The present methods utilized a well-validated computational approach to measure the thickness of the cerebral cortex. All participants provided written, informed consent and the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Two meditation participants were left-handed exclusion of the left-handed participants did not significantly alter results. All participants were physically and psychologically healthy. The meditation and control participants were matched for sex (meditators 65% male, controls 67%), age (meditators 38.2 years old, controls 36.8 years old), race (both groups 100% Caucasian) and years of education (meditators 17.3 years, controls 17.4 years). Fifteen control participants with no meditation or yoga experience were also recruited. Participants were required to have participated in at least 1 week-long Insight meditation retreat, which entails approximately 10 h of meditation per day. On average, participants had 9.1 ± 7.1 years of meditation experience and practiced 6.2 ± 4.0 h per week. Two participants were full-time meditation teachers, three were part-time yoga or meditation teachers and the rest meditated an average of once a day for 40 min, while pursuing traditional careers in fields such as healthcare and law. These participants were not monks, but rather typical Western meditation practitioners who incorporate their practice into a daily routine involving career, family, friends and outside interests. Twenty participants with extensive training in Insight meditation were recruited from local meditation communities. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that between-group and experience-dependent differences in cortical thickness would be found in brain regions involved in attention and sensory processing, thereby showing evidence of cortical plasticity. Formal practice involves sustained mindful attention to internal and external sensory stimuli. Rather, the main focus of Insight meditation is the cultivation of attention and a mental capacity termed ‘mindfulness’, which is a specific nonjudgmental awareness of present-moment stimuli without cognitive elaboration. This form of meditation does not utilize mantra or chanting. To test this hypothesis, we used magnetic resonance imaging to visualize differences in the thickness of the cerebral cortex of experienced Buddhist Insight meditation practitioners. We hypothesized that regular meditation practice should also result in significant changes in the cortical structure in regions that are routinely engaged during this mental exercise. Regular practice of meditation is reported to produce changes in mental state and resting electroencephalogram patterns that persist beyond the time-period of active practice. Meditation is a form of mental exercise that has become a popular US health practice. These data provide the first structural evidence for experience-dependent cortical plasticity associated with meditation practice. Finally, the thickness of two regions correlated with meditation experience. Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be associated with changes in the brain’s physical structure. Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity.
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