Transactions of the Japan Academy

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　Meditation in Zen has received much attention in the scientific exploration of consciousness from metacognition and the social brain. Zen meditation provides effective clues to self-knowledge by providing awareness of “present self-being”. Our brains are thought to operate in dynamic equilibrium every day with two broad networks: the working memory network (WMN), which is oriented toward solving real problems (cognitive brain network), and the default mode network (DMN), which wanders in an internal imaginary and a creative world (social brain network). However, how these two cyclical networks operating in seesaw mode relate to meditation is not well understood. In this paper, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the process of meditation from a cognitive conflict situation in monks who had meditated in Rinzai Zen for over seven years and healthy adults who had not meditated before. The monks were asked to perform a Stroop task as a conflict task in the first half of the study, and were led to meditate in the second half. Behavioral experiments revealed that monks showed excellent performance under the Stroop task with fewer errors and shorter reaction times due to better control of attention, whereas healthy adults showed poor attentional control and were more affected by the conflicts. Two new findings about brain activity were found. First, it was suggested that the two networks were not in an anti-correlated relationship, as is usually claimed, on the time series, but were involved in a mutually cooperative manner. Second, in terms of functional connectivity, the monks' brains showed a strong inhibitory effect under meditation. As a result of years of Zen practice, the monks were found to be able to successfully deal with conflict situations in the DMN of the brain and maintain meditative awareness.

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