Mindfulness meditation regulates anterior insula activity during empathy for social pain.
Davide Laneri, Sören Krach, Frieder M Paulus, Philipp Kanske, Verena Schuster, Jens Sommer, Laura Müller-Pinzler
Human Brain Mapping August 2017 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.23646 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Cross-sectional fMRI study with state manipulation (between-group comparison) Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Long-term mindfulness meditation practitioners and matched controls |
| Intervention | Mindfulness meditation |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Anterior insula Empathy Mindfulness meditation Social pain Vicarious embarrassment |
| Key findings | When sharing others' social suffering, both long-term meditators and controls showed increased activation in the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and temporal pole. In meditators who practiced mindfulness meditation just before the task, left anterior insula activation was lower, and its strength was negatively associated with trait compassion. The authors suggest mindfulness meditation may help adaptively cope with empathic distress, possibly enabling compassionate behavior. |
Abstract
Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, promote health, and well-being, as well as to increase compassionate behavior toward others. It reduces distress to one's own painful experiences, going along with altered neural responses, by enhancing self-regulatory processes and decreasing emotional reactivity. In order to investigate if mindfulness similarly reduces distress and neural activations associated with empathy for others' socially painful experiences, which might in the following more strongly motivate prosocial behavior, the present study compared trait, and state effects of long-term mindfulness meditation (LTM) practice. To do so we acquired behavioral data and neural activity measures using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an empathy for social pain task while manipulating the meditation state between two groups of LTM practitioners that were matched with a control group. The results show increased activations of the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as well as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole when sharing others' social suffering, both in LTM practitioners and controls. However, in LTM practitioners, who practiced mindfulness meditation just prior to observing others' social pain, left AI activation was lower and the strength of AI activation following the mindfulness meditation was negatively associated with trait compassion in LTM practitioners. The findings suggest that current mindfulness meditation could provide an adaptive mechanism in coping with distress due to the empathic sharing of others' suffering, thereby possibly enabling compassionate behavior. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4034-4046, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |
Citations in the library
Cited by 14
- Functional Connectivity of Prefrontal Cortex in Various Meditation Techniques – A Mini-Review International Journal of Yoga September 1, 2022
- Mindfulness meditation modulates stress-eating and its neural correlates. Scientific Reports March 27, 2024
- Enhanced Resting-State Functional Connectivity With Decreased Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations of the Salience Network in Mindfulness Novices Frontiers in Human Neuroscience March 3, 2022
- Compassion As an Intervention to Attune to Universal Suffering of Self and Others in Conflicts: A Translational Framework. Frontiers in Psychology 2020
- WITHDRAWN: I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) August 15, 2023
and 9 more in the library
Cites 23
- How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective Perspectives on Psychological Science October 14, 2011
- Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology October 27, 2008
- Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness Neuroreport November 7, 2005
- Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise PLoS One March 25, 2008
- Exploring self‐compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness‐based stress reduction (MBSR) Stress and Health March 15, 2010
and 18 more in the library