Effects of an online mindfulness-based intervention on brain haemodynamics: a pilot randomized controlled trial using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

A 12-week online mindfulness-based intervention altered prefrontal cortex function in healthy university students, as measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy during a verbal fluency task. Eighty-two participants were randomly assigned to the intervention or a wait-list control group. The intervention group showed significantly greater oxygenated hemoglobin signals than the control group, though effect sizes were small. The findings suggest that continuous mindfulness practice can produce measurable changes in brain hemodynamics and that functional near-infrared spectroscopy can detect these accumulated effects, potentially enabling biofeedback applications.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Although many neuroimaging studies have evaluated changes in the prefrontal cortex during mindfulness-based interventions, most of these studies were cross-sectional studies of skilled participants or involved pre-post comparisons before and after a single session. While functional near-infrared spectroscopy is a useful tool to capture changes in the hemodynamic response of the prefrontal cortex during continuous mindfulness-based intervention, its ability to detect the accumulated effects of continuous mindfulness-based intervention is currently unclear. We investigated whether a 12-wk online mindfulness-based intervention changed the hemodynamic response of the prefrontal cortex during a verbal fluency task. Eighty-two healthy university students were randomly allocated to a 12-wk online mindfulness-based intervention group or a wait-list control group. The integral values of oxygenated hemoglobin measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy before and after the intervention were compared to the values in the wait-list group. The intervention condition showed significantly greater functional near-infrared spectroscopy signal activation than the control condition; however, the effect sizes before and after the intervention were small. Thus, continuous mindfulness-based intervention could alter prefrontal cortex function, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy could be useful for measuring the accumulated effects of continuous mindfulness-based interventions. With a better understanding of the association between mindfulness and functional near-infrared spectroscopy signals, functional near-infrared spectroscopy can be used for biofeedback analyses.