Social Behavior
Conditions
Keywords
healthy subjects, prosocial, metta meditation, fMRI
Brief summary
The purpose of the study is to look at the impact of a metta meditation training on prosocial behavior and socio-affective brain responses. The training involves an 8-week, online administration of guided metta meditation practices aimed at generating feelings of kindness and compassion for other people. The study examines how participants respond to thinking about familiar others and strangers using behavioral and brain-imaging measures. This study will be important for understanding how people develop the capacity to be prosocial towards other individuals, which is a key component of adaptive social behavior.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALMetta meditation
Administered 5 days per week for 8 weeks.
Sponsors
Georgetown University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 55 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Is a medically healthy individual * Lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area and is able to travel to Georgetown University
Exclusion criteria
* Has experience with meditation * Has any MRI contraindication (e.g. metal in the body, cardiac pacemaker, cannot lie still, etc.) * Has any neurological disease * Has a current psychiatric disorder * Is pregnant or planning to become pregnant * Is on medication that affects the central nervous system (e.g. psychotropic drugs)
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Social Discounting | 8 weeks | During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning, participants will complete a social discounting task. Participants will choose whether to forgo various amounts of money to give to another person. Behavioral and brain responses will be analyzed to assess social discounting in each participant. |
| Affective Brain Responses to Familiar and Unfamiliar Others | 8 weeks | During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning, participants will view images of people who they know and people who they do not know. Affective brain response patterns will be analyzed to assess responding in each participant. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| State Affect Rating | 8 weeks | Participants will complete the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) questionnaire. This self-report scale includes 20 items that are rated on a 5-point scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Positive and negative self-reported affect will be quantified for each participant. |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed