禅定幫助我們做出正確的決定
Meditation helps us take wise decisions
亞洲新聞國際，2011年4月21日
ANI,Apr 21,2011
智悲翻譯中心
譯者：慧靈
校對：圓唐
新德裏，印度——一項新的研究表明，持久的正念冥想，可以影響人類決策製定的獨特區域，可使他們更理智地做出決定。
烏利奇·柯克，人類神經影像學實驗室研究助理教授，裏德·蒙太奇，弗吉尼亞理工大學物理學教授，以及喬那森·唐納，多倫多大學神經精神病學診所和成瘾及精神健康中心助理教授，共同完成該項研究。
他們的研究顯示了在面對不公平對待的反應時，佛教的禅定者采用的大腦區域與其他人的不同，(這個區域)可以使他們做出理智的決定，而不是情緒化的決定。
冥想者訓練他們的大腦，在某些特定的處境下，表現出不同的功能並且做出更好的抉擇。
使用計算和神經影像學的技術，蒙太奇進行人類社會認知和製定決策時的神經生物學研究。
他和他的學生，招募了26名佛教的禅修者，和40位對照組的成員。當這些參與者玩“最後通牒”遊戲時，使用核磁共振成像(fMRI)比較和觀看他們大腦的處理過程。在該遊戲中，第一個參與者提議如何去分一筆錢，而第二個人只能接受或拒絕這個提議。
研究者們假定，禅修者對“負面情緒反應的成功調節，應該會導致增加接受不公平提議的幾率”，行爲結果證實了這個假設。
但是神經影像學的結果，顯示了佛教的禅修者，參與決策的大腦區域與預想的不同。
“在禅修者中，前部腦島顯示了對不公平提議的無意義激活反應，在前腦島活動與拒絕提議之間沒有重要的關系。 因此， 禅修者能排解開對不公平提議的消極情緒反應，推測可能是通過關注內在的身體狀態(內感受)，而該狀態是由後腦島的活動反射的。”作者解釋說。
這項研究發表在2011年4月出版的《決策神經科學前沿》雜志上。
New Delhi, India -- A new study has suggested that sustained training in mindfulness meditation may impact distinct domains of human decision-making, enabling them to make decisions rationally.
Ulrich Kirk, research assistant professor with the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, Read Montague, professor of physics at Virginia Tech and Jonathan Downar, assistant professor with the Neuropsychiatry Clinic and the Centre for Addition and Mental Health at the University of Toronto conducted the study.
Their research showed that Buddhist meditators use different areas of the brain than other people when confronted with unfair choices, enabling them to make decisions rationally rather than emotionally.
The meditators had trained their brains to function differently and make better choices in certain situations.
Using computational and neuroimaging techniques, Montague studies the neurobiology of human social cognition and decision-making.
He and his students recruited 26 Buddhist meditators and 40 control subjects for comparison and looked at their brain processes using functional MRI (fMRI) while the subjects played the ultimatum game, in which the first player propose how to pide a sum of money and the second can accept or reject the proposal.
The researchers hypothesized that successful regulation of negative emotional reactions would lead to increased acceptance rates of unfair offers by the meditators. The behavioral results confirmed the hypothesis.
But the neuroimaging results showed that Buddhist meditators engaged different parts of the brain than expected.
In meditators, the anterior insula showed no significant activation for unfair offers, and there was no significant relationship between anterior insula activity and offer rejection. Hence, meditators were able to uncouple the negative emotional response to an unfair offer, presumably by attending to internal bodily states (interoception) reflected by activity in the posterior insula, explained the authors.
The study was published in the April 2011 issue of Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience.