The Longitudinal Effect of Meditation on Resting-State Functional Connectivity Using Dynamic Arterial Spin Labeling: A Feasibility Study.

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

doi:10.3390/brainsci11101263

Abstract

We aimed to assess whether dynamic arterial spin labeling (dASL), a novel quantitative MRI technique with minimal contamination of subject motion and physiological noises, could detect the longitudinal effect of focused attention meditation (FAM) on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC). A total of 10 novice meditators who recorded their FAM practice time were scanned at baseline and at the 2-month follow-up. Two-month meditation practice caused significantly increased rsFC between the left medial temporal (LMT) seed and precuneus area and between the right frontal eye (RFE) seed and medial prefrontal cortex. Meditation practice time was found to be positively associated with longitudinal changes of rsFC between the default mode network (DMN) and dorsal attention network (DAN), between DMN and insula, and between DAN and the frontoparietal control network (FPN) but negatively associated with changes of rsFC between DMN and FPN, and between DAN and visual regions. These findings demonstrate the capability of dASL in identifying the FAM-induced rsFC changes and suggest that the practice of FAM can strengthen the efficient control of FPN on fast switching between DMN and DAN and enhance the utilization of attentional resources with reduced focus on visual processing.

Highlights

Meditation provides evidence of a diverse set of benefits, including emotional regulation [1], awareness and self-regulation [2], memory and cognition [3], attention [4], and working memory [5]
In a recent study on the same subjects used in the present work, we have found that meditation can significantly increase resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between default mode network (DMN) and dorsal attention network (DAN) [20]
Assuming that the maximum increase in the effect size for anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) rsFC is reached for the dynamic arterial spin labeling (dASL) method, we can consider the effect size of dASL increases by about half of 49% (i.e., 24%) on average from conventional BOLD

Summary

Introduction

Meditation provides evidence of a diverse set of benefits, including emotional regulation [1], awareness and self-regulation [2], memory and cognition [3], attention [4], and working memory [5]. Meditation has been demonstrated to be beneficial to the treatment of psychological disorders [6,7,8,9]. Neuroimaging studies have examined the state effect and the trait effect of meditation. The state effect refers to the short-term consequences during an individual’s meditative practice. The trait effect characterizes the long-lasting changes that accrue via repetitive practice even when the meditation is not practiced. The therapeutic effects and daily life benefits (e.g., improved attention) emerge from the trait-related brain changes that are induced by meditation

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Conclusion