Mindfulness meditation increases default mode, salience, and central executive network connectivity
Scientific Reports August 2, 2022 Benno Bremer, Qiong Wu, María Guadalupe Mora Álvarez et al. 125 citations
One month of mindfulness meditation training increases functional connectivity between major large-scale brain networks, particularly the default mode network, salience network, and central executive network. In a study of 46 healthy, meditation-naïve adults, resting-state fMRI scans before and after 31 days of mindfulness training or an active control intervention revealed that mindfulness training strengthened connections between nodes of the default mode and salience networks, and between the salience network and key regions of the central executive network. These connectivity changes may represent a neural mechanism underlying the beneficial effects of mindfulness meditation on health and cognition.