Intertemporal meditation regulates time perception and emotions: an exploratory fNIRS study

Mental time travel enables humans to project life episodes into the future, shaping present behaviour through episodic future thinking. This study explored the effects of repeated mental time travel from the present to the end of life on the time perception and emotional experiences of young adults. Unlike previous studies that focused solely on a single moment (present or death), we introduced intertemporal meditation, which combines mindfulness meditation and episodic future thinking. Using a within-subject design combined with fNIRS recording, we compared pre-meditation with post-meditation measures in both mindfulness and intertemporal meditation conditions. Behavioural results showed that intertemporal meditation shortened time perception and made the participants feel more peaceful and less anxious. The fNIRS results revealed that intertemporal meditation resulted in higher overall brain activations than mindfulness meditation. Hemodynamic measures revealed significant left-lateralized activations in brain regions associated with emotion regulation and cognitive control, particularly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior prefrontal cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex. In addition, right-lateralized activations in Broca's area and middle temporal gyrus indicated enhanced processing of social cues and autobiographical memory processing. These findings underscore the adaptive utility of intertemporal meditation in emotion regulation and its potential to improve cognitive control functions.