This cross-sectional EEG/ERP study compared 35 experienced mindfulness meditators (mean 8.17 years practice, ~7 h/week) with 29 non-meditators on N2 and P3 event-related potentials during both an easy (50% Nogo) and a hard (25% Nogo) Go/Nogo task, to assess differences in conflict monitoring, stimulus expectancy, and attention-related neural activity.
Meditators showed stronger fronto-midline N2 responses on hard Nogo trials (pFDR = 0.011, ηp² = 0.11) and a distinct P3 topography: more frontally distributed in the easy task vs. more posteriorly distributed in the hard task — the opposite of non-meditators (pFDR = 0.015, ηp² = 0.08). These were topographic differences without significant differences in global amplitude. In age-matched analyses, meditators also outperformed non-meditators on easy-task accuracy (d-prime interaction p = 0.035), but not on the hard task.
- Cross-sectional design prevents causal inference; neural differences may reflect pre-existing traits rather than meditation effects. - Easy task was always presented first, so condition differences may partly reflect order, fatigue, or learning rather than difficulty alone. - No formal a priori power analysis; modest sample size (n=64 total) may have limited detection of subtle effects.
Meditation experience is linked to distinct patterns of brain activity during attention and response-inhibition tasks, particularly a stronger fronto-midline N2 and task-dependent P3 shifts, but these neural differences do not consistently translate to better behavioral performance — clinicians should be cautious about overstating cognitive enhancement claims for meditation. The behavioral advantage observed for meditators was limited to an easier, more monotonous task, suggesting meditation may most reliably support sustained attention in low-demand settings.
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