Scientific reports
March 27, 2024
Alyssa Torske, Benno Bremer, Britta Karen Hölzel et al.
24 citations
A 31-day web-based mindfulness meditation training, compared to a health training condition, increased mindfulness and reduced stress-eating, emotional-eating tendencies, and food cravings in 66 meditation-naïve adults who tend to stress-eat. These behavioral improvements were accompanied by changes in resting-state functional connectivity between the hypothalamus, reward regions, and default mode network areas, as well as between the insula and somatosensory areas. Additional connectivity changes occurred in brain regions linked to emotion regulation, awareness, attention, and sensory integration. The correlations between connectivity and behavioral changes suggest neural mechanisms underlying mindfulness effects on stress-eating.
Scientific reports
December 19, 2023
María Guadalupe Mora Álvarez, Britta Karen Hölzel, Benno Bremer et al.
19 citations
A 31-day web-based mindfulness meditation training reduced perceived stress and anxiety and improved overall reaction time on an attention test, though no specific attentional components were affected. The training also increased flow experiences. Brain imaging showed increased activity in the superior frontal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and right hippocampus during an alerting task, and decreased stress and anxiety correlated with right hippocampus activation. Increased flow correlated with activity in all those areas. Diffusion imaging revealed improved white matter microstructure in the right uncinate fasciculus, linking the right hippocampus to frontal areas. An active control group showed no significant changes.
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Saampras Ganesan, Fernando A Barrios, Ishaan Batta et al.
6 citations
Meditation practices, which have shown therapeutic benefits for conditions like depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety, have been studied with neuroimaging over the past decade. However, existing neuroscientific models are based on small, heterogeneous datasets, limiting generalizability and replicability. The ENIGMA-Meditation consortium is the first worldwide collaborative effort to conduct systematic meta- and mega-analyses of globally distributed neuroimaging data using standardized methods. This framework aims to improve statistical power and address multidomain heterogeneity in meditation practice types, experience, and experimental design. The consortium will generate rigorous neuroscientific insights into the mechanisms underlying meditation's therapeutic effects on psychological and cognitive attributes.
Scientific reports
April 25, 2025
Alyssa Torske, Doris Schicker, Jessica Freiherr et al.
3 citations
Frequent exposure to food cues in modern environments can desensitize sensory systems, reducing eating pleasure and prompting overeating to compensate. A 31-day web-based mindfulness training, compared to health training, may reduce this habituation response to high-calorie food stimuli in stressed, hungry individuals. The training appears to increase neural activity in brain regions for visual, olfactory, and emotion processing, potentially improving attention to food and enhancing eating pleasure, which could curb overeating and associated weight gain and disease risks.
April 8, 2024
Saampras Ganesan, Aki Tsuchiyagaito, Greg J. Siegle et al.
2 citations
preprint
Meditation practices, which have been adapted into manualized interventions for conditions like depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety, show therapeutic promise, but their neuroscientific basis remains unclear. Current neuroimaging studies rely on small, heterogeneous datasets that vary in practice types, participant experience, clinical targets, and imaging methods, limiting generalizability and replicability. To address this, the ENIGMA-Meditation consortium was formed as a global collaboration to conduct systematic meta- and mega-analyses of distributed neuroimaging data using standardized methods. This framework aims to improve statistical power and rigorously characterize the neural mechanisms underlying meditation's effects on psychological and cognitive attributes, advancing the field of contemplative neuroscience.