ENIGMA-Meditation: Worldwide Consortium for Neuroscientific Investigations of Meditation Practices.
Study Goal
The researchers aimed to establish a collaborative framework (ENIGMA-Meditation) to improve the generalizability and rigor of neuroscientific investigations into meditation practices and their therapeutic effects.
Results Summary
The abstract highlights that meditation interventions have shown therapeutic efficacy for disorders like depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety, but current neuroscientific models lack generalizability due to small, heterogeneous datasets. ENIGMA-Meditation seeks to address these limitations through standardized, large-scale neuroimaging analyses.
Population
Clinical and nonclinical populations (no specific demographic details provided).
Effective Dosage
Not specified
Duration
Not specified
Interactions
None mentioned
| Intervention | Direction | Endpoint | Population | Dosage | Impact | Claim # |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
meditation interventions | decrease | depression | clinical populations | - | have shown therapeutic efficacy | #1 |
meditation interventions | decrease | pain | clinical populations | - | have shown therapeutic efficacy | #2 |
meditation interventions | decrease | addiction | clinical populations | - | have shown therapeutic efficacy | #3 |
meditation interventions | decrease | anxiety | clinical populations | - | have shown therapeutic efficacy | #4 |
meditation practices | neutral | psychological processes | - | - | can modulate | #5 |
meditation practices | neutral | awareness | - | - | can modulate | #6 |
meditation practices | neutral | mental states | - | - | can modulate | #7 |
ENIGMA-Meditation consortium | neutral | neuroscientific investigations of meditation | - | - | will enable systematic meta- and mega-analyses | #8 |
ENIGMA-Meditation consortium | increase | statistical power | - | - | will improve | #9 |
ENIGMA-Meditation consortium | increase | generalizability | - | - | will improve | #10 |
ENIGMA-Meditation consortium | neutral | therapeutic action of meditation practices | - | - | will inform neuroscientific mechanisms | #11 |
ENIGMA-Meditation consortium | neutral | field of meditation and contemplative neuroscience | - | - | will advance | #12 |
Meditation is a family of ancient and contemporary contemplative mind-body practices that can modulate psychological processes, awareness, and mental states. Over the last 40 years, clinical science has manualized meditation practices and designed various meditation interventions that have shown therapeutic efficacy for disorders including depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety. Over the past decade, neuroimaging has been used to examine the neuroscientific basis of meditation practices, effects, states, and outcomes for clinical and nonclinical populations. However, the generalizability and replicability of current neuroscientific models of meditation have not yet been established, because they are largely based on small datasets entrenched with heterogeneity along several domains of meditation (e.g., practice types, meditation experience, clinical disorder targeted), experimental design, and neuroimaging methods (e.g., preprocessing, analysis, task-based, resting-state, structural magnetic resonance imaging). These limitations have precluded a nuanced and rigorous neuroscientific phenotyping of meditation practices and their potential benefits. Here, we present ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis)-Meditation, the first worldwide collaborative consortium for neuroscientific investigations of meditation practices. ENIGMA-Meditation will enable systematic meta- and mega-analyses of globally distributed neuroimaging datasets of meditation using shared, standardized neuroimaging methods and tools to improve statistical power and generalizability. Through this powerful collaborative framework, existing neuroscientific accounts of meditation practices can be extended to generate novel and rigorous neuroscientific insights that account for multidomain heterogeneity. ENIGMA-Meditation will inform neuroscientific mechanisms that underlie therapeutic action of meditation practices on psychological and cognitive attributes, thereby advancing the field of meditation and contemplative neuroscience.