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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on December 3, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2008 3(1):55-61; doi:10.1093/scan/nsm038
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry

Britta K. Hölzel1, Ulrich Ott1, Tim Gard1, Hannes Hempel1, Martin Weygandt1, Katrin Morgen1,2 and Dieter Vaitl1,3

1Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, 2Department of Neurology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, 3Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany

Mindfulness meditators practice the non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal experiences as they arise. Using voxel-based morphometry, this study investigated MRI brain images of 20 mindfulness (Vipassana) meditators (mean practice 8.6 years; 2 h daily) and compared the regional gray matter concentration to that of non-meditators matched for sex, age, education and handedness. Meditators were predicted to show greater gray matter concentration in regions that are typically activated during meditation. Results confirmed greater gray matter concentration for meditators in the right anterior insula, which is involved in interoceptive awareness. This group difference presumably reflects the training of bodily awareness during mindfulness meditation. Furthermore, meditators had greater gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus and right hippocampus. Both regions have previously been found to be involved in meditation. The mean value of gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus was predictable by the amount of meditation training, corroborating the assumption of a causal impact of meditation training on gray matter concentration in this region. Results suggest that meditation practice is associated with structural differences in regions that are typically activated during meditation and in regions that are relevant for the task of meditation.

Keywords: meditation; mindfulness; voxel-based morphometry; gray matter concentration

Correspondence should be addressed to Britta Hölzel, Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10H, 35394 Giessen, Germany. E-mail: Britta.K.Hoelzel{at}psychol.uni-giessen.de.

Received August 16, 2007. Accepted November 13, 2007.


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