Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry

Abstract

Mindfulness meditators practice the non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal experiences as they arise. Using voxel-based morphometry, this study investigated MRI brain images of 20 mindfulness (Vipassana) meditators (mean practice 8.6 years; 2 h daily) and compared the regional gray matter concentration to that of non-meditators matched for sex, age, education and handedness. Meditators were predicted to show greater gray matter concentration in regions that are typically activated during meditation. Results confirmed greater gray matter concentration for meditators in the right anterior insula, which is involved in interoceptive awareness. This group difference presumably reflects the training of bodily awareness during mindfulness meditation. Furthermore, meditators had greater gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus and right hippocampus. Both regions have previously been found to be involved in meditation. The mean value of gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus was predictable by the amount of meditation training, corroborating the assumption of a causal impact of meditation training on gray matter concentration in this region. Results suggest that meditation practice is associated with structural differences in regions that are typically activated during meditation and in regions that are relevant for the task of meditation.

An Integrated Assessment of Changes in Brain Structure and Function of the Insula Resulting from an Intensive Mindfulness-Based Intervention

“…Yet the insula is not monolithic, and existing work has found morphometric changes in different subregions of the insula. Some research has found increased gray matter density localized in the right anterior insula-a key hub within the salience network, a collection of brain regions involved in the detection and evaluation of motivationally relevant stimuli (Hölzel et al 2008;Seeley et al 2007). By contrast, the present investigation observed increased cortical thickness within the left posterior insula-a region implicated in auditory processing and interoception (Bamiou et al 2003;Remedios et al 2009;Flynn 1999;Farb et al 2012).…”

“…We predicted both functional and structural changes in the insula based on extensive previous research implicating the insula in the immediate and long-term effects of meditation practice. For instance, correlational studies have shown that meditation experience is associated with insular cortical thickness, gray matter density, and gyrification (Lazar et al 2005;Hölzel et al 2008;Luders et al 2012; but see Hölzel et al 2011). Yet the insula is not monolithic, and existing work has found morphometric changes in different subregions of the insula.…”

Forever Young(er): potential age-defying effects of long-term meditation on gray matter atrophy

“…The nine significance clusters, indicating different age-related correlations in meditators, are spanning large areas of the brain and include several structures where prior studies-although not focusing on aging effects per se-had revealed meditation effects, either as cross-sectional group differences and/or as longitudinal changes. For example, resembling the spatial location of previous observations, we detected significant group-by-age interactions within the left hippocampus [C1] (Holzel et al, 2011;Luders et al, 2013a,b), left and right insula [C2, C4] (Lazar et al, 2005;Holzel et al, 2008;Luders et al, 2012), left posterior cingulate gyrus [C1] (Holzel et al, 2011), right anterior cingulate gyrus [C3] (Grant et al, 2010(Grant et al, , 2013, left and right superior frontal lobe, including precentral gyrus and central sulcus [C1, C2, C3, C5] (Lazar et al, 2005;Luders et al, 2009Luders et al, , 2012Grant et al, 2013;Kang et al, 2013;Kumar et al, 2014), left and right inferior frontal lobe, including orbital gyrus [C3] (Luders et al, 2009;Vestergaard-Poulsen et al, 2009;Kang et al, 2013), left and right parietal lobe, including supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, and secondary somatosensory cortex [C1, C2, C4, C9] (Grant et al, 2010(Grant et al, , 2013Leung et al, 2013), right middle/inferior temporal cortex [C2] (Kang et al, 2013), left temporo-parietal junction [C4] (Holzel et al, 2011), right thalamus [C8] (Luders et al, 2009), as well as left and right cerebellum [C6] (VestergaardPoulsen et al, 2009;Holzel et al, 2011).…”

Neuro-imaging of mindfulness meditations: implications for clinical practice

“…Intriguingly, the similarities between areas activated in functional neuro-imaging studies and those observed to be thicker in structural ones (in particular thicker ACC and reduced amygdala grey matter density) suggest the hypothesis that repeated activation (or deactivation) of specific brain areas could lead to long-lasting brain structure changes (e.g. Lazar et al 2005;Hölzel et al 2008;Grant et al 2010). However, further research based on more rigorous long-term prospective studies is needed to better explore such an issue.…”