Mindfulness training induces structural connectome changes in insula networks

Paul B Sharp, Bradley P Sutton, Erick J Paul, Nikolai Sherepa, Charles H Hillman, Neal J Cohen, Arthur F Kramer, Ruchika Shaurya Prakash, Wendy Heller, Eva H Telzer, Aron K Barbey, Paul B Sharp, Bradley P Sutton, Erick J Paul, Nikolai Sherepa, Charles H Hillman, Neal J Cohen, Arthur F Kramer, Ruchika Shaurya Prakash, Wendy Heller, Eva H Telzer, Aron K Barbey

Abstract

Although mindfulness meditation is known to provide a wealth of psychological benefits, the neural mechanisms involved in these effects remain to be well characterized. A central question is whether the observed benefits of mindfulness training derive from specific changes in the structural brain connectome that do not result from alternative forms of experimental intervention. Measures of whole-brain and node-level structural connectome changes induced by mindfulness training were compared with those induced by cognitive and physical fitness training within a large, multi-group intervention protocol (n = 86). Whole-brain analyses examined global graph-theoretical changes in structural network topology. A hypothesis-driven approach was taken to investigate connectivity changes within the insula, which was predicted here to mediate interoceptive awareness skills that have been shown to improve through mindfulness training. No global changes were observed in whole-brain network topology. However, node-level results confirmed a priori hypotheses, demonstrating significant increases in mean connection strength in right insula across all of its connections. Present findings suggest that mindfulness strengthens interoception, operationalized here as the mean insula connection strength within the overall connectome. This finding further elucidates the neural mechanisms of mindfulness meditation and motivates new perspectives about the unique benefits of mindfulness training compared to contemporary cognitive and physical fitness interventions.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of the connectome analysis for mindfulness training. (1) Connectomes are obtained from pre- and post-training data. Each entry in the connectome matrix contains connection strength for a given connection (e.g., insula to OFC), which is computed by dividing the raw number of tracks from tractography by the average volume of each pair of ROIs. (2) Three global graph-theoretical metrics were computed on the overall connectome: mean strength (B), global efficiency (E), and mean clustering coefficient (C). (3) Connection density (i.e. connection strength) was summed across left insula and right insula, yielding two summary metrics of left and right insula mean connection density.
Figure 2
Figure 2
In both panels, the left brain-image is an anatomical representation of tractography pathways between right insula and highly connected regions, and the right diagram is a graphical representation of those same right insula connections. Connections displayed (only corticocortical, here) comprised the top 80% connection strengths across all insula pathways. (A) Displays pre-training connections in right insula, which showed the greatest structural reorganization across mindfulness training. (B) Represents the same two images as in (A) except at post-training.

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