Short-term Sahaja Yoga meditation training modulates brain structure and spontaneous activity in the executive control network

Alessandra Dodich, Maurizio Zollo, Chiara Crespi, Stefano F Cappa, Daniella Laureiro Martinez, Andrea Falini, Nicola Canessa, Alessandra Dodich, Maurizio Zollo, Chiara Crespi, Stefano F Cappa, Daniella Laureiro Martinez, Andrea Falini, Nicola Canessa

Abstract

Introduction: While cross-sectional studies have shown neural changes in long-term meditators, they might be confounded by self-selection and potential baseline differences between meditators and non meditators. Prospective longitudinal studies of the effects of meditation in naïve subjects are more conclusive with respect to causal inferences, but related evidence is so far limited.

Methods: Here, we assessed the effects of a 4-week Sahaja Yoga meditation training on gray matter density and spontaneous resting-state brain activity in a group of 12 meditation-naïve healthy adults.

Results: Compared with 30 control subjects, the participants to meditation training showed increased gray matter density and changes in the coherence of intrinsic brain activity in two adjacent regions of the right inferior frontal gyrus encompassing the anterior component of the executive control network. Both these measures correlated with self-reported well-being scores in the meditation group.

Conclusions: The significant impact of a brief meditation training on brain regions associated with attention, self-control, and self-awareness may reflect the engagement of cognitive control skills in searching for a state of mental silence, a distinctive feature of Sahaja Yoga meditation. The manifold implications of these findings involve both managerial and rehabilitative settings concerned with well-being and emotional state in normal and pathological conditions.

Keywords: Sahaja Yoga meditation; fronto-parietal executive control network; neural plasticity; resting-state fMRI; voxel-based morphometry.

© 2018 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Spatial contiguity between the right inferior frontal clusters showing increased GM density (in blue) and a modulation of coherent activity (in red) after meditation training. The overlap between morphometric and resting‐state data is shown in green. (b) Spectral power of intrinsic activity in the executive control network, providing a measure of the contribution of each frequency bin (between 0 and 0.25 Hz) to the fluctuations of BOLD signal at rest (asterisks indicate the frequency bins displaying a significant effect in time‐by‐group interaction). Meditators, compared with non meditators, display a reduction of power at ultra‐low frequencies, and an increase at low–middle frequencies, after training. (c) Average GM density in the cluster resulting from VBM interaction analysis for the two time points of both training (MG) and control (CG) groups (error bars depict standard deviations). Meditators, compared with non meditators, display a significant increase of GM density with training in the right fronto‐insular cluster depicted in green color in panel A

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