develop one's ability to focus through concentrating on a particular object, often the breath.
Although I'm not a Buddhist scholar by any means, Chiesa's understanding of Vipassana appears to be a little shaky. Contrary to Chiesa's claim thar Vipassana is the "most ancient of Buddhist traditions," it is perhaps more accurate to say that Vipassana is a style of meditation attributed to the Buddha, which he is said to have developed after finding that concentration meditation failed to bring about lasting transformation and enlightenment. Concentrative practices such as Shamatha are believed to have been practiced thousands of years before the Buddha.
Vipassana is a general term and encompasses a number of traditions such as the Insight Meditation Society that inspired Kabat-Zinn and S.N. Goenka's promulgation of the tradition of U Ba Khin. It is Goenka's program that Chiesa focuses on in his review. Goenka has been hugely influential in creating a network of rigorously organized 10-day Vipassana retreats all over the world.
Chiesa uncovered 18 articles on Vipassana in his search but found only 7 met his inclusion criteria. Three of them came out of Dr. Marlatt's lab and were briefly mentioned in a previous post on Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (Bowen et al., 2007, 2008; Simpson et al., 2007). One is by Dr. Lazar, whose work was also briefly discussed in a previous post, which looks at differences in cortical thickness in meditators (Lazar et al, 2005). Two were by Dr. Holzel (Holzel et al., 2007, 2008), and the remaining one I had never heard of (Emavardhana & Tori, 1997).
A problem I have with the way the review is the set-up: Dr. Chiesa links Vipassana to Goenka's organization in his introduction but does not mention other Vipassana traditions such as Insight Meditation. This would be fine if Dr. Chiesa only included studies of participants in Goenka's retreats (i.e., Bowen et al., 2006, 2007; Holzel et al., 2007, 2008; Simpson et al., 2007); however, he includes two studies with meditators that appear to be from Vipassana traditions other than Goenka's (Emavardhana & Tori, 1997; Lazar, 2005). One is through the Young Buddhist Association of Thailand (i.e., Emavardhana & Tori); the other appears to be of Insight Meditation meditators (i.e., Lazar). None of this is necessarily a problem, but it should have been made clearer in the introduction.
Chiesa makes the important point that these initial studies show great promise for continued research of Vipassana meditation, but that more higher quality studies are needed. Given that Goenka's retreats are donation only (i.e., you pay only what you want and can for the retreat), they offer a potentially untapped resource for people who cannot afford ongoing psychotherapy. (However, they do require an initial 10-day investment.) Chiesa also suggests that Vipassana meditation be compared against Transcendental Meditation (TM) for treatment of addiction. Unless things have changed, however, my understanding is that the TM organization is open to research but has more rigid requirements to allowing itself to be studied; for example, it rarely allows TM to be compared to another technique (See Rao, 1998).
Overall, this review is useful in drawing attention to the growing body of research on Vipassana meditation. Because it is so standardized, Goenka's program would be a great resource for continued research; however, from what I've heard from Dr. Marlatt's lab, they found it impossible to secure grant funding for continuing their inquiries. For now, research on Buddhist meditation remains much less cohesive than research on particular mindfulness and acceptance-based treatments. I would love to see continued exploration of the benefits of these forms of Buddhist practice, but it may take commitment of a researcher or group of researchers to develop a series of studies that build upon one another.
For the full citation:
Chiesa, A. (2010): Vipassana Meditation: Systematic Review of Current Evidence. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 1(16), 37-46.
For those interested, I've tracked down downloadable files of some of the articles Dr. Chiesa's review discusses. Just click on the citation:
Although research of mindfulness-based treatments such as MBSR and DBT make up the majority of the currently published literature, there remains an interest in particular Buddhist meditative traditions. Dr. Chiesa of the University of Bologna, Italy, who also authored a review of neuroimaging studies of mindfulness meditation, recently reviewed research on Vipassana Meditation. Vipassana is a Pali word commonly translated as "insight" or "clear seeing." It is a mindfulness meditation, and is distinguished from meditative practices that emphasize concentration. The counterpart to Vipassana is Samatha ("calm abiding"in Pali), which is a way to calm the mind and develop one's ability to focus through concentrating on a particular object, often the breath.
Although I'm not a Buddhist scholar by any means, Chiesa's understanding of Vipassana appears to be a little shaky. Contrary to Chiesa's claim thar Vipassana is the "most ancient of Buddhist traditions," it is perhaps more accurate to say that Vipassana is a style of meditation attributed to the Buddha, which he is said to have developed after finding that concentration meditation failed to bring about lasting transformation and enlightenment. Concentrative practices such as Shamatha are believed to have been practiced thousands of years before the Buddha.
Vipassana is a general term and encompasses a number of traditions such as the Insight Meditation Society that inspired Kabat-Zinn and S.N. Goenka's promulgation of the tradition of U Ba Khin. It is Goenka's program that Chiesa focuses on in his review. Goenka has been hugely influential in creating a network of rigorously organized 10-day Vipassana retreats all over the world.
