Modulation of Posterior Default Mode Network Activity During Interoceptive Attention and Relation to Mindfulness

Background: Interoceptive attention to internal sensory signals, such as the breath, is fundamental to mindfulness. However, interoceptive attention can be difficult to study, with many studies relying on subjective and retrospective measures. Response consistency is an established method for evaluating variability of attention on exteroceptive attention tasks, but it has rarely been applied to interoceptive attention tasks.

Methods: In this study, we measured consistency of response times on a breath-monitoring task with simultaneous electroencephalography in individuals across the life span (15-91 years of age, N = 324).

Results: We found that consistency on the breath-monitoring task was positively correlated with attentive performance on an exteroceptive inhibitory control task. Electroencephalography source reconstruction showed that on-task alpha band (8-12 Hz) activity was greater than that measured at rest. Low-consistency/longer breath responses were associated with elevated brain activity compared with high-consistency responses, particularly in posterior default mode network (pDMN) brain regions. pDMN activity was inversely linked with functional connectivity to the frontoparietal network and the cingulo-opercular network on task but not at rest, suggesting a role for these frontal networks in on-task regulation of pDMN activity. pDMN activity within the precuneus region was greater in participants who reported low subjective mindfulness and was adaptively modulated by task difficulty in an independent experiment.

Conclusions: Elevated pDMN alpha activity serves as an objective neural marker for low-consistency responding during interoceptive breath attention, scales with task difficulty, and is associated with low subjective mindfulness.