Researchers Successfully use Ultrasound Waves on the Brain to Enhance Mindfulness
Within five minutes, participants reported experiencing the effects of meditation without actually meditating.
Hiya!
Even when you don’t think you’re doing anything, your brain never stops whirling away. When you’re inactive, as in not engaged with a task, your brain takes the opportunity to daydream, ruminate, and contemplate. How a person’s brain experiences this wandering function influences their internal conscious experiences — for better or worse.
Yet, until just 23 years ago, it was a mystery how this mind wandering happens in the brain and which regions are responsible for it. While mysteries remain, scientists have discovered a new way to manipulate this brain function to enhance feelings of mindfulness and the ability to detach from negative thoughts and feelings — all of which are attributes shared with the effects of meditation.
Default Mode Network
In 1929, Hans Berger, the inventor of the electroencephalogram (EEG), was the first to propose that the brain is relentlessly busy. However, it wasn’t until 2001 that researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, Missouri, first described the brain network responsible for Berger's observation, and they named it the default mode network (DMN).
The DMN is a web of interconnected brain regions that become especially active when we disengage with the outside world and become introspective by daydreaming, envisioning our future, and reminiscing.
Brian Lord, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Arizona, explains that we use our DMN to create narratives about ourselves. These narratives are an entirely natural and essential part of forming a clear sense of Self, but he cautions that it can also impede people from being present in the moment.
Studies repeatedly show that abnormal DMN connectivity and activity are linked to depressive symptoms and anxiety disorders. Lord, who is also the lead researcher of a study I’ll tell you about soon, explained to Lucy Tu of Scientific American that when abnormal DMN activity occurs,
“You get stuck, where your mind just keeps going and you can’t stop it.”
Since the default mode network was identified in 2001, scientists have tried to manipulate it using methods like meditation and psychedelic drugs. The problem is that such methods are broad, affecting the entire brain at once. Thanks to its location deep inside the brain, it’s far more challenging to access the DMN and adjust it with any sort of precision. Researchers from the University of Arizona, however, believe they have found a way to overcome this issue.
New Research
In a new study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Lord and his team applied low-intensity ultrasound waves to noninvasively alter a brain region associated with the DMN that is linked to introspection and off-task mind wandering.
The brain region the researchers focused on is the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), which is thought to be highly involved in how our minds grasp experiences. The PCC is a mostly mysterious brain region where the metabolic rate and cerebral blood flow average about 40 percent higher than the rest of the brain for some unknown reason. This elevated blood flow suggests the PCC is a core hub, or relay station, in the human connectome — yet neuroscientists aren’t sure exactly what its functional significance is.
That said, researchers have linked PCC activity to several cognitive functions and processes — including autobiographical memory retrieval, emotional salience, motivational decision-making, visual tasks, and more — but scientists are still figuring out what the connections are between the PCC and these tasks, which all involve other brain regions, too.
Still, multiple studies agree that at least one activity makes the PCC go quiet — meditation, which also quiets the DMN, making the PCC all the more interesting to Lord.
New Study
Typically, researchers use techniques like transcranial magnetic or transcranial electrical stimulation for noninvasive brain stimulation, but both methods use magnetic fields or electrodes across the scalp. So Lord and his team tried a new method.
To access the PCC, the researchers used transcranial-focused ultrasound (TFUS), which converts electrical current into concentrated acoustic waves. Unlike the more common methods, TFUS can penetrate below the brain’s cortex, the outer wrinkly layer, and can be localized within millimeter-level precision. The depth and accuracy of TFUS allowed Lord and his team to target the PCC directly. Lord explained in the statement:
"We are the first to show that the default mode network can be directly targeted and noninvasively modulated.”
The study involved 30 participants — 18 females and 12 males — with an average age of 19. Half of the participants served as a control group, while the other half received TFUS to their PCC.
The researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor changes in brain activity, and the participants reported their feelings and experiences before and after treatment.
The Results
Believe it or not, the results showed that TFUS reduced the brain's DMN connectivity within five minutes.
The participants who received the five-minute treatment reported heightened abilities to be fully present in the moment, without judgment toward themselves or others. In other words, they became significantly more mindful.
For at least 30 minutes, the treated participants described their subjective experiences as similar to entering a deep meditative state, including a distorted sense of time, improved ability to detach from their feelings, and fewer negative thoughts.
In the Future
The study’s results open the door to new therapeutic treatment options, some of which Lord plans to explore. He explains to Tu:
“One of the greatest barriers to meditation and mindfulness is the steep learning curve. Brain stimulation can act like training wheels for the mind, helping people achieve that deep state of consciousness. That’s our larger goal.”
Beyond helping people reap the (many) benefits of meditation, the TFUS technique could be used for precision therapeutics, which are personalized medical treatments tailored to things like a person’s lifestyle, environment, and genetics.
Lord mentions that other researchers are already exploring TFUS as a potential treatment for mood disorders like anxiety and depression, along with treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and chronic pain. Social psychologist Hadley Rahrig, at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in Lord’s study but who also studies mindfulness in the brain, told Tu:
“I haven’t seen ultrasound technology used in this way, but this type of neuromodulation has significant potential to change how we think about and enhance mindfulness.”
Perspective Shift
Like exercise, meditation is wonderful, and its seemingly endless list of benefits are life-changing — but gosh, it is a struggle to get started. It would be so nice to skip the brutal beginning of taming an unruly mind and jump straight to feeling like it’s a natural and easy part of your life.
Maybe, just maybe, TFUS and Lord’s research will enable people to make that leap one day. Rather than enduring hours of struggle before tasting the benefits, people may one day reap the rewards of mindful meditation in five minutes. Even if the effects aren’t permanent, TFUS could offer a preview of what a regular meditation practice can add to our lives.
On the flip side, there’s something to be said for taming One’s mind (or body) without skipping ahead. Often, the struggle at the beginning is required for our growth. Still, some minds are more challenging to tame than others, and TFUS could offer the reprieve these people need. Either way, I’m all for new ways to help people become more mindful and feel at peace.
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Very intriguing, I used to meditate regularly and it made a huge difference in my default state. Now I’m a bit of a loose cannon, and really need to get back to it. Thanks for the prod! Reading this article also reminded me of a most interesting book I recently read:
My stroke of insight
https://a.co/d/2XmwFz6
This author talks about having a whole left hemisphere stroke, and noting how only having her right hemisphere in control was an absolutely mind blowing experience.
Very interesting. Knowing how transcranial magnetic stimulation can warp judgment though, at least temporarily, gives me pause when considering sending any kind of stimulation into the brain, including ultrasound. Lots of room for intriguing future research. Great article, Katrina.