doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa137.
Studying the precuneus reveals structure-function-affect correlation in long-term meditators
Affiliations
- PMID: 33210139
- PMCID: PMC7745150
- DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa137
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Studying the precuneus reveals structure-function-affect correlation in long-term meditators
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci.
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No abstract available
Keywords: MRI; VBM; default mode network (DMN); fMRI; gray matter; mindfulness meditation; positive affect.
Figures
Neuroanatomy of L-Prc is associated with meditation experience. (A) Second-level VBM analyses found a significant between-group GM thickness difference in the L-Prc (at MNI coordinates −21, −64, 16, P = 0.013, family wise error corrected, small volume correction) but not in the other DMN ROIs. The scale bar denotes the F statistics (n = 36). (B) To demonstrate that the observed correlations were not driven by outliers, for each participant (n = 36) L-Prc peak GM density (in normalized arbitrary units, y-axis) is plotted in gray against meditation expertise (in years), the regression line in gray for ‘Full Sample’ and the red line is for ‘Meditators Only’ (please note that the y-axis shows normalized values—i.e. in arbitrary units, as extracted from the peak SPM result presented in (A)). Note that this should not be used for inference as it is not independent of the VBM analysis in (A) and is presented for visualization purposes only. The correlation based on the MM group alone (n = 18) that is indicated by the dots with red border and by the red regression line is also significant (R = −0.52661948, t (16) = −2.478, P = 0.025). As can be seen the slope is similar in both analyses. RH, Right hemisphere.
L-Prc structure-function correlation in the two groups. L-Prc GM (y-axis) of the MM group (n = 15) is significantly correlated with (A) resting-state variance (x-axis, r = 0.552, t (13) = 2.39, P = 0.033) and with (B) task peak-to-peak amplitudes (x-axis, r = 0.605, t (13) = 2.74, P = 0.017). The extracted L-Prc ROI GM density (see Methods) was independent of the acquired functional measures. Each point represents an individual MM participant. No significant correlations were found in the control group for (C) resting-state variance (r = −0.079, t (13) = − 0.285, P = 0.779), or for (D) task peak-to-peak amplitudes (r = − 0.024, t (13) = −0.087, P = 0.932). (see Table 1).
L-Prc neuroanatomy correlates with positive affect. Correlation between L-Prc ROI extracted gray matter (GM) density (y-axis) and positive affect (as measured by the PANAS, x-axis) is significant for the MM group ((A), n = 16, r = −0.555, P = 0.026), but not for the control group ((B), n = 17, r = −0.371, P = 0.143), see Methods for more details.
