Meditation involves complex emotional and attentional training that may improve self-awareness, emotion regulation, attention, and brain structure, but its neurophysiology is not well understood. Transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) offers a non-invasive way to probe brain activity and connectivity. This work aims to determine whether TMS-EEG can detect changes in brain reactivity during meditation and whether those changes are specific to the meditative state and the brain region stimulated.
Long-term meditation practitioners who had spent an average of 40,000 hours cultivating loving-kindness and compassion showed increased cortical thickness in fronto-insular brain regions compared to meditation-naïve controls. Functional MRI during a loving-kindness meditation session revealed increased brain activity in multiple prefrontal and insular areas, with partial overlap in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, suggesting these regions are central to generating emotional states relevant to the practice. These cross-sectional findings motivate future longitudinal research on brain plasticity from training aimed at enhancing altruism and prosocial motivation.