Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 47, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 1038-1046
NeuroImage

BOLD signal in insula is differentially related to cardiac function during compassion meditation in experts vs. novices

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.04.081Get rights and content

Abstract

The brain and the cardiovascular system influence each other during the processing of emotion. The study of the interactions of these systems during emotion regulation has been limited in human functional neuroimaging, despite its potential importance for physical health. We have previously reported that mental expertise in cultivation of compassion alters the activation of circuits linked with empathy and theory of mind in response to emotional stimuli. Guided by the finding that heart rate increases more during blocks of compassion meditation than neutral states, especially for experts, we examined the interaction between state (compassion vs. neutral) and group (novice, expert) on the relation between heart rate and BOLD signal during presentation of emotional sounds presented during each state. Our findings revealed that BOLD signal in the right middle insula showed a significant association with heart rate (HR) across state and group. This association was stronger in the left middle/posterior insula when experts were compared to novices. The positive coupling of HR and BOLD was higher within the compassion state than within the neutral state in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex for both groups, underlining the role of this region in the modulation of bodily arousal states. This state effect was stronger for experts than novices in somatosensory cortices and the right inferior parietal lobule (group by state interaction). These data confirm that compassion enhances the emotional and somatosensory brain representations of others' emotions, and that this effect is modulated by expertise. Future studies are needed to further investigate the impact of compassion training on these circuits.

Section snippets

Participants

We selected the participants from our previous studies (Brefczynski-Lewis et al., 2007, Lutz et al., 2008a) for whom the heart beats were visible in the signal recorded by the pulse oximeter during the whole session. Participants from the current analysis included 10 long-term Buddhist practitioners whom we classified as experts (mean age = 40.0 years, std = 9.6 years,) and 13 healthy volunteers (mean age = 38.3 years, std = 9.1 years). The two groups did not differ in age (t-test, t(1,21) =  0.3, p = 

Effects of compassion state on HR

We investigated changes in HR as a function of block, state and group using an 8 × 2 × 2 factorial design (repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA)). Table 1 and Fig. 1 display the results. We found that HR was higher during compassion versus neutral states (main effect of state), and that this increase was stronger for the experts than the novices (the interaction between state and group is displayed in Table 1 and in Fig. 1). For experts, the mean HR was 64.2 (8.2 S.D.) and 67.1 (9.8 S.D.)

From empathy to compassion

In the current study, we found that changes in HR across states were positively associated with the right middle insula and somatosensory regions, right IPL and premotor regions (BA6), as well as right TPJ (Table 2). This pattern of neurovisceral coupling was more pronounced for experts than novices in the left hemisphere (left insula, left somatosensory cortex and left IPL) and in the mid-ACC (Table 3, Fig. 2). A growing number of neuroimaging studies have reported a similar pattern of

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Matthieu Ricard for assistance with task design, participant recruitment and written meditation instructions and Dr. John Dunne for Tibetan translation and clarifications on Buddhist meditative techniques. We also thank the Mind and Life Institute for helping to facilitate this work and Helen Weng, for helpful comments on a preliminary version of the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH P50-MH069315 to

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