Intracranial substrates of meditation-induced neuromodulation in amygdala and hippocampus

Abstract

ABSTRACTMeditation is an accessible mental practice associated with emotional regulation and well-being. Loving-kindness meditation (LKM), a specific sub-type of meditative practice, involves focusing one’s attention on thoughts of well-being for oneself and others. Meditation has been proven to be beneficial in a variety of settings, including therapeutical applications, but the neural activity underlying meditative practices and their positive effects are not well understood. In particular, it’s been difficult to understand the contribution of deep limbic structures given the difficulty of studying neural activity directly in the human brain. Here, we leverage a unique patient population, epilepsy patients chronically implanted with responsive neurostimulation device that allow chronic, invasive electrophysiology recording to investigate the physiological correlates of loving-kindness meditation in the amygdala and hippocampus of novice meditators. We find that LKM-associated changes in physiological activity specific to periodic, but not aperiodic, features of neural activity. LKM was associated with an increase in γ (30-55 Hz) power and an alternation in the duration of β (13-30 Hz) and γ oscillatory bursts in both the amygdala and hippocampus, two regions associated with mood disorders. These findings reveals the nature of LKM-induced modulation of limbic activity in first-time meditators.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTWe leverage rare chronic, invasive electrophysiology recordings while participants engage in loving-kindness meditation to demonstrate that meditation induces neural changes in beta and γ activity in the amygdala and hippocampus of novice meditators. These results build on previous findings in experienced meditators and reveal meditation’s potential for noninvasive neuromodulation of neural mechanisms associated with emotional regulation and mood disorders.