Two distinct mindfulness practices—breathing and body scan—produce different patterns of brain connectivity after an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. Using fMRI, the study examined the salience network (SN) in 18 meditation-naïve participants who completed MBSR and 14 waitlist controls. Breathing (fixed attention) increased long-distance SN connectivity to occipital regions, while body scan (shifting attention) increased SN connectivity to frontal and central gyri and boosted local neural coherence in the parietal lobe. During mindfulness practices after MBSR, distant and local connections became positively correlated, suggesting globally enhanced SN information processing. The small sample limits generalizability.
Long-term breathing training (8-week mindfulness program) reduces delta and alpha functional connectivity in the left frontal region, while short-term breath counting reduces gamma functional connectivity in the same region. These patterns suggest that breathing practices engage approach-motivation emotion regulation, as indicated by left frontal asymmetry. The findings support the use of both long-term training and brief digital interventions for emotion regulation. Study 1 involved 31 participants; Study 2 involved 51 participants using a virtual reality platform.
Electroencephalography (EEG) effective connectivity can predict whether someone has experience with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Machine learning algorithms classified participants' MBSR history using gamma-band brain connectivity. The decision tree algorithm achieved the highest prediction accuracy of 91.7% during resting state, outperforming classifications during focus-breathing and body-scan sessions. Support vector machine and naïve Bayes classifiers also showed significant accuracies above chance across all three sessions. Preserving just four EEG channels (F7, F8, T7, P7) out of 19 yielded 83.3% accuracy. Connectivity features predominantly in the frontal lobe contributed most to classifier construction, consistent with existing mindfulness literature.
Low-gamma band effective connectivity increased globally after an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, while high-beta band effective connectivity increased only during breathing. Outgoing effective connectivity was stronger during resting, breathing, and body-scan. Changes in effective connectivity of the right lateral prefrontal area predicted mindfulness and emotional regulation abilities, partially supporting the theory that lateral prefrontal areas exert top-down modulatory control, implying that mindfulness training cultivates better emotional regulation.