Mechanisms of Meditation

The increasingly widespread use of meditation for stress-related emotional and medical conditions highlights the urgent need to rigorously evaluate mechanisms through which the benefits of practice might be conferred. Primary challenges in this regard include evaluating dose response relationships between practice time and outcomes; clarifying whether physiological and behavioral effects of meditation derive primarily from non-specific aspects of training or result from specific meditation practices; and identifying molecular mechanisms by which meditation might affect physiological responses relevant to stress-related illness. Recent findings from a cross-sectional study by our group indicate that young adults who are randomized to, and practice, compassion meditation demonstrate reduced inflammatory responses, less emotional distress, and reduced autonomic responses to a standardized laboratory psychosocial stressor (Trier Social Stress Test [TSST]) when compared to subjects randomized to an active control condition. However, as a result of the cross-sectional study design and lack of a meditation comparator arm, these results provide only partial insight into key issues outlined above regarding the role played by specific meditation procedures and/or practice time in observed physiological and behavioral outcomes. The primary hypothesis of the proposed work is that practicing a meditation procedure specifically designed to enhance empathic concern for others (i.e. compassion meditation) will optimize autonomic reactivity to psychosocial stress in a manner that results in diminished activation of peripheral inflammatory signaling pathways and reduced behavioral distress.