Changes in Perception and Cognition During a Meditation Retreat (LONGIMED)

Civil Hospices of Lyon

Status

Completed

Conditions

Healthy Volunteers

Treatments

Behavioral: 10 days intensive meditation retreat

Behavioral: Waiting for a 10 days intensive meditation retreat

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04449913

69HCL20_0003

2020-A00669-30 (Other Identifier)

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study aims at assessing neuro-behavioral changes occuring during an intensive ten days meditation retreat. The investigator will study changes in tactile, auditory and pain perceptions as well as changes in cognitive and affective mental contents and their neural markers, as measured by self-reports, EEG event-related potentials, and functional connectivity of resting state fMRI. He will recruit healthy participants with a prior meditation experience. They will be randomly assigned to two groups, one active group who will undergo measurements just before, during and 3 weeks after the retreat. The other group will serve of control for task habituation, control participants will undergo the same measurements, equally spaced in time, but before the retreat. The main hypothesis is that meditation training strengthens meta-awareness, attention capacities resulting in enhanced bodily- and self-awareness during sensory perception and emotion regulation during pain.

Enrollment

58 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 67 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Age between 18 and 67
Regular meditation practice (at least 20 minutes 3 times a week) arising from a formal teaching (buddhist tradition, MBSR, mindfulness) for at least one year.
Having taken part to at least one intensive retreat (more than six hours of sitting meditation a day, during at least two days) in the past.
Affiliated to french social security
Motivated to take part in the study
Having signed an informed consent
Normal or corrected vision
Sufficient mastering of French to be able to understand correctly written and auditory instructions

Exclusion criteria

neurological or psychiatric antecedents
chronical pain or any other medical condition giving rise to acute pain or sensitivity to pain.
Motor or sensory deficit in the hands
severe auditory loss
regularly taking medical drugs acting on the central nervous system
regularly taking opioids or antidepressant drugs
alcohol consumption above the safety threshold recognized by the French healthy agency (10 drinks a week, 2 drinks a day, 5 drinks for special occasions)
drugs consumption (except tabacco) qualified as addictive according to medical criteria (https://www.drogues.gouv.fr/comprendre/l-essentiel-sur-les-addictions/qu-est-ce-qu-une-addiction)
alcohol or drug consumption the day before or the day of experiment and during the full duration of the retreat
being pregnant, breastfeading or having given birth less than 6 months ago
Will be excluded from the fMRI task only, participants presenting contraindication to a MRI scan : being claustrophobic, body mass index over 30, people, having a pacemaker or an insuline pump, metallic prothesis, intracranial clip, neurosensory stimulator, in-body defibrillator, cochlear implants, ocular or brain feromagnetic bodies close to nervous structures, neurosurgery stunts, dental brace.