IBMT linked with pos­i­tive struc­tural changes in brain con­nec­tiv­ity (News Medical):

- “A Texas Tech Uni­ver­sity sci­en­tist study­ing the Chi­nese mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion known as inte­gra­tive body-mind train­ing (IBMT) said he and other researchers have con­firmed and expanded on changes in struc­tural effi­ciency of white mat­ter in the brain that can be related to pos­i­tive behav­ioral changes in sub­jects prac­tic­ing the tech­nique for a month and a min­i­mum of 11 hours total.”

- “In a paper appear­ing in the online Early Edi­tion of the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences (PNAS), sci­en­tists Yi-Yuan Tang of Texas Tech and Michael Pos­ner of the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon (UO) reported improved mood changes coin­cided with increased brain-signaling con­nec­tions. They also found an expan­sion of myelin, the pro­tec­tive fatty tis­sue that sur­rounds the nerves, in the brain’s ante­rior cin­gu­late region.”

Study: Mech­a­nisms of white mat­ter changes induced by med­i­ta­tion (Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sciences)

Abstract: Using dif­fu­sion ten­sor imag­ing, sev­eral recent stud­ies have shown that train­ing results in changes in white mat­ter effi­ciency as mea­sured by frac­tional anisotropy (FA). In our work, we found that a form of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, inte­gra­tive body–mind train­ing (IBMT), improved FA in areas sur­round­ing the ante­rior cin­gu­late cor­tex after 4-wk train­ing more than con­trols given relax­ation train­ing. Reduc­tions in radial dif­fu­siv­ity (RD) have been inter­preted as improved myelin but reduc­tions in axial dif­fu­siv­ity (AD) involve other mech­a­nisms, such as axonal den­sity. We now report that after 4-wk train­ing with IBMT, both RD and AD decrease accom­pa­nied by increased FA, indi­cat­ing improved effi­ciency of white mat­ter involves increased myelin as well as other axonal changes. How­ever, 2-wk IBMT reduced AD, but not RD or FA, and improved moods. Our results demon­strate the time-course of white mat­ter neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in short-term med­i­ta­tion. This dynamic pat­tern of white mat­ter change involv­ing the ante­rior cin­gu­late cor­tex, a part of the brain net­work related to self-regulation, could pro­vide a means for inter­ven­tion to improve or pre­vent men­tal disorders.

Related arti­cles:

• Med­i­ta­tion can Change the Struc­ture of the Brain
• Train­ing Atten­tion and Emo­tional Self-Regulation — Inter­view with Michael Posner
• Med­i­ta­tion on the Brain: a Con­ver­sa­tion with Andrew Newberg

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