Mindfulness meditation modulates stress-eating and its neural correlates.
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.