By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Mindfulness and meditation are the two most effective brain trainers to support optimal prefrontal cortex functioning. The more you incorporate them into your daily experience, the more you will be training your brain to recalibrate, balance, and control.” – Michele Rosenthal
The nervous system is constantly changing and adapting to the environment. It will change size, activity, and connectivity in response to experience. For example, the brain area that controls the right index finger has been found to be larger in blind subjects who use braille than in sighted individuals. Similarly, cab drivers in London who navigate the twisting streets of the city, have a larger hippocampus, which is involved in spatial navigation, than predefined route bus drivers. These changes in the brain are called neuroplasticity. Over the last decade neuroscience has been studying the effects of contemplative practices on the brain and has identified neuroplastic changes in widespread areas.
There are two primary brain areas that appear to be altered by mindfulness training, the prefrontal cortex, including the orbitofrontal cortex, and what is termed the default mode network, which includes the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior and posterior cingulate cortices, precuneus, inferior parietal cortex, and lateral temporal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is involved in attention, decision making, and cognitive processes while the default mode network is involved in mind wandering and self-referential thinking.
Self-referential thinking is an important process that I prevalent when the mind is wandering and appears to be reduced by mindfulness training. In today’s Research News article “Medial orbital gyrus modulation during spatial perspective changes: Pre- vs. post-8 weeks mindfulness meditation.” See
or see below.
Tomasino and colleagues further investigate the neural process in self-referential thinking and the area of the brain that underlie them. They studied the effects of 8-weeks of meditation training on the brain responses to tasks that involve referencing the self or involve non self-referenced thinking. Brian activity was measured with functional Magnetic Imaging (f-MRI). They found that when processing the self-referential thinking task, there was significant activations of the left and right medial orbital gyrus. This activation was greater after the meditation training than before. In addition, after training response speeds increased on the self-referential thinking task. They also found that the magnitude of the signal change was negatively related to Self-Directedness, such that the higher the level of self-directed thinking the lower the activation.
The orbitofrontal cortex area is normally activated in high level thinking and with attention. It is thus not surprising that the orbitofrontal cortex would be activated by processing information necessary to make decisions. It is, however, surprising that the response would be greater for self-related tasks than for non self-related tasks. Meditation training is known to reduce self-referential thinking. So, it would make sense that that this intensified activation of the orbitofrontal cortex to self-referential thinking would be negatively related to self-directedness after meditation training. But, it is surprising that the activation of this area by self-referential thinking would be intensified after meditation. It will remain for future research to disentangle these puzzling responses.
Regardless, alter the brains self-related processing with mindfulness.
“Meditation practice appears to have an amazing variety of neurological benefits – from changes in grey matter volume to reduced activity in the “me” centers of the brain to enhanced connectivity between brain regions.” – Alice Walton
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
Study Summary
Tomasino B, Campanella F, Fabbro F. Medial orbital gyrus modulation during spatial perspective changes: Pre- vs. post-8 weeks mindfulness meditation. Conscious Cogn. 2016 Feb;40:147-58. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.01.006. Epub 2016 Jan 25.
Highlights
- We used fMRI pre and following a 8-weeks mindfulness training (MT).
- During fMRI subjects solved a own-body mental transformation task.
- The own-body mental transformation task (vs. non-bodily) in the post (vs. Pre-MT) significantly increased activations in the left and right middle orbital gyrus.
- The signal change correlated with changes in a self-maturity scale.
- A brief mindfulness training caused increased activation in areas involved in self related processing.
Abstract
Mindfulness meditation exercises the ability to shift to an “observer perspective”. That means learning to observe internally and externally arising stimulations in a detached perspective. Both before and after attending a 8-weeks mindfulness training (MT) participants underwent an fMRI experiment (serving as their own internal control) and solved a own-body mental transformation task, which is used to investigate embodiment and perspective taking (and an non-bodily mental transformation task as control).
We found a stimulus × time-points interaction: the own-body mental transformation task (vs. non-bodily) in the post (vs. pre-MT) significantly increased activations in the medial orbital gyrus. The signal change in the right medial orbital gyrus significantly correlated with changes in a self-maturity personality scale.
A brief MT caused increased activation in areas involved in self related processing and person perspective changes, together with an increase in self-maturity, consistently with the aim of mindfulness meditation that is exercising change in self perspective.