Enhanced Resting-State Functional Connectivity With Decreased Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations of the Salience Network in Mindfulness Novices

Quan Gan; Ning Ding; Guoli Bi; Ruixiang Liu; Xingrong Zhao; Jingmei Zhong; Shaoyuan Wu; Yong Zeng; Liqian Cui; Kunhua Wu; Yunfa Fu; Zhuangfei Chen

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2022.838123

Enhanced Resting-State Functional Connectivity With Decreased Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations of the Salience Network in Mindfulness Novices

Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 Mar 3:16:838123. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.838123. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Quan Gan¹, Ning Ding¹, Guoli Bi^{1

2}, Ruixiang Liu³, Xingrong Zhao⁴, Jingmei Zhong⁵, Shaoyuan Wu⁵, Yong Zeng⁶, Liqian Cui⁷, Kunhua Wu^{1

2}, Yunfa Fu⁸, Zhuangfei Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Medical Faculty, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China.
² Department of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, The First People's Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming, China.
³ Department of Clinical Psychology, The Second People's Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming, China.
⁴ Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China.
⁵ Department of Clinical Psychology, The First People's Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming, China.
⁶ Department of Clinical Psychology, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Yuxi, China.
⁷ Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
⁸ School of Information Engineering and Automation, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China.

Abstract

Mindfulness and accordant interventions are often used as complementary treatments to psychological or psychosomatic problems. This has also been gradually integrated into daily lives for the promotion of psychological well-being in non-clinical populations. The experience of mindful acceptance in a non-judgmental way brought about the state, which was less interfered by a negative effect. Mindfulness practice often begins with focused attention (FA) meditation restricted to an inner experience. We postulate that the brain areas related to an interoceptive function would demonstrate an intrinsic functional change after mindfulness training for the mindful novices along with paying more attention to internal processes. To further explore the influence of mindfulness on the organization of the brain regions, both functional connectivity (FC) in the voxel and the region of interest (ROI) level were calculated. In the current study, 32 healthy volunteers, without any meditation experiences, were enrolled and randomly assigned to a mindfulness-based stress reduction group (MBSR) or control group (CON). Participants in the MBSR group completed 8 weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and rated their mindfulness skills before and after MBSR. All subjects were evaluated via resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) in both baselines and after 8 weeks. They also completed a self-report measure of their state and trait anxiety as well as a positive and negative affect. Pre- and post-MBSR assessments revealed a decreased amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) in the right anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC.R), left anterior and posterior insula (aIC.L, pIC.L), as well as left superior medial frontal gyrus (SFGmed.L) in MBSR practitioners. Strengthened FC between right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC.R) and aIC.R was observed. The mean ALFF values of those regions were inversely and positively linked to newly acquired mindful abilities. Along with a decreased negative affect score, our results suggest that the brain regions related to attention and interoceptive function were involved at the beginning of mindfulness. This study provides new clues in elucidating the time of evaluating the brain mechanisms of mindfulness novices.

Keywords: amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF); emotion regulation; functional connectivity (FC); functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); mindfulness.