Does mindfulness really work, or is it just a smokescreen?

One of the best ways we can see physical evidence of positive changes in the brains of those who are depressed or anxious is increased brain plasticity, or in other words, the ability for people to ‘change’ developed and established thought patterns and behaviours. Mindfulness is seen by many as a way to manage common mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety, but is it really a long-term solution?

Written by Bryony Porteous-Sebouhian

A team from the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US has conducted the largest and most rigorously controlled study on the impact of mindfulness activity such as, meditation, on the brain.

The brain, plasticity and mindfulness

Plasticity is a quality associated with the brain when it is able to produce new neural pathways or edit or change already existing ones. Plasticity is also associated with learning new skills, especially those that are physical.

Research from 2011 previously suggested that an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course did, in fact, alter participants brain structure. However, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe that research may have been limited in scope, technology and may have also been skewed by ‘elective participant pools’.

The research team from the Center for Healthy Minds, headed by Richard J Davidson found no evidence that mindfulness leads to structural brain changes. The team conducted two trials, with over 200 participants. One group took part in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, as seen in the 2011 research and the other a Health Enhancement Programme (HEP), as well as a control group that didn’t receive any kind of intervention.

The MBSR course was lead by certified yoga instructors, meditation practitioners and body awareness trainers. The HEP course was similar, but didn’t involve mindfulness training. Instead the HEP course included exercise, music therapy and nutrition practice.

To detect whether or not structural brain changes had been triggered by the mindfulness training, all participants had an MRI scan before and after the eight-week trial.

What were the findings of the study?

Participants in the study self-reported on mindfulness throughout the duration of the eight week trial. Researchers found that participants in the MBSR and HEP groups reported increased mindfulness in comparison to the control group. The research team suggested that this could indicate that mindfulness ‘may be related to benefits of any type of wellness intervention more broadly, rather than being specific to mindfulness meditation practice.’

The prior study that the researchers at the Center for Healthy Minds cite, may have found evidence of positive structural changes after the eight-week MBSR course because they had sought the course out for stress reduction. This suggests that a willingness or eagerness to participate in mindfulness interventions might be the key variable in having a positive result from it.

In other words, as first author of the study, Tammi Kral said: “The simple act of choosing to enrol in MBSR may be associated with increased benefit.”

Researchers do acknowledge that a longer course may result in structural changes being found as a result of mindfulness training.

Importantly, this new research highlights the necessity to conduct studies that scrutinise previously understood ‘positive findings’ and for the practice of verification through replication.?