Wisconsin Center for the Neuroscience and Psychophysiology of Meditation

Summary

The Wisconsin Center for the Neuroscience and Psychophysiology of Meditation will be a highly focused center dedicated to novel and cutting edge research on the mechanisms by which meditation works. The core set of hypotheses for this Center focus on the mechanisms of two common meditation practices: Mindfulness Meditation (MM) and Loving-Kindness/Compassion Meditation (LKM-CO), both taught in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The investigators will study both Long-Term Meditators (LTMs) as well as meditation-naïve participants (MNPs). The latter group will be randomly assigned to MBSR, a rigorously matched comparison intervention called the Health Enhancement Program (HEP; MacCoon et al., 2012), or to a Wait List (WL) control group. This will give us a comprehensive view of changes that are produced by meditation practices per se, changes generically associated with interventions designed to promote well-being, and changes that might be effects of repeating testing protocols across multiple occasions. In addition, the inclusion of both novice and experienced meditators provides a wide range of practice experience that will provide critical information on dose-related effects, information that is lacking in the research literature today.

Each of the projects is focused on examining the brain mechanisms and peripheral biological correlates of meditation. Project 1 (Davidson) will examine the impact of the explicit use of mindfulness and loving-kindness/compassion strategies on emotion regulation, specifically neural, biobehavioral and hormonal indices of reactivity to and recovery from pictures of human suffering and flourishing. Project 2 (Rosenkranz) will investigate the brain to periphery pathways through which psychological factors contribute to the expression of asthma symptoms. In addition, it will examine the efficacy of meditation training in reducing the inflammatory response to an allergen in asthmatic individuals by reducing the reactivity of emotion-related neural circuitry. Project 3 (Tononi) will examine whether the previously reported increase in gamma oscillations during Non-REM (NREM) sleep in meditators is associated with changes in sleep mentation (Ferrarelli et al. 2013). In addition, project 3 will examine relations between meditation-induced changes in brain activity during sleep and brain activity and cognitive function during wakefulness.

Conditions

• Mindfulness
• Compassion
• Meditation
• Mental Health
• Asthma

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Intensive Meditation Practice

Long term meditators complete three days of of mindfulness or compassion/loving kindness meditation at T2 and T3 (one meditation type per visit).

BEHAVIORAL

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

8 week class designed to enhance well-being through training in mindfulness.

BEHAVIORAL

Health Enhancement Program

8 week class designed to enhance well-being through training in physical activity, functional movement, music therapy and nutrition.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Wisconsin, Madison

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Richard J Davidson, PhD · UW-Madison, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-09-30

Primary Completion

2018-11-30

Completion

2019-04-14

Countries

• United States

Study Locations