Mindfulness changes the brain
Recent coverage highlights Sara Lazar’s MRI work showing eight weeks of meditation reduces amygdala volume and thickens prefrontal cortex, and a Harvard study finds mindfulness reductions in anxiety comparable to antidepressants — structural and clinical signals line up. (x.com) (x.com)
A controlled longitudinal MRI study by Hölzel, Carmody and Lazar published in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging (2011) scanned 16 meditation‑naïve participants before and after an 8‑week MBSR course and 17 wait‑list controls, reporting increases in gray‑matter concentration in the left hippocampus and whole‑brain increases in the posterior cingulate cortex, temporo‑parietal junction and cerebellum. (sciencedirect.com) A separate longitudinal analysis by Hölzel et al. in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (published online Sep 2009, print Mar 2010) followed 26 stressed adults through an 8‑week MBSR program and found reductions in right basolateral amygdala gray‑matter density that correlated with decreases on the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). (academic.oup.com) Sara W. Lazar’s 2005 NeuroReport study compared 20 long‑term Insight meditators with matched controls and reported thicker cortical regions including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula, with the prefrontal differences most pronounced in older participants. (surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu) The Treatments for Anxiety: Meditation and Escitalopram (TAME) randomized clinical trial assessed 430 screened individuals, recruited 276 adults from three academic sites, and randomized participants between June 2018 and February 2020 to 8 weeks of MBSR or escitalopram, with 208 patients completing the trial. (surg.me) Per‑protocol analysis included 102 MBSR and 106 escitalopram patients (mean age 33 years, 75% female), escitalopram was flexibly dosed 10–20 mg, endpoint Clinical Global Impression‑Severity (CGI‑S) reductions were 1.35 for MBSR versus 1.43 for escitalopram, and the between‑group difference (−0.07; 95% CI −0.38 to 0.23) met the prespecified noninferiority margin of −0.495. (surg.me) Putting the pieces together, two longitudinal imaging papers (Hölzel et al. SCAN 2010, N=26; Hölzel et al./Lazar et al. Psychiatry Res 2011, N=16 MBSR vs 17 controls) documented rapid hippocampal, posterior cingulate/TPJ and amygdala structural changes, and the 2022 JAMA Psychiatry TAME randomized trial (per‑protocol N=208) demonstrated comparable clinical anxiety reduction for MBSR versus escitalopram. (academic.oup.com)
