Lifestyle Psychiatry by Douglas L. Noordsy;

Author:Douglas L. Noordsy; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615372522
Publisher: American Psychiatric Association
Published: 2019-11-06T20:00:00+00:00

Mindfulness and the Brain

A recent area of research inquiry is the neurobiological changes that occur in the practice of meditation and mindfulness. Fox et al. (2014) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine if there are structural brain changes associated with meditation. They evaluated 123 differences in brain structure from 21 neuroimaging studies involving approximately 300 meditators. The study used anatomical likelihood estimation meta-analysis and found eight brain regions that were consistently changed in meditators: frontopolar cortex or Brodmann area 10 (meta-awareness), hippocampus (memory consolidation and reconsolidation), anterior cingulate and midcingulate (self-regulation), orbitofrontal cortex (emotion regulation), sensory cortices and insula (exteroceptive and interoceptive body awareness), superior longitudinal fasciculus (intrahemispheric communication), and corpus callosum (interhemispheric communication). However, the authors noted some limitations, including methodological limitations and publication bias among the studies they evaluated.

In another meta-analysis, Boccia et al. (2015) investigated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies that included 37 individual functional MRI (fMRI) experimental studies on functional activations during meditation tasks (642 participants), 63 fMRI experimental studies on functional changes ascribable to meditation (1,652 participants, including both meditators and control subjects), and 10 experimental structural MRI studies of structural changes ascribable to meditation (581 participants). The meta-analysis used activation likelihood estimation analysis, which indicated that meditation practice causes functional and structural brain changes in areas involved in attention, memory formation, and executive functioning as well as self-referential processes, including self-awareness and self-regulation. One widely cited study found changes in activity in the default mode network, which processes self-reflection, particularly reduced activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (Brewer et al. 2011). These researchers suggested that their results could provide further evidence of the benefit of mindfulness in the prevention of age-related cognitive decline and the treatment of mood, anxiety, and addiction disorders. Several studies revealed that mindfulness meditation leads to changes in white and gray matter in the brain. Hölzel et al. (2011) proposed that mindfulness increases gray matter density, and Doll et al. (2015) concluded that mindfulness is associated with intrinsic functional connectivity (i.e., synchronized ongoing activity) between the default mode network and the salience network. Tang et al. (2010) found that even short courses of meditation (4 weeks or 11 hours) can produce white matter changes involving the anterior cingulate cortex (involved in self-regulation) in the brain.

Mindfulness has also been studied in the context of immune response. Tang et al. (2007) showed that a short course of meditation (5 days) can result in decreased cortisol levels and increased immunoreactivity. These studies and others indicate that short courses of meditation can not only produce significant effects in one’s subjective experience but also can lead to objective changes at the cellular, genetic, and neuronal level. In a systematic review of randomized controlled trials, Black and Slavich (2016) studied the effects of mindfulness meditation on immune system parameters, with a focus on five outcomes: 1) circulating and stimulated inflammatory proteins, 2) cellular transcription factors and gene expression, 3) immune cell count, 4) immune cell aging, and 5) antibody response. The findings suggested possible

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