ArticleBrain sciences2021
Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Correlate with Psychosocial Development in Contemplative Practitioners and Controls.
Article in Brain sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- How yoga shapes the brain: a systematic review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- The neurobiological effects of mind-body exercise: a systematic review and meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.Scientific reports · 2023Pooled it
- Integrated Decentering: Validating an Automated Measure of Decentering Expression Across Seven Independent Samples.Research square · 2026Article
- Automated scoring of adult ego development from sentence completions: interpretable maturity indicators derived by evolutionary prompt optimization.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Mindfulness, cognition, and long-term meditators: Toward a science of advanced meditation.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Toward a Unified Model of Advanced Meditation, Human Development, Meditation Maps, and Transtradition Metaphors: Facing Impermanence, Suffering, and Death.Mindfulness · 2025Article
- Review
- Beyond the veil of duality-topographic reorganization model of meditation.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2022Review
- Grasping the paradoxical nature of wisdom through unconscious integrative complexity.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Jane Loevinger's theory of adult development, termed ego development (1966) and more recently maturity development, provides a useful framework for understanding the development of the self throughout the lifespan. However, few studies have investigated its neural correlates. In the present study, we use structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate the neural correlates of maturity development in contemplative practitioners and controls. Since traits possessed by individuals with higher levels of maturity development are similar to those attributed to individuals at advanced stages of contemplative practice, we chose to investigate levels of maturity development in meditation practitioners as well as matched controls. We used the Maturity Assessment Profile (MAP) to measure maturity development in a mixed sample of participants composed of 14 long-term meditators, 16 long-term yoga practitioners, and 16 demographically matched controls. We investigated the relationship between contemplative practice and maturity development with behavioral, seed-based resting state functional connectivity, and cortical thickness analyses. The results of this study indicate that contemplative practitioners possess higher maturity development compared to a matched control group, and in addition, maturity development correlates with cortical thickness in the posterior cingulate. Furthermore, we identify a brain network implicated in theory of mind, narrative, and self-referential processing, comprising the posterior cingulate cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and inferior frontal cortex, as a primary neural correlate.
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Registered trials
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.