Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness

By Sara W. Lazar, C. Kerr, R. Wasserman, Jeremy R. Gray, Douglas N. Greve, Michael T. Treadway, M. McGarvey, Brian T. Quinn, Jeffery A. Dusek, H. Benson and 3 more. NeuroReport, 2005

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Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be associated with changes in the brain's physical structure. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning. Finally, the thickness of two regions correlated with meditation experience. These data provide the first structural evidence for experience-dependent cortical plasticity associated with meditation practice.

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Citations in the corpus

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective (2011, unknown): “Two crosssectional studies comparing the gray matter morphometry of the brains of experienced meditators and controls showed that meditators had greater cortical thickness (Lazar et al., 2005) and greater gray matter concentration (Hölzel et al.”
Mindfulness-based therapy: a comprehensive meta-analysis. (2013, background): “…with the notion that mindfulness training is associated with changes in areas of the brain responsible for affect regulation, and stress impulse reaction (Davidson et al., 2003; Hölzel et al., 2011; Lazar et al., 2005) the empirical evidence for explaining themechanisms ofMBT remains sparse.”
What are the benefits of mindfulness? A practice review of psychotherapy-related research. (2011, background): “…in the structure of the brain include thicker brain regions associated with attention, sensory processing and sensitivity to internal stimuli (Lazar et al., 2005), distinct gray matter concentrations (Hölzel et al., 2008), and thicker brain stems, which may account for positive cognitive,…”
Integrating Mindfulness Training into K-12 Education: Fostering the Resilience of Teachers and Students (2012, background): “…correlations between mindfulness training and increased thickness of cortical structures (i.e., grey matter) associated with attention, working memory, processing sensory input, EF, self-reflection, empathy, and affective regulation (Hölzel et al. 2008; Lazar et al. 2005; Luders et al. 2009).”
Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise (2008, unknown): “functional group difference found in insula is consistent with larger cortical thickness in this region among meditators than among controls, in a group of meditators trained in a tradition that usually contains a compassion meditation component [17].”
Understanding Others: Brain Mechanisms of Theory of Mind and Empathy (2008, background): “…as reviewed above, studies have started to investigate the structural and functional neural effects of expertise in compassion and its impact on affect and neuroendocrinological responses (Fredrickson et al., 2008; Klimecki et al., 2012; Lazar et al., 2005; Lutz et al., 2004; Pace et al., 2009).”
Learning to BREATHE: A Pilot Trial of a Mindfulness Curriculum for Adolescents (2009, background): “Some of these include changes in brain structures in areas related to attention (Lazar et al, 2005), enhanced performance in attentional tasks (Jha et al, 2007), increases in positive mood and immune system functioning (Davidson et al, 2003), improved academic achievement in college students (Hall,…”
Mindfulness: What Is It? Where Did It Come From? (2009, background): “Sara Lazar et al. (2005) demonstrated that brain areas associated with introspection and attention enlarge with years of meditation practice.”
The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: Larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter (2009, background): “However, in correspondence with Lazar et al. (2005), the VBM study by Holzel et al. (2008) revealed group differences in the anterior insula, though the detected cluster was very small (i.e., k = 22).”
Mindful emotion regulation: An integrative review. (2009, background): “In addition, research has identified observable concomitant functional and structural brain changes (Lutz, Greischar et al., 2004), particularly in areas implicated in both mindfulness and adaptive ER (Gray et al., 2002; Lazar et al., 2005).”
Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness (2012, methodology): “Across a number of different MBI studies (Lazar et al., 2005; Pagnoni and Cekic, 2007; Holzel et al., 2008, 2010, 2011b; Luders et al., 2009; Vestergaard-Poulsen et al., 2009; Grant et al., 2010a), increases in GM volume and density (in comparison to non-meditating controls) have been found using vo”
Neural Correlates of Dispositional Mindfulness During Affect Labeling (2007, background): “Recent studies with experienced mindfulness meditation practitioners provide some preliminary support for this possibility (25,26).”
The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) (2012, result): “Interindividual variations in interoceptive capacity have been found to be associated with right anterior insula cortical thickness, suggesting potential neuroplasticity effects of interoceptive awareness [30,31], an interpretation further supported by recent longitudinal studies of a mindfulness-ba”