Follow your breath: respiratory interoceptive accuracy in experienced meditators

Abstract

Attention to internal bodily sensations is a core feature of mindfulness meditation. Previous studies have not detected differences in interoceptive accuracy between meditators and nonmeditators on heartbeat detection and perception tasks. We compared differences in respiratory interoceptive accuracy between meditators and nonmeditators in the ability to detect and discriminate respiratory resistive loads and sustain accurate perception of respiratory tidal volume during nondistracted and distracted conditions. Groups did not differ in overall performance on the detection and discrimination tasks; however, meditators were more accurate in discriminating the resistive load with the lowest ceiling effect. Meditators were also more accurate during the nondistracted tracking task at a lag time of 1 s following the breath. Results provide initial support for the notion that meditators have greater respiratory interoceptive accuracy compared to nonmeditators.

Keywords: Anxiety; Interoceptive accuracy; Interoceptive awareness; Meditation; Mindfulness; Respiration.

Figure 1

A: Detection task. B: Discrimination task. Error bars indicate standard error of the mean. *group differences significant at p < .05.

Figure 2

A: Nondistraction period. B: Distraction period. Error bars indicate standard error of the mean. *group differences significant at p < .05.

Figure 3

Cross-correlations at lag 6 of estimated and actual tidal volume by group and distraction period over time. ∧group differences marginally significant at p < .10. *group differences significant at p < .05.