Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
September 30, 2021
Yoni K Ashar, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna, Joan Halifax et al.
A four-week compassion meditation program delivered via smartphone increased brain activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) when participants listened to stories of suffering others, compared with a condition that controlled for increased familiarity with suffering. Among compassion meditation participants, greater increases in mOFC activity correlated with greater self-reported compassion-related feelings and attributions. Compared with a placebo condition (presented as oxytocin), the meditation group showed a similar mOFC increase at an uncorrected statistical threshold. The authors conclude that the mOFC is an important brain mechanism of compassion meditation, that its effects are not explained by familiarity, and that they are partly explained by placebo effects.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
July 1, 2019
T. Kral, Ted Imhoff‐Smith, D. Dean et al.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) increases resting-state functional connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in healthy, meditation-naïve adults. This effect did not persist at a 5.5-month follow-up, but more practice time was linked to greater connectivity increases. The connectivity change was associated with increased microstructural connectivity of a white matter tract connecting these regions and with improved self-reported attention.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
May 17, 2019
Jennifer Yih, Danielle E Beam, Kieran C. R. Fox et al.
Intracranial electrical stimulation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and insula (INS) in 18 neurosurgical patients produced distinct subjective experiences: ACC stimulation elicited somatic and visceral sensations, OFC stimulation predominantly olfactory and gustatory responses, and INS stimulation a mix of these. The magnitude of electric current correlated positively with the perceived intensity of subjective experience and evoked emotional state across all three regions. Most reported experiences were negatively valenced and unpleasant, especially those from ACC stimulation. These findings demonstrate a direct relationship between electrical stimulation magnitude and the qualia of subjective experience, highlighting the importance of charge magnitude for eliciting specific changes in human experience.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
January 1, 2015
Florian Kurth, Allan MacKenzie-Graham, Arthur W Toga et al.
Long-term meditators show altered gray matter asymmetry in brain regions linked to self-referential thought and attention. Compared to 50 matched controls, 50 long-term meditators had decreased rightward asymmetry in the precuneus, a core node of the default mode network. More meditation practice years correlated with stronger leftward asymmetry near the posterior intraparietal sulcus, an area involved in attention, and with stronger rightward asymmetry in the pregenual cingulate cortex. These patterns suggest meditation may adapt the default mode network and attention-related processing.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
January 1, 2015
Xiaoqian Ding, Yi-Yuan Tang, Chengyue Cao et al.
After five hours of meditation training, compared with the same amount of relaxation, participants showed greater brain activity in the right cingulate gyrus, insula, putamen, inferior frontal gyrus, and bilateral middle frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and superior temporal gyrus when presented with a solution to a problem they had failed to solve. The authors speculate that these regions may support detecting conflict, breaking mental set, restructuring problem representation, error detection, and the 'Aha' feeling of insight.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
October 1, 2014
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn, Abraham Goldstein
The default mode network (DMN), typically studied with brain imaging, was investigated using electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity (FC) during mindfulness meditation (MM). Three groups of meditators were compared with controls. DMN activity appeared as reduced overall inter-hemispheric gamma mean phase coherence (MPC) when transitioning from rest to a time production task. MM produced a state increase in alpha MPC and a trait decrease in EEG-FC, regardless of expertise or band. Specifically, reductions occurred in right theta MPC and left alpha and gamma MPC. Left gamma MPC negatively correlated with MM expertise, possibly reflecting lower internal verbalization. The lower gamma MPC supports the idea that MM reduces DMN activity related to self-reference and mind-wandering.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
March 1, 2010
Britta K. Hölzel, James Carmody, Karleyton C Evans et al.
Reductions in perceived stress after an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention correlate with decreases in gray matter density in the right basolateral amygdala. Stressed but otherwise healthy individuals (N = 26) reported significantly less perceived stress after the intervention. The study demonstrates that neuroplastic changes are associated with improvements in a psychological state variable, not just with learning abstract information or motor and language skills.