The networks activated for internal attention and positive mood are mainly located in the frontal and subcortical brain regions. More specifically, this positive affect increases the activity in the left prefrontal and limbic region of the brain.
The internal focused attention is thought to originate in an activation of frontal and thalamic region of the brain. There is also some evidence that experienced meditators show these activations and deactivations to a greater extent than novice meditators.
In conclusion, there is converging evidence that fronto-parietal and fronto-limbic brain networks seem to be activated in the attention practices that lead to meditation, presumably reflecting processes of internalized sustained attention and emotion regulation.
It should be kept in mind that these findings relate to meditation in general.
Different kinds of meditation can result in slightly different activation and deactivation patterns. Different brain activation networks can thus be activated by different meditation traditions.
These findings mostly result from comparison of small groups of experienced meditators compared to novices.
