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Eight Weeks of Meditation Doesn’t Change the

Brain, Study Finds
Study finds that, contrary to what other research has found, a popular meditation
course does not appear to alter brain structure.

Natalia Mesa
May 20, 2022

C
an meditation restructure our brains? Several ABOVE:
recent studies have claimed that, with daily © ISTOCK.COM,
NAMBITOMO
practice, meditation can boost grey matter
volume and density in some brain areas in just eight
short weeks. But a study published today (May 20) in Science Advances—one
with the largest sample size yet—was not able to replicate these findings. 

“There was frankly a lot of hype . . . saying that if you meditated for eight
weeks you could change the volume of your prefrontal cortex. That is false,”
study coauthor Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, tells The Scientist. He adds that beneficial functional and
behavioral changes due to meditation are likely to occur much faster, 
however. 

“From a methodological standpoint, [the study] really addressed some of the

concerns that are common in a lot of imaging research,” says Matthew Jerram,
a psychology researcher at Suffolk University in Boston who was not involved
in the study. “I think a lot of the people who’ve done research on . . .
mindfulness based treatments will probably be disappointed. . . . But if they’re
really honest with each other, I don’t think they’ll be surprised.” 

Amishi Jha, a psychologist at the University of Miami who also was not
involved in the work, agrees that the study “astutely addressed” flaws of the
studies it replicated. “This is a stellar study,” she writes in an email to The
Scientist.

Based on their own and other groups’ previous studies on long-term

meditators, the study’s authors say that meditation can eventually boost brain
volume and neuron density in some key areas—but, they add, it’s likely these
changes take much longer than eight weeks to occur.

Investigating meditation’s effects on the brain

The study focused on a meditation program called Mindfulness Based Stress

Reduction (MBSR), a popular mindfulness intervention that clinicians
developed to help patients cope with pain. The authors and other experts are
quick to point out that MBSR is very effective—studies have found that it helps
reduce stress and lessen symptoms of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. 

Previous studies have reported that MBSR, which involves 24-30 hours of
meditation practice over two months, led to an increase in gray matter
density—a measure of the amount of cortical grey matter in a given area. The
results also included increases in gray matter volume—the total size of the grey
matter—and cortical thickness in several brain areas including the
hippocampus, posterior cingulate cortex, and the temporoparietal junction.
These regions are involved in learning and memory and emotional regulation,
and the study authors interpreted the findings as evidence that meditation
might, in a short time span, improve both. 

But those same studies also used small sample sizes, typically one to two dozen
participants. And many didn’t use controls that also received positive
interventions, instead of looking at the effect of a treatment on individuals
versus a lack of intervention. Thus, in previous studies, the fact that there was a
positive intervention at all may have caused a change, rather than meditation
specifically. The authors and experts tell The Scientist that to be certain that
MBSR was responsible for neurological changes, researchers needed to
compare its effects to other positive interventions, such as those focused on
diet and exercise. 

So over seven years, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

conducted two randomized controlled trials with more than 70 subjects each in
the experimental and control groups. In both, patients were placed in one of
three groups: a group that attended an MBSR session each week and practiced
mindfulness-based relaxation techniques daily, a control group that received a
different positive wellbeing intervention training called HEP—which focuses
on music therapy, healthy eating, and exercise—and a third group that was told
they would get one of these interventions later. The patients received structural
MRI brain scans before and after eight weeks of these interventions (or in the
control group’s case, eight weeks of waiting). 

Drawing a blank

I think a lot of the people who’ve done

research on . . . mindfulness based
treatments will probably be disappointed. .
. . But if they’re really honest with each
other, I don’t think they’ll be surprised.
—Matthew Jerram, University of Suffolk

Davidson says that based on previous studies, he expected MBSR to lead to

structural changes within the brain. The researchers compared gray matter
density, gray matter volume, and cortical thickness before and after the
intervention in various regions of interest, including the hippocampus, the
posterior cingulate cortex, and the temporoparietal junction. The team chose
regions other researchers had found to have MBSR-linked changes in size or
density, plus other regions that are involved in emotional processing. But in
the brain regions they analyzed, the researchers didn’t find any differences
when comparing changes in gray matter density, gray matter volume, or
cortical thickness among the groups. The researchers also found no differences
among the groups when they looked at changes in volume and density across
the whole brain over the course of the experiment.   

Within the MBSR group, the researchers did find that people who practiced
the mindfulness meditation-based techniques they’d learned in the course for
more than 22 minutes each day had significantly smaller amygdalas—a region
associated with stress and fear—after eight weeks. 

Davidson says that this connection is to be expected. Brain structure changes

occur when people practice other skills, like exercise or learning a new
instrument, so it’s likely that changes also come about when practicing
meditation—eventually. “It’s not just 24 or 30 hours of practice, it’s going to
take more. And it’s kind of not surprising, because in order to develop a skill,
we need thousands of hours of practice, not 25 hours of practice,” says
Davidson.

The contrast between the results of earlier studies with fewer subjects and the
current work aligns with a study earlier this year that found small sample sizes
in MRI-based research can generate misleading results, and that data drawn
from typical study sample sizes is insufficient to be reliable. 

Davidson says he hopes that the new meditation study will serve as a “useful
corrective in the field and help to tone down some of the hype that has been
associated with these kinds of practices.” 

“We’re big fans of meditation,” he says, “but we’re big fans of truth, too.”

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