Dispositional mindfulness co-varies with smaller amygdala and caudate volumes in community adults

Mindfulness, a psychological process reflecting attention and awareness to what is happening in the present moment, has been associated with increased well-being and decreased depression and anxiety in both healthy and patient populations. However, little research has explored underlying neural path...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-05, Vol.8 (5), p.e64574
Main Authors: Taren, Adrienne A, Creswell, J David, Gianaros, Peter J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adults
Amygdala
Amygdala - anatomy & histology
Anxiety
Attention
Biology
Brain research
Cardiovascular disease
Caudate Nucleus - anatomy & histology
Communities
Demographics
Depression (Mood disorder)
Emotions
Female
Fibromyalgia
Humans
Hypotheses
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical research
Medicine
Mental depression
Middle Aged
Mindfulness
Mindfulness meditation
Neurobiology
Neurophysiology
Neurosciences
Neurosis
Older people
Pain
Personality
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Stress
Stress (Psychology)
Studies
Substantia grisea
Training
Well being
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Summary:Mindfulness, a psychological process reflecting attention and awareness to what is happening in the present moment, has been associated with increased well-being and decreased depression and anxiety in both healthy and patient populations. However, little research has explored underlying neural pathways. Recent work suggests that mindfulness (and mindfulness training interventions) may foster neuroplastic changes in cortico-limbic circuits responsible for stress and emotion regulation. Building on this work, we hypothesized that higher levels of dispositional mindfulness would be associated with decreased grey matter volume in the amgydala. In the present study, a self-report measure of dispositional mindfulness and structural MRI images were obtained from 155 healthy community adults. Volumetric analyses showed that higher dispositional mindfulness is associated with decreased grey matter volume in the right amygdala, and exploratory analyses revealed that higher dispositional mindfulness is also associated with decreased grey matter volume in the left caudate. Moreover, secondary analyses indicate that these amygdala and caudate volume associations persist after controlling for relevant demographic and individual difference factors (i.e., age, total grey matter volume, neuroticism, depression). Such volumetric differences may help explain why mindful individuals have reduced stress reactivity, and suggest new candidate structural neurobiological pathways linking mindfulness with mental and physical health outcomes.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0064574