Changes in Perception and Cognition During a Meditation Retreat

NCT ID: NCT04449913

Last Updated: 2021-10-27

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 58 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2020-10-02
• Study Completion Date: 2021-04-10

Brief Summary

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.

Conditions

Healthy Volunteers

Keywords

Meditation; Emotional Regulation; Metacognitive Awareness; Attention; Mindfulness; Pain; Predictive Coding

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Active group

10 days intensive meditation retreat

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

10 days intensive meditation retreat

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

The intervention consists in a 10 days contemplative retreat, with 6 to 8 hours of sitting and walking meditation per day, and 1 or 2 hours of meditation teachings. The meditation practice will mainly train in mindfulness practice. Mindfulness meditation intends to train attention to detect and regulate afflictive cognitive and emotional patterns. Mindfulness practice requires skills involved in openness to experience, in monitoring the focus of attention and in detecting distraction, disengaging attention from the source of distraction, and flexibly (re)directing and engaging attention to the intended object. A brief introduction to loving-kindness and compassion meditation will also be present throughout the retreat.

Control group

Waiting for a 10 days intensive meditation retreat

Group Type: OTHER

Waiting for a 10 days intensive meditation retreat

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

At the time of measure, participants in this group are waiting to participate to the same meditation retreat as the active group. They may perform their own daily meditation practices as usual.

Interventions

10 days intensive meditation retreat

The intervention consists in a 10 days contemplative retreat, with 6 to 8 hours of sitting and walking meditation per day, and 1 or 2 hours of meditation teachings. The meditation practice will mainly train in mindfulness practice. Mindfulness meditation intends to train attention to detect and regulate afflictive cognitive and emotional patterns. Mindfulness practice requires skills involved in openness to experience, in monitoring the focus of attention and in detecting distraction, disengaging attention from the source of distraction, and flexibly (re)directing and engaging attention to the intended object. A brief introduction to loving-kindness and compassion meditation will also be present throughout the retreat.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Waiting for a 10 days intensive meditation retreat

At the time of measure, participants in this group are waiting to participate to the same meditation retreat as the active group. They may perform their own daily meditation practices as usual.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 67 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Hospices Civils de Lyon

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Antoine LUTZ, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Centre de recherche de Neurosciences de Lyon (CRNL)

Locations

Centre de Recherche en Neuroscience de Lyon

Bron, , France

Countries

France

Other Identifiers

2020-A00669-30

Identifier Type: OTHER

Identifier Source: secondary_id

69HCL20_0003

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id