亚洲新闻国际，2011年4月21日
ANI,Apr 21,2011

智悲翻译中心
译者：慧灵
校对：圆唐

新德里，印度——一项新的研究表明，持久的正念冥想，可以影响人类决策制定的独特区域，可使他们更理智地做出决定。

乌利奇·柯克，人类神经影像学实验室研究助理教授，里德·蒙太奇，弗吉尼亚理工大学物理学教授，以及乔那森·唐纳，多伦多大学神经精神病学诊所和成瘾及精神健康中心助理教授，共同完成该项研究。

他们的研究显示了在面对不公平对待的反应时，佛教的禅定者采用的大脑区域与其他人的不同，(这个区域)可以使他们做出理智的决定，而不是情绪化的决定。

冥想者训练他们的大脑，在某些特定的处境下，表现出不同的功能并且做出更好的抉择。

使用计算和神经影像学的技术，蒙太奇进行人类社会认知和制定决策时的神经生物学研究。

他和他的学生，招募了26名佛教的禅修者，和40位对照组的成员。当这些参与者玩“最后通牒”游戏时，使用核磁共振成像(fMRI)比较和观看他们大脑的处理过程。在该游戏中，第一个参与者提议如何去分一笔钱，而第二个人只能接受或拒绝这个提议。

研究者们假定，禅修者对“负面情绪反应的成功调节，应该会导致增加接受不公平提议的几率”，行为结果证实了这个假设。

但是神经影像学的结果，显示了佛教的禅修者，参与决策的大脑区域与预想的不同。

“在禅修者中，前部脑岛显示了对不公平提议的无意义激活反应，在前脑岛活动与拒绝提议之间没有重要的关系。 因此， 禅修者能排解开对不公平提议的消极情绪反应，推测可能是通过关注内在的身体状态(内感受)，而该状态是由后脑岛的活动反射的。”作者解释说。

这项研究发表在2011年4月出版的《决策神经科学前沿》杂志上。

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 divide 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.