Contemplative practitioners (long-term meditators and yoga practitioners) show higher levels of maturity development—a measure of adult self-development—than matched controls. Maturity development correlates with cortical thickness in the posterior cingulate, a brain region involved in self-referential and narrative processing. The study identifies a brain network including the posterior cingulate cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and inferior frontal cortex as a primary neural correlate of maturity development.
Mindfulness, defined as nonjudgmental present-moment awareness, can help initiate and maintain behavior change, which is crucial for preventing and treating chronic medical and psychiatric illnesses. This integrative review synthesizes the neuroscience of mindfulness, integrating motivation and learning mechanisms into a mindful self-regulation model that explains how mindfulness affects behavior change. It also reviews clinical research on mindfulness-based interventions for health behaviors relevant to psychiatric care. The authors highlight current research limitations and propose mechanisms for future study to enhance mindfulness's impact on behavior change.
Participation in an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program is associated with increases in gray matter concentration in several brain regions. Sixteen healthy, meditation-naïve adults underwent MRI scans before and after the program, and their brain changes were compared to a wait-list control group of 17 individuals. Increases were found in the left hippocampus, posterior cingulate cortex, temporo-parietal junction, and cerebellum. These regions are involved in learning, memory, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking. The findings suggest that MBSR can produce structural brain changes.