Neural Correlates of Conscious Flow during Meditation

Human conscious flows can alter brain states. Such brain activities modulate energy consumptions, which can be manifest in the BOLD effect in fMRI experiment. The goal of this study is to identify whether there is difference in such BOLD effects between experienced Tai Chi master in meditation state and normal control subjects. In this experiment, both the meditator and the controls using their conscious to lead a flow periodically circling in their brain in axial, sagittal, and coronal orientations inside a MRI scanner. The experimental results showed significant differences between the meditator and the controls. The most important one is that the meditator activates frontal medial cortex and precuneous regions without any visual excitation, while the controls only utilize visual cortex and precuneous regions without any frontal medial excitation. These seems suggest that for performing the same tasks, the meditator is in cognitive control state, while the controls are in spatial imagination state.