Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience December 3, 2007 Britta K. Hölzel, Ulrich Ott, Tim Gard et al. 544 citations
Long-term mindfulness meditators show greater gray matter concentration in brain regions linked to interoceptive awareness and meditation, including the right anterior insula, left inferior temporal gyrus, and right hippocampus. In a comparison of 20 Vipassana meditators (averaging 8.6 years of practice, 2 hours daily) with matched non-meditators, the amount of meditation training predicted gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus, suggesting a causal impact of practice. The findings indicate that meditation practice is associated with structural brain differences in areas typically activated during meditation and relevant to the task.