Correlates of Silence: Enhanced Microstructural Changes in the Uncinate Fasciculus

Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan; Fabio Marson; Claudia Piervincenzi; Joseph Glicksohn; Antonio De Fano; Francesca Amenduni; Carlo C Quattrocchi; Filippo Carducci

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.543773

Correlates of Silence: Enhanced Microstructural Changes in the Uncinate Fasciculus

Front Psychol. 2020 Oct 8:11:543773. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.543773. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan¹, Fabio Marson^{1

2}, Claudia Piervincenzi³, Joseph Glicksohn^{4

5}, Antonio De Fano^{1

6}, Francesca Amenduni⁷, Carlo C Quattrocchi⁸, Filippo Carducci²

Affiliations

¹ Research Institute for Neuroscience, Education and Didactics, Patrizio Paoletti Foundation, Assisi, Italy.
² Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Neuroimaging Laboratory, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
³ Human Neuroscience Department, Neuroimaging Laboratory, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
⁴ Department of Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
⁵ The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
⁶ Department of Neuroscience, Imaging, and Clinical Science, Behavioral Imaging and Neural Dynamics (BIND) Center, University of Chieti-Pescara G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy.
⁷ Department of Educational Sciences, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy.
⁸ Departmental Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, Università "Campus Bio-Medico di Roma," Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Silence is an important aspect of various meditation practices, but little work has focused specifically on the underlying neurophysiology of silence-related meditative practice, and on how it relates to the self-reported experiences of practitioners. To expand current knowledge regarding the neurophenomenology of silence in meditation, we directly investigated first-person reports of silence-related experiences during the practice of Quadrato Motor Training (QMT) and their association with changes in fractional anisotropy (FA). Participants recorded their cognitive, emotional, and physical experiences upon beginning QMT and again after 6 weeks of QMT practice. These reports were evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings showed that change between the two time points in self-reported silence-related experiences was negatively correlated with change in attentional effort, and positively correlated with changes in the left uncinate fasciculus. These results expand current knowledge regarding the neuroanatomical correlates of silence-related experiences during meditation.

Keywords: DTI; attentional effort; mind-wandering; silence; uncinate fasciculus.