Brain Changes after brief meditation

Participants will be called for through community advertising, and must be over 18 years (for consent issues). Both women and men will be eligible for treatment and both meditators and non-meditators will be included. You cannot participate if you have a previous or current mental health diagnosis (as diagnosed previously), a prior head trauma, current recreational drug usage or current medication that affects the central nervous system. Some of the main mental health diagnosis groups are: • mood disorders (such as depression or bipolar disorder) • anxiety disorders. • personality disorders. • psychotic disorders (such as schizophrenia) • eating disorders. • trauma-related disorders (such as post-traumatic stress disorder) • substance abuse disorders. Suitable participants will be sent a package of questionnaires to complete online before they attend a brain scanning session (fMRI). They will be scanned for 10 minutes and then engage in a 4 week meditation trial where they will be asked to listen to either a brief 22 minute Ecomeditation track (daily) or a comparison brief meditation track. Everyone will be asked to keep a daily log of whether they completed the track for that day - the Ecomeditation or comparison track will be randomly allocated (via computer generator) after they have been assigned their first scan time. Both meditations are delivered by a meditation expert (recorded voice on the track). There will be 2 groups: experienced meditators and in-experienced meditators (defined below). EcoMeditation is a novel form of meditation designed to address this issue. Rather than relying on a spiritual, religious or cognitive framework, it uses physical cues (e.g. “Slow your breathing to 6 seconds per inbreath”) to induce transcendent states. This makes its practice relatively easy for both novices and experienced meditation practitioners. Preliminary evidence indicates that EcoMeditation is able to induce a sustained alpha brain wave state in under 5 minutes, a time period much briefer than that measured in studies of other methods. The actual script of the Ecomeditation is as follows: 1. Mindful Breathing. 0:00: Instruction: Feel the natural rhythm of your own breath. Imagine your breath coming in and out of your heart. 2. Heart Tapping. 1:00: Instruction: Imagine crossing hands over heart and tapping with fingertips. 3. Stress Release Visualization. 1:30: Instruction: Imagine tapping on heart, visualize stress leaving your body. 4. Reversal Point Tapping. 2:00: Instruction: Imagine tapping on the side of your hand. 5. Affirmation of Inner Peace. 2:30: Instruction: Affirm that I release any and every obstacle to inner peace. I fill myself with inner peace and release everything else. 6. Parasympathetic Activation of Vagus via Hypoglossal Nerve. 3:07: Instruction: Relax your tongue on the floor of your mouth. 7. Alpha Brain Wave Induction. 3:45: Instruction: Feel the space inside your hands, feet, body, head, and between your eyes. 8. Heart Coherence Induction. 5:00: Instruction: Slow your breathing down to six seconds in and six seconds out. 9. Heart Mindfulness. 6:20: Instruction: Feel the energy of love, kindness and compassion inside your own heart 10. Deep Coherence Induction. 6:45: Instruction: Send a beam of heart energy to a person or place. 7:20: Instruction: Visualize details of heart energy beam. 11. Compassion for Others Visualization. 11:10: Instruction: In your heart energy beam, feel the love and compassion, and send it to that person or place. 12. Universal Compassion Visualization. 13:00: Instruction: Imagine your compassion flowing to every part of the universe. 13. Intensity Induction. 14:00: Instruction: Intensify the experience. 14. Compassion for Self Visualization. 16:15: Instruction: Draw energy beam back into your own body. Feel compassion and love within. 15. Body Mindfulness Eyes Closed. 17:10: Instruction: Send a beam of your compassionate heart energy with to a part of your own body that is suffering. 16. Orientation to Present. 20:00: Return to the Present: Instruction: Feel your hands and feet. With the next three breaths bring yourself fully into the present. 17. Return to Present Time and Space. 20:30: Open Eyes. Instruction: Open your eyes, look around you with soft eyes. Notice objects in environment. 18. Body Mindfulness Eyes Open. 21:15: Instruction: Notice peace in body. 19. Anchoring Wellbeing in Body. 21:30: Instruction: Heart tapping 20. Anchoring Wellbeing in Mind. 21:45: Instruction: Affirm that I deserve to feel good. 22:35: End. Inclusion criteria: Ability to follow instructions and fill out forms. 18 years or older. Both meditators and non-meditators will be included. Exclusion: No previous or current DSM-5 (as diagnosed previously). No prior head trauma. No current recreational drug usage. No current medication that affects the central nervous system. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is widely used to map brain activity. fMRI exploits the local increase in blood flow and hence blood volume and blood oxygenation that occur to support the resulting increase in metabolic demand, instead of detecting neuronal activity directly. Brain imaging is a powerful technique that is enhancing neuroscience research. Most conventional fMRI studies are based on the BOLD effect, which is the term used to describe the increase in fMRI signal due to the change in blood oxygenation and blood volume secondary to the increase in blood flow. BOLD fMRI has been used to map the primary cortical representation of taste and odour in humans and to study responses to pleasant and aversive stimuli. The fMRI scans will be examined for intracranial structural abnormalities by the Radiologist expert who works at the service - Queensland Diagnostic Imaging (Dr Craig Buchan). During the fMRI scanning the participants will be passive. The scan will be 10 minutes at baseline. Afterwards they will engage in listening to a meditation track daily for 4 weeks and then be scanned again at post. Teh scans will be compared. Participants will be scanned on a Skyra 3T system on NUMARIS/4 Version Syngo MR E11A, using a 20ch head neck coil combination. A ep2d_pace_moco sequence will be used. This is a single shot Echo planar sequence that has prospective motion correction built within the sequence to correct in real time for motion. In addition, real time monitoring of the amount of motion is possible via the 3D neuro card utilizing the inline features. Post processing will be completed on the scanner using the Neuro 3D platform. Meditator definitions: experienced meditators are defined as those participants who report a meditation frequency and duration of at least twice a week, thirty minutes or more, for a year or more. Non-meditators: are those who a meditation frequency of less than once a week over the previous year.