josipovic con-cog commentary final 2010

7/29/2019 Josipovic Con-Cog Commentary Final 2010

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Co n s c io u s n e s s an d C o g n i t i o n x x x ( 2 0 1 0 ) x x x x x x

Contents lists available at ScienceDirectConsciousness and Cognition

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Please cite this article in press as: Josipovic, Z. Duality and nonduality in meditationresearch. Consciousness and Cognition (2010), doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.016

Co m m e n t a r y :

D u a l i t y a n d N o n d u a l i t y i n M e d i t a t i o n R e se a r c h

Zoran Josipovic

Abstract:

The great variety of meditation techniques found in different contemplativetraditions presents a challenge when attempting to create taxonomies based on the

constructs of contemporary cognitive sciences. In the current issue of

Consciousness and Cognition, Travis and Shear add automatic self-transcending to

the previously proposed categories of focused attention and open monitoring, and

suggest characteristic EEG bands as the defining criteria for each of the three

categories. Accuracy of current taxonomies and potential limitations of EEG

measurements as classifying criteria are discussed.

Cognitive and affective neuroscience studies of meditation have a potential to makeimportant contributions to the understanding of the brains functioning and neural

plasticity (Lutz et al., 2008; Lazar et al., 2005). Furthermore, extensive first-

person reports of changes brought on by these practices, may, once verified,

enhance our views of the nature and functions of consciousness.

The enormous variety of meditation techniques that have been developed over the

centuries in the worlds contemplative traditions have presented an ongoing

challenge to finding consistent and encompassing taxonomies. Only recently has

this challenge emerged into full focus in the field of contemporary meditation

research (Cahn and Polich, 2006; Lutz, Slagter et al., 2008). The current paper by

Travis and Shear is an important contribution in this direction.

A recent effort by Lutz et al. (2008) to operationalize meditation techniques in

terms of the deployment of attentional strategies has resulted in a categorization of

meditation techniques as belonging to either a focused attention or open

monitoring style. This appears to be accurate, as most meditation techniques rely,

at least at some stage of practice, on either endogenous or exogenous attentional


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systems, respectively (Austin, 2009). While this generalization covers a fairly large

number of meditation techniques, especially within the Buddhist tradition, it

surprisingly leaves out a very important, if not critical meditation style. Travis and

Shear correctly point to this flaw and argue that Transcendental Meditation actually

belongs to a new category, which they label automatic self-transcending. The term

transcendence has its inherent problems, and placing it in the context of cognitive

psychology and neuroscience brings with it some unavoidable awkwardness. What

the authors imply here is that something about the meditation techniques belonging

to this category makes them auto-transcending, and leads to establishing of

automaticity due to implicit learning.

Transcending the technique, in this sense, is common among experienced

practitioners of other meditation styles as well, as the authors note in reference to

QiGong (Qin et al., 2009), and the focused attention meditation in Tibetan Buddhist

practitioners (Brefczinski-Lewis et al., 2007). Their claim in relation to TM is that

developing a certain level of automaticity and effortlessness, happens relativelyquickly because of the way in which the technique is set up, and that this is one of

its chief differentiating features. Thus, in addition to differentiating meditations

based on attentional strategy, this new category involves differences in working

memory load.

However, what is at stake here is a more profound difference, one that cannot be

adequately captured within a single-dimension characterization of attentional

strategy. Both focused attention and open monitoring styles of meditation contain

an essentially dualistic orientation of subject-observing-object. Yet, there is

another group of meditations that do not employ this strategy, but instead rely onaccessing a level of awareness that is inherently free from this dualistic subject-

object construct. This non-conceptual awareness has sometimes been termed

nondual awareness, open awareness or open presence (Kozhevnikov et al. 2009;

Lutz et al., 2007). Recognizing it within ones waking experience, and learning to

abide in it, is known in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen as taking the

goal of meditation as the path. In other traditions, such as various branches of

Yoga and Vedanta, and in some other sects of Tibetan Buddhism, this non-

conceptual awareness is first isolated from experience, and later, with practice,

established in daily life. With this approach, there may be, initially, various degrees

of focused attention deployment, until one can access this nondual awareness. Thisinitial stage is perhaps what has led some to classify TM as a focused attention style

of meditation. Thus, in terms of the actual goal of meditation practice, the

fundamental differentiating feature of a meditation technique is whether it remains

within the dualistic subject-object cognitive structure, or whether it transcends this

structure to reveal the underlying nondual awareness.


