title: Medial orbital gyrus modulation during spatial perspective changes: Pre- vs. post-8 weeks mindfulness meditation.
abstract: Mindfulness meditation exercises the ability to shift to an "observer perspective". That means learning to observe internally and externally arising stimulations in a detached perspective. Both before and after attending a 8-weeks mindfulness training (MT) participants underwent an fMRI experiment (serving as their own internal control) and solved a own-body mental transformation task, which is used to investigate embodiment and perspective taking (and an non-bodily mental transformation task as control). We found a stimulus×time-points interaction: the own-body mental transformation task (vs. non-bodily) in the post (vs. pre-MT) significantly increased activations in the medial orbital gyrus. The signal change in the right medial orbital gyrus significantly correlated with changes in a self-maturity personality scale. A brief MT caused increased activation in areas involved in self related processing and person perspective changes, together with an increase in self-maturity, consistently with the aim of mindfulness meditation that is exercising change in self perspective.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università di Udine, Italy. Electronic address: barbara.tomasino@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tomasino
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università di Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Campanella
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università di Udine, Italy; Perceptual Robotics Laboratory (PERCRO), Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fabbro
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D019122:Meditation; D064866:Mindfulness; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Mindfulness meditation; Orbitofrontal cortex; Own-body mental transformation; fMRI