Mindfulness-based training: a cortical thickness study

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a specific meditation program aimed at changing mental and behavioural patterns or attitudes towards thoughts, sensations and emotions. Several studies have proposed possible neuroanatomical changes due to mindfulness and other meditation styles training, mainly using a cross-sectional approach. Here we originally tried to evaluate cortical thickness changes after an 8-weeks mindfulness training (MBSR) on meditation naïve subjects, finding significant thickness increase in right insula and other midline structures referring to somatosensory and cingulate cortices. Moreover, a significant reduction of several psychological indexes related to worry, state anxiety, depression and alexitymia have been observed, as well as a significant correlation between aforementioned anatomical changes and alexitymia level changes after MBSR. These results confirm previous literature about Mindfulness modulation of psychological dimensions related to anxiety. Most importantly, these originally demonstrate the feasibility of MBSR-induced brain morfometric changes after a brief, 8-weeks long, exposure to mindfulness in naïve subjects. If results about psychological/morfovolumetric changes interaction will be confirmed, a link between MBSR effect on specific brain regions and increase in psychological wellness will become feasible, so that therapeutic hypothesizes, especially for pain-related pathologies and several psychiatric diseases, could rise from these assumptions.