Chiesa uncovered 18 articles on Vipassana in his search but found only 7 met his inclusion criteria. Three of them came out of Dr. Marlatt's lab and were briefly mentioned in a previous post on Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (Bowen et al., 2007, 2008; Simpson et al., 2007). One is by Dr. Lazar, whose work was also briefly discussed in a previous post, which looks at differences in cortical thickness in meditators (Lazar et al, 2005). Two were by Dr. Holzel (Holzel et al., 2007, 2008), and the remaining one I had never heard of (Emavardhana & Tori, 1997).
A problem I have with the way the review is the set-up: Dr. Chiesa links Vipassana to Goenka's organization in his introduction but does not mention other Vipassana traditions such as Insight Meditation. This would be fine if Dr. Chiesa only included studies of participants in Goenka's retreats (i.e., Bowen et al., 2006, 2007; Holzel et al., 2007, 2008; Simpson et al., 2007); however, he includes two studies with meditators that appear to be from Vipassana traditions other than Goenka's (Emavardhana & Tori, 1997; Lazar, 2005). One is through the Young Buddhist Association of Thailand (i.e., Emavardhana & Tori); the other appears to be of Insight Meditation meditators (i.e., Lazar). None of this is necessarily a problem, but it should have been made clearer in the introduction.
Chiesa makes the important point that these initial studies show great promise for continued research of Vipassana meditation, but that more higher quality studies are needed. Given that Goenka's retreats are donation only (i.e., you pay only what you want and can for the retreat), they offer a potentially untapped resource for people who cannot afford ongoing psychotherapy. (However, they do require an initial 10-day investment.) Chiesa also suggests that Vipassana meditation be compared against Transcendental Meditation (TM) for treatment of addiction. Unless things have changed, however, my understanding is that the TM organization is open to research but has more rigid requirements to allowing itself to be studied; for example, it rarely allows TM to be compared to another technique (See Rao, 1998).
Overall, this review is useful in drawing attention to the growing body of research on Vipassana meditation. Because it is so standardized, Goenka's program would be a great resource for continued research; however, from what I've heard from Dr. Marlatt's lab, they found it impossible to secure grant funding for continuing their inquiries. For now, research on Buddhist meditation remains much less cohesive than research on particular mindfulness and acceptance-based treatments. I would love to see continued exploration of the benefits of these forms of Buddhist practice, but it may take commitment of a researcher or group of researchers to develop a series of studies that build upon one another.
For the full citation:
Chiesa, A. (2010): Vipassana Meditation: Systematic Review of Current Evidence. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 1(16), 37-46.
For those interested, I've tracked down downloadable files of some of the articles Dr. Chiesa's review discusses. Just click on the citation:
Monday, May 17, 2010
Studying Mindfulness in Experienced Meditators
Often studies of meditation are conducted using samples of people taking 8-week mindfulness meditation courses such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Studies of experience meditators are less common. For this reason, I perked up when I came across Fredik Falkenström’s new study of experienced meditators.
The experimenter obtained a sample of Vipassanna meditators who had completed at least one retreat of one week or longer. He used a quasi-experimental design, which means that participants weren’t randomly assigned into groups. The experimenter collected assessments of mindfulness and well-being one-week prior and one-week following retreats of 5 and 7 days in 48 participants. These measures were compared to a control group of 28 experienced meditators who did not participate in a retreat during the time period that the assessments were collected. Mindfulness was measured using the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS) and Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), which include subscales of observing, describing, acting with awareness, accepting without judgment, and nonreactivity to inner experiences. The findings are quite interesting and easiest to understand grouped by hypothesis:
1. Mindfulness was related to well-being, as predicted.
2. The prediction that meditation experience was related to mindfulness was partially supported. Only the acceptance scales and the KIMS acting with awareness scale were related to meditation experience. Moreover, when controlling for age, only the KIMS acting with awareness scale remained significantly correlated, suggesting that we cannot rule out that greater scores on acceptance were related to age rather than meditation experience.
The authors note that because all the participants were experienced, there may be some ceiling effects, as the entire sample scored higher on the observe scales than the average population.
3. Although mindfulness skills increased following the retreat for the experimental group, they also increased for the control group. Interestingly, the increase for the retreat group was not significantly greater than that for the control group. The author suggests that it is possible the retreat group may have been struggling with post-retreat life following a week in quiet solitude. However, this is conjecture and the results remain intriguing.
4. Although mindfulness didn’t increase in the retreat group any more than the control group, well-being did. The retreat group exhibited significant increases in well-being, and this was greater than the control group.
5. The increase in well-being was associated with increases in mindfulness, but the relationship was not particularly strong.
The author discusses the apparent paradox in the results: the retreat was related to greater well-being, and well-being was related to greater mindfulness, but meditators who completed a retreat didn’t appear to develop greater mindfulness than meditators who did not attend a retreat during that time. Consequently, the authors note, there may be other factors that lead to an increase in well-being during retreat other than mindfulness (e.g., insight); also, it does not rule out that well-being is related to a placebo effect or something more mundane (e.g., the retreatants simply had a break).
Overall, these are fascinating results with much food for thought. Hopefully, the future will bring similar studies with experienced meditators, but with larger samples and greater experimental control.
Full citation:
Falkenström, F. (2010). Studying mindfulness in experienced meditators: A quasi-experimental approach. Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 305-310.
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