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Updated: Jul 14, 2026

Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex to Experimentally Reduce Ideological Threat Responses
Published on: September 28, 2018
Differential engagement of anterior cingulate and adjacent medial frontal cortex in adept meditators and
Britta K Hölzel1, Ulrich Ott, Hannes Hempel
1Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany. britta.k.hoelzel@psychol.uni-giessen.de
Abstract:
This study investigated differences in brain activation during meditation between meditators and non-meditators. Fifteen Vipassana meditators (mean practice: 7.9 years, 2h daily) and fifteen non-meditators, matched for sex, age, education, and handedness, participated in a block-design fMRI study that included mindfulness of breathing and mental arithmetic conditions. For the meditation condition (contrasted to arithmetic), meditators showed stronger activations in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex bilaterally, compared to controls. Greater rostral anterior cingulate cortex activation in meditators may reflect stronger processing of distracting events. The increased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex may reflect that meditators are stronger engaged in emotional processing.

