Teachings in loving kindness rely on examples to convey this quality,

such as “imagine meeting a dear friend who you haven’t seen in a long time, and pay attention to the heartfelt feeling that arises in your chest.” Novices are taught to attend to this feeling, and to foster the feeling by repeating phrases of well-wishing Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (“may you be happy”). This is selleck compound considered to help novices to remain on task and to allow the feeling of loving kindness to arise and stabilize. As practice develops and novices are able to bring about the feeling of loving kindness, the phrases may be dropped to allow one’s attention to rest in the feeling itself. Loving kindness is considered a non-self-referential practice; rather than one’s “self” offering well-wishes to “others,” loving kindness is offered from a condition of selflessness, for the benefit of all (Salzberg 1995). In this study, the main effect of loving kindness differed between Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical meditators and novices, such that meditators showed less BOLD signal than novices during loving kindness meditation in clusters including the PCC/PCu; the left MCC; and the left supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, middle and superior temporal

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical gyrus; among others. With regard to group differences in BOLD signal in the PCC/PCu, these findings are consistent with our prior work (Brewer et al. 2011) suggesting this region may be a hub of the DMN that is relatively less active in meditators as compared to novices across meditation practices, including loving kindness. The PCC/PCu has been implicated as a Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical region of the DMN involved in self-referential processing and mind wandering (Northoff et al. 2006; Buckner et al. 2008). Less activity in this brain region during meditation may reflect less self-related thinking and mind wandering (among others; see Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Garrison et al. 2013). These

findings support the theoretical perspective that loving kindness is a focused and/or present-centered practice similar to other forms of meditation such as breath awareness (Gunaratana 2002), and that loving kindness involves a non-self focus (Salzberg 1995). One possible interpretation of the group difference in the PCC/PCu is that novices may practice directed well-wishing in loving kindness from many a stance of duality, that is, “self” directing well-wishes toward “other,” whereas meditators have learned to practice “selfless” well-wishing. With regard to group differences in BOLD signal in the left parietal and temporal cluster, the left temporal parietal junction (TPJ) is considered a node of the DMN (Andrews-Hanna et al. 2010), and has been implicated in theory of mind (e.g., Samson et al. 2004). Recent studies have suggested that the left TPJ is particularly involved in processing socially relevant information about others (Saxe and Wexler 2005; Ciaramidaro et al. 2007).