Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry |
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| Authors: | Holzel, Britta K. Ott, Ulrich Gard, Tim Hempel, Hannes Weygandt, Martin Morgen, Katrin Vaitl, Dieter |
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| Affiliation: | 1Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, 2Department of Neurology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, 3Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany |
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| Abstract: | Mindfulness meditators practice the non-judgmental observationof the ongoing stream of internal experiences as they arise.Using voxel-based morphometry, this study investigated MRI brainimages of 20 mindfulness (Vipassana) meditators (mean practice8.6 years; 2 h daily) and compared the regional gray matterconcentration to that of non-meditators matched for sex, age,education and handedness. Meditators were predicted to showgreater gray matter concentration in regions that are typicallyactivated during meditation. Results confirmed greater graymatter concentration for meditators in the right anterior insula,which is involved in interoceptive awareness. This group differencepresumably reflects the training of bodily awareness duringmindfulness meditation. Furthermore, meditators had greatergray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrusand right hippocampus. Both regions have previously been foundto be involved in meditation. The mean value of gray matterconcentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus was predictableby the amount of meditation training, corroborating the assumptionof a causal impact of meditation training on gray matter concentrationin this region. Results suggest that meditation practice isassociated with structural differences in regions that are typicallyactivated during meditation and in regions that are relevantfor the task of meditation. |
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| Keywords: | meditation mindfulness voxel-based morphometry gray matter concentration |
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