The Immediate and Sustained Positive Effects of Meditation on Resilience Are Mediated by Changes in the Resting Brain

Abstract

While recent studies have explored the maintenance of the effect of meditation on stress resilience, the underlying neural mechanisms have not yet been investigated. The present study conducted a highly controlled residential study of a 4-day meditation intervention to investigate the brain functional changes and long-term effects of meditation on mindfulness and resilience. Thirty participants in meditation practice and 17 participants in a relaxation retreat (control group) underwent magnetic resonance imaging scans at baseline and post-intervention and completed the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale (CAMS) and Resilience Quotient Test (RQT) at baseline, post-intervention, and the 3-month follow-up. All participants showed increased CAMS and RQT scores post-intervention, but only the meditation group sustained the enhancement after 3 months. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), precuneus, and angular gyrus was significantly increased post-intervention in the meditation group compared with the relaxation group. The changes in rACC-dmPFC rsFC mediated the relationship between the changes in the CAMS and RQT scores and correlated with the changes in the RQT score both immediately and at 3 months post-intervention. Our findings suggest that increased rACC-dmPFC rsFC via meditation causes an immediate enhancement in resilience that is sustained. Since resilience is known to be associated with the preventative effect of various psychiatric disorders, the improvement in stress-related neural mechanisms may be beneficial to individuals at high clinical risk.

The Effect of Mindfulness-Based Intervention on Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Controlled Trials

“…Our meta-analysis does not include non-controlled (single-arm) trials due to the presence of confounding factors. One of the important confounders is called the “vacation effect.” This effect is reported in some studies that show the non-intervention group also had peripheral BDNF changes during follow-up (Epel et al, 2016 ; Kwak et al, 2019 ). The BDNF changes suggesting a vacation effect, refers to the temporary improvements in health and psychological well-being after taking a vacation, which soon fade after work resumption (Goldberg et al, 2018 ).…”

The Role of Future Time Perspective, Body Awareness, and Social Connectedness in the Relationship Between Self-efficacy and Resilience

“…On the whole, such findings were expected, given previous empirical evidence linking resilience to social (Arewasikporn et al 2019) and temporal (Zheng et al 2019) embeddedness. One surprising finding, however, was the absence of an association between body awareness and resilience, a hypothesis derived from evidence of the role of interoception in appraisal and adaptive behaviour (Haase et al 2015) and success in its use as an intervention target for improving resilience (Kwak et al 2019). There may be two potential reasons for this disparity in this research.…”

“…Therefore, interoceptive awareness has direct bearing on resilience as it is implicated in adaptive behaviour (Perchtold et al 2019). Conversely, abnormal body perception is implicated in depression (Wiebking et al 2010) and low body awareness has been associated with low resilience (Haase et al 2016), with body awareness interventions successfully found to foster resilience (Hwang et al 2018;Kwak et al 2019).…”

Transforming Practice with HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences)

“…Recent research has shown that anatomic and physiologic changes in the developing brain also occur in response to positive stimuli and events (Kwak et al, 2019 ; Tomlinson et al, 2016 ), and that the brain shows growth and healing following a significant traumatic event (Fujisawa et al, 2015 ; Nakagawa et al, 2016 ). These and other observations led to the study of PCEs alongside ACEs, shifting the focus to a relationship-based, Science of the Positive (Linkenbach, 2020 ), approach which touches on all levels of the social-ecological system (Bronfenbrenner, 2009 ).…”

“…Recent research has pointed to PCEs as protective and mitigating factors against the effects of ACEs and toxic stress (Bethell et al, 2019 ). Neurobiological studies, showing physical and functional changes in the brain in response to positive stimuli, suggest a physiologic mechanism for this phenomenon (Fujisawa et al, 2015 ; Kwak et al, 2019 ; Lake et al, 2017 ; Nakagawa et al, 2016 ; Nenert et al, 2018 ; Tomlinson et al, 2016 ). Mitigating toxic stress is especially urgent during the pandemic, as families and children experience social isolation, financial difficulty, and other disruptions to their daily lives, factors which also increase risk of child maltreatment.…”