Intracranial substrates of meditation-induced neuromodulation in the amygdala and hippocampus.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America – February 11, 2025
Source: PubMed
Summary
Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) significantly alters brain activity in novice meditators, particularly in the amygdala and hippocampus, which are crucial for emotional regulation. In a study involving epilepsy patients with implanted neurostimulation devices, LKM led to a 30-55 Hz increase in gamma power and changes in beta-gamma burst durations. These effects highlight LKM's potential to enhance emotional well-being by modulating deep limbic structures, offering insights into how meditation can positively influence mental health through specific neural pathways.
Abstract
Meditation is an accessible mental practice associated with emotional regulation and well-being. Loving-kindness meditation (LKM), a specific subtype of meditative practice, involves focusing one's attention on thoughts of well-being for oneself and others. Meditation has been proven to be beneficial in a variety of settings, including therapeutic applications, but the neural activity underlying meditative practices and their positive effects are not well understood. It has been difficult to understand the contribution of deep limbic structures given the difficulty of studying neural activity directly in the human brain. Here, we leverage a unique patient population, epilepsy patients chronically implanted with responsive neurostimulation devices that allow chronic, invasive electrophysiology recording to investigate the physiological correlates of LKM in the amygdala and hippocampus of novice meditators. We find that LKM-associated changes in physiological activity were specific to periodic, but not aperiodic, features of neural activity. LKM was associated with an increase in γ (30 to 55 Hz) power and an alternation in the duration of β (13 to 30 Hz) and γ oscillatory bursts in both the amygdala and hippocampus, two regions associated with mood disorders. These findings reveal the nature of LKM-induced modulation of limbic activity in first-time meditators.