Stirring the Hidden Currents of Awareness: Mindfulness Training Influences Neural Responses Related to Visual Awareness Without Overflowing Explicit Reports
摘要
While mindfulness has been shown to bring cognitive benefits, its effects on early perceptual processes, such as visual awareness, remain underexplored. This study aimed to fill this gap by investigating how 20 days of mindfulness training influenced visual awareness.
MethodWe used the EEG-adapted no-report inattentional blindness (IB) task with a hierarchical linear model to minimize confounds from post-perceptual processing and self-report biases. In Study 1, we validated the task and examined neural correlates of awareness, including visual awareness negativity (VAN), P300, and alpha oscillations in 32 participants. Study 2 compared a mindfulness training group (n = 23) with a control group (n = 20) using a pretest-posttest design, exploring the effects of mindfulness on these neural correlates and the functional connectivity indexed by phase-locking values (PLV).
ResultsStudy 1 identified significant VAN, decreased alpha power, as indicators of awareness. Study 2 revealed that mindfulness training induced a dual-pattern modulation of the underlying neural dynamics linked to visual awareness, characterized by enhanced occipital VAN activity, increasing bilateral alpha power, and activation of within-prefrontal delta connectivity, even in the absence of explicit reports.
ConclusionsThe current study showed that mindfulness training induced a larger VAN amplitude and increased alpha power and enhanced in delta-band PLV within the prefrontal area, revealing that mindfulness training could concurrently enhance visual discriminability and strengthen inhibitory control in occipital regions over task-irrelevant stimuli, even in the absence of explicit reportability.
PreregistrationThis study was not preregistered.