Mindfulness training -- brief, but enduring effects
Nov 24, 2012
A recent study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience [LINK] has found that two months of training, consisting of as little as two hours per week (participants were also instructed to also meditate on their ownfor approximately 20 minutes per day)., could have enduring effects on neuropsychological functioing, as assessed by functional neuroimaging. "This is the first time that meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state," study researcher Gaëlle Desbordes, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University's Center for Computation Neuroscience and Neural Technology, said in a statement.
Researchers had study participants undergo one of three eight-week courses: one course was on mindful attention meditation, where they were trained to be more attentive and aware of their thinking, feeling and breathing; one course was on compassion meditation, where they were trained to feel compassion and kindness to other people and themselves; and one course just provided general health information as a control condition.
The researchers found that the people who took either of the meditation courses experienced decreased activity in the amydala in response to images that provoked negative emotions -- a sign that they were coping well with stress and were experiencing stability of their emotions. But people who only went through the health education class experienced an increase in the amygdala in response to images that provoked negative emotions.
Previously, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers found that eight weeks of meditation training was linked with more density of grey matter in the hippocampus of the brain (which plays a role in memory and learning), as well as parts of the brain linked with compassion and self-awareness. That research was published last year in the Journal of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging Holzel et al [LINK]
In a separate but related study, Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, of Duke University School of Medicine, has found that hippocampal size predicts antidepressant response, at least in those in later life [LINK]. More details about the study than are available in the abstract are available here [LINK]