Effect of meditation on clinical symptoms and gray matter volume in chronic schizophrenia: a randomized controlled trial.
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience May 19, 2026 Mi Yang, Yuzheng Ma, Jialong Huang et al.
Meditation therapy can slow the loss of gray matter volume in the brains of people with chronic schizophrenia. In an eight-month trial with 58 male inpatients, those who practiced meditation showed less brain tissue shrinkage than those receiving conventional treatment alone. Greater preservation of gray matter in the right thalamus was linked to larger reductions in positive, negative, and total symptom scores on the PANSS scale. Similar links were found for the right insula and supplementary motor area. The results suggest meditation may help alleviate clinical symptoms in schizophrenia by protecting brain structure.