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Some current research in cognitive neuroscience has attempted to differentiate

attention from awareness (Brascamp et al., 2009; Koch and Tsuchiya, 2004). The

problem is that nondual awareness is not a level of consciousness that is known

about or has been operationalized in cognitive neuroscience. So, while

operationalizing different meditation techniques in terms of already established

constructs of cognitive science allows for experimental tractability, it also creates a

problem of accuracy as to the intended goal of meditation. It also leads to

confounding the neural correlates of the meditation techniques that are used to get

to particular states of consciousness, with the correlates of the states themselves.

In order to solve this problem, both the taxonomy and the research of meditation

need to be approached in a multi-dimensional fashion, where some of the

dimensions could be: targeted states of consciousness; duality to nonduality scale;

(which may or may not overlap with) stages of expertise; cognitive processes such

as attentional strategies and working memory load; and objects of meditation.

Travis and Shear suggest that the differences between meditation styles should be

evident as fairly simple distinctions in EEG signatures. There is elegance and

parsimoniousness to this idea, but the reality may be more complicated. The EEG

signatures of meditation tend to be fairly complex across all bands and differ, as

well, with the degree of the subjects proficiency (Cahn & Polich, 2006). Changes in

the gamma band, which the authors use as one of the indicators of focused

attention style, have been found in other styles of meditation as well (Cahn et al.,

2010). It is also questionable whether compassion meditation (Lutz et al., 2004)

which produced some of the largest changes in the gamma band found in

meditation to date, belongs to the focused attention style, as the authors suggest.The non-referentiality of compassion makes it more akin to meditations in the

nondual or automatic self-transcending category. Most importantly, certain aspects

of synchrony in the gamma range await further clarification due to artifacts from

scalp muscles and eye movement (Yuval-Greenberg et al., 2008).

The two EEG signatures of meditation that at present appear to be most consistent

are the increase in frontal midline theta, and the forward spread and increase in

alpha. Whether they can be used as reliable indices for meditation categories

requires further research. Finally, the lingering question is whether the changes in

the EEG signal accurately reflect the subtle meditative states of consciousness or

whether they reflect the overall levels of arousal in the brain and the specifics of

various cognitive processes associated with the techniques of meditation.

Expanding the current taxonomy of meditation and defining the characteristic

neurophysiological signatures of various meditation categories are important issues

in meditation research. Travis and Shear's paper makes a significant contribution to

their clarification. Advancing the research of meditation will add to the scientific


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understanding of brain functioning, and may help answer the larger social and

psychological question about what it is to be an authentic, integrated and realized

human being.

References:

Austin, J.H. (2009). Selfless Insight. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Brascamp JW, van Boxtel JJ, Knapen T, & Blake R. (2009). A Dissociation of

Attention and Awareness in Phase-sensitive but Not Phase-insensitive Visual

Channels.J Cogn Neurosci. 2009 Nov 25. [Epub ahead of print]

Cahn, B. R., Delorme, A., & Polich, J. (2010). Occipital gamma activation during

vipassana meditation. Cognitive Processing.11, 3956.Cahn, B. R., & Polich, J. (2006). Meditation states and traits: Eeg, erp, and

neuroimaging studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(2), 180-21.

Koch C, Tsuchiya N. (2007). Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain

processes. Trends Cogn Sci., 11(1), 16-22.

Kozhevnikov, M., Louchakova, O., Josipovic, Z., Motes, M.A. (2009). The

Enhancement of Visuospatial Processing Efficiency through Buddhist Deity

Meditation. Psychological Science, 20(5), 645-653.

Lazar, S., Kerr, C.E., Wasserman, R.H., Grey, J.R., Greve, D.N., Treadway, M.T., et

al., (2005). Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.

Neuroreport, 16, 1893-1897.

Lutz A, Brefczynski-Lewis J, Johnstone T, & Davidson RJ. (2008). Regulation of the

neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative

expertise. PLoS One 26, e1897.

Lutz, A., Dunne, J., & Davidson, R. (2007). Meditation and the neuroscience of

consciousness. In P.D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, & E. Thompson (Eds.), The

Cambridge handbook of consciousness (pp. 499551). Cambridge, England:

Cambridge University Press.

Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Rawlings, N. B., Ricard, M., & Davidson, R. J. (2004).

Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental

practice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 101(46), 16369-16373.

Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention regulation

and monitoring in meditation. Trends Cogn Sci, 12(4), 163-169.


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Qin, Z., Jin, Y., Lin, S., & Hermanowicz, N. S. (2009). A forty-five year follow-up

eeg study of qigong practice. Int J Neurosci, 119(4), 538-552.

Yuval-Greenberg, S., Tomer, O., Keren, A.S., Nelken, I. & Deouell, L.Y. (2008).

Transient Induced Gamma-Band Response in EEG as a Manifestation of Miniature

Saccades. Neuron, 58 (3), 429-441.

josipovic con-cog commentary final 2010

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