Longitudinal effects of meditation on brain resting-state functional connectivity

Zongpai Zhang,Adam K Anderson,Wen-Ming Luh,Wenna Duan,George Weinschenk,Grace D Zhou,Weiying Dai

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-90729-y

Zongpai Zhang, Adam K Anderson + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90729-y

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Abstract

Changes in brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) were investigated using a longitudinal design by following a 2-month focused attention meditation (FAM) practice and analyzing their association with FAM practice time. Ten novice meditators were recruited from a university meditation course. Participants were scanned with a resting-state fMRI sequence with multi-echo EPI acquisition at baseline and at the 2-month follow-up. Total FAM practice time was calculated from the daily log of the participants. We observed significantly increased rsFC between the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and dorsal attention network (DAN), the right middle temporal (RMT) region and default mode network (DMN), the left and right superior parietal lobules (LSPL/RSPL) and DMN, and the LSPL/RSPL and DAN. Furthermore, the rsFC between the LSPL and medial prefrontal cortex was significantly associated with the FAM practice time. These results demonstrate increased connectivity within the DAN, between the DMN and DAN, and between the DMN and visual cortex. These findings demonstrate that FAM can enhance the brain connection among and within brain networks, especially DMN and DAN, indicating potential effect of FAM on fast switching between mind wandering and focused attention and maintaining attention once in the attentive state.

Highlights

Changes in brain resting-state functional connectivity were investigated using a longitudinal design by following a 2-month focused attention meditation (FAM) practice and analyzing their association with FAM practice time
Brain activations observed during meditation provide evidence for increases of neural activity while practicing meditation; the findings may have been influenced by the individual variance of performing the required meditation during the fMRI scanning
Mind wandering and reorienting attention were associated with neural activity in the default mode network (DMN)[2,3,4,5,6] and dorsal attention network (DAN)/ ventral attention network (VAN)[7,8,9,10], respectively

Summary

Results

We observed that the longitudinal changes of rsFC between the LSPL seed and medial prefrontal region (mPFC) (including anterior cingulate cortex and superior medial frontal regions) was significantly associated with individual practice time (Fig. 4), using the denoised ME BOLD time series. Post-hoc regional analysis confirmed the significantly positive association between the changes in LSPL-mPFC rsFC and meditation practice time (r = 0.93, p = 0.00027) after adjusting for the gender effects and (r = 0.94, p = 0.00053) after adjusting for both the gender and handedness effects (Fig. 6). Increased LSPL-mPFC rsFC was observed for two participants who practiced longer than the zero-crossing time These regional results indicated the direction of rsFC changes may change after a period of meditation practice. Longitudinal changes in GM density were not associated with practice time at both voxel-levels of p < 0.005 and p < 0.01

Discussion

Conclusion

Methods