Mindfulness meditation regulates anterior insula activity during empathy for social pain

Human Brain Mapping
Davide LaneriLaura Müller-Pinzler

Abstract

Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, promote health, and well-being, as well as to increase compassionate behavior toward others. It reduces distress to one's own painful experiences, going along with altered neural responses, by enhancing self-regulatory processes and decreasing emotional reactivity. In order to investigate if mindfulness similarly reduces distress and neural activations associated with empathy for others' socially painful experiences, which might in the following more strongly motivate prosocial behavior, the present study compared trait, and state effects of long-term mindfulness meditation (LTM) practice. To do so we acquired behavioral data and neural activity measures using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an empathy for social pain task while manipulating the meditation state between two groups of LTM practitioners that were matched with a control group. The results show increased activations of the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as well as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole when sharing others' social suffering, both in LTM practitioners and controls. However, in LTM practitioners, who practiced mindfulness meditation just prior to observi...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jan 25, 2018·The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine : Research on Paradigm, Practice, and Policy·Maria T Chao, Shelley R Adler
Jul 30, 2019·Asia-Pacific Psychiatry : Official Journal of the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists·Xing-Rong ZhaoYa-Lin Zhang
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Aug 12, 2021·Communications Biology·Esmeralda Hidalgo-LopezBelinda Pletzer

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