Meditating on White Matter

Researchers have found that a technique of short-term meditation (3 hours of training) decreases anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue and improves efficiency in executive attention (JW Psychiatry Dec 3 2007). The same group later showed that 11 hours of meditation training improves the basal immune system. Now, the researchers report the effects of 11 hours of integrative body–mind training (IBMT) on white-matter connectivity, as measured by fractional anisotropy (FA), which was calculated from diffusion tensor imaging. IBMT involves “body relaxation, mental imagery, and mindfulness training, accompanied by selected music background.”

For 1 month, 45 undergraduate volunteers received 30 minutes, 5 days per week, of IBMT or, as a control, …