Trial reportHuman brain mapping2017
Mindfulness meditation regulates anterior insula activity during empathy for social pain.
Trial report in Human brain mapping, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Do I feel or do I know? Neuroimaging meta-analyses on the multiple facets of empathy.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2020Pooled it
- Effect of meditation on clinical symptoms and gray matter volume in chronic schizophrenia: a randomized controlled trial.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Trial
- Telehealth tDCS to reduce cannabis use: A pilot RCT in multiple sclerosis as a framework for generalized use.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2025Trial
- Examining emotion reactivity to politically polarizing media in a randomized controlled trial of mindfulness training versus active coping training.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- Mindfulness meditation modulates stress-eating and its neural correlates.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- A causal and dissociable role for the right inferior frontal gyrus in empathy for physical and social pain.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Fasting as a Multisystem Health Modulator: A Narrative Review of Metabolic, Cardiovascular, Immune, Neurocognitive, and Psychospiritual Effects.Current nutrition reports · 2026Review
- Research progress on the mechanisms of pain empathy.Ibrain · 2025Review
- Emerging Theories of Allostatic-Interoceptive Overload in Neurodegeneration.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Managing emotions in the age of political polarization: A randomized controlled trial comparing mindfulness to cognitive reappraisal.Research square · 2024Article
- The Neural Signatures of Shame, Embarrassment, and Guilt: A Voxel-Based Meta-Analysis on Functional Neuroimaging Studies.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Treatments and regulatory mechanisms of acoustic stimuli on mood disorders and neurological diseases.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Review
- Increased insula response to interoceptive attention following mindfulness training is associated with increased body trusting among patients with depression.Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging · 2022Article
- A predictive coding framework of allostatic-interoceptive overload in frontotemporal dementia.Trends in neurosciences · 2022Review
- Grey matter covariation and the role of emotion reappraisal in mental wellbeing and resilience after early life stress exposure.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
- Engaging endogenous opioid circuits in pain affective processes.Journal of neuroscience research · 2022Review
- Enhanced Resting-State Functional Connectivity With Decreased Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations of the Salience Network in Mindfulness Novices.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Spectral dynamic causal modelling in healthy women reveals brain connectivity changes along the menstrual cycle.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Effects of repeated menstrual pain on empathic neural responses in women with primary dysmenorrhea across the menstrual cycle.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, promote health, and well-being, as well as to increase compassionate behavior toward others. It reduces distress to one's own painful experiences, going along with altered neural responses, by enhancing self-regulatory processes and decreasing emotional reactivity. In order to investigate if mindfulness similarly reduces distress and neural activations associated with empathy for others' socially painful experiences, which might in the following more strongly motivate prosocial behavior, the present study compared trait, and state effects of long-term mindfulness meditation (LTM) practice. To do so we acquired behavioral data and neural activity measures using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an empathy for social pain task while manipulating the meditation state between two groups of LTM practitioners that were matched with a control group. The results show increased activations of the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as well as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole when sharing others' social suffering, both in LTM practitioners and controls. However, in LTM practitioners, who practiced mindfulness meditation just prior to observing others' social pain, left AI activation was lower and the strength of AI activation following the mindfulness meditation was negatively associated with trait compassion in LTM practitioners. The findings suggest that current mindfulness meditation could provide an adaptive mechanism in coping with distress due to the empathic sharing of others' suffering, thereby possibly enabling compassionate behavior. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4034-4046, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.