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eCAM Advance Access published online on October 27, 2007
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/nem163
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© 2007 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Regional Brain Activation During Meditation Shows Time and Practice Effects: An Exploratory FMRI Study{dagger}

E. Baron Short1,2, Samet Kose1,2, Qiwen Mu1, Jeffery Borckardt1, Andrew Newberg3, Mark S. George1,2,4 and F. Andrew Kozel1,2,4,5

1Brain Stimulation Laboratory, Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, 2Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, Charleston, SC, 3Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA, 4Center for Advanced Imaging Research, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC and 5Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA.

Meditation involves attentional regulation and may lead to increased activity in brain regions associated with attention such as dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether DLPFC and ACC were activated during meditation. Subjects who meditate were recruited and scanned on a 3.0 Tesla scanner. Subjects meditated for four sessions of 12 min and performed four sessions of a 6 min control task. Individual and group t-maps were generated of overall meditation response versus control response and late meditation response versus early meditation response for each subject and time courses were plotted. For the overall group (n = 13), and using an overall brain analysis, there were no statistically significant regional activations of interest using conservative thresholds. A region of interest analysis of the entire group time courses of DLPFC and ACC were statistically more active throughout meditation in comparison to the control task. Moreover, dividing the cohort into short (n = 8) and long-term (n = 5) practitioners (>10 years) revealed that the time courses of long-term practitioners had significantly more consistent and sustained activation in the DLPFC and the ACC during meditation versus control in comparison to short-term practitioners. The regional brain activations in the more practised subjects may correlate with better sustained attention and attentional error monitoring. In summary, brain regions associated with attention vary over the time of a meditation session and may differ between long- and short-term meditation practitioners.

Keywords: anterior cingulate cortex – attention – dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex – functional MRI – meditation – time courses

For reprints and all correspondence: Baron Short, MD; Brain Stimulation Laboratory; Institute of Psychiatry, 67 President Street, 3North; Charleston, SC 29425, USA. Tel: 1(843) 792-0199; Fax: 1(843)792-0159; E-mail: shorteb{at}musc.edu or shorteb{at}gmail.com

{dagger}Portions of this work were presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, 2005, Atlanta, GA and Career Development Institute, 2006, Pittsburgh, PA, The Mind and Life Summer Research Institute, 2006, Garrison, NY and American Psychiatric Association, 2007, San Diego, CA, USA.

Received May 18, 2007; accepted September 12, 2007


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