Heartfulness meditation effects on affective symptoms and neural function in healthy adults

Meditation-based interventions are increasingly investigated as scalable, non-pharmacological approaches for supporting mental health, but different contemplative practices may not operate through identical psychological and neural mechanisms. Existing meditation research has emphasised attentional control and executive function as candidate mechanisms. Heartfulness meditation is a heart-based contemplative practice centred on relaxation, inner awareness and emotional balance, but its neural effects remain under-characterised. This study examined whether a 6-week Heartfulness meditation intervention was associated with changes in affective symptoms, mindfulness-related processes, behavioural attention and functional brain activity in healthy adults. Thirty-nine adults aged 18–50 years completed baseline and post-intervention assessments, including 20 participants in the Heartfulness group and 19 controls. Assessments included self-report measures of anxiety, depression, stress and mindfulness-related processes, behavioural cognitive tasks, and functional magnetic resonance imaging during an N-back working memory task. Behavioural and questionnaire outcomes were analysed using mixed analyses of variance with Group as the between-subject factor and Session as the within-subject factor. Follow-up within-group comparisons were conducted where appropriate. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were analysed using region-of-interest analyses focusing on frontoparietal regions implicated in executive control, working memory and affective regulation. Multiple comparisons were controlled using Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate correction. Behavioural indices of attention, including sustained attention and N-back task performance, did not show clear Group × Session effects. Although Group × Session effects for affective symptom measures were not significant, self-report outcomes showed affective and mindfulness-related changes within the Heartfulness group. On the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, depression and stress decreased significantly in the Heartfulness group, p = .044 and p = .021, respectively, but not in controls, p = .826 and p = .870. Broader symptom indices showed a similar pattern, with reductions in Self-Rating Anxiety Scale scores, p = .049, and Self-Rating Depression Scale scores, p = .020, in the Heartfulness group only. Depression Anxiety Stress Scales anxiety showed a trend-level reduction in the Heartfulness group, p = .088. For mindfulness-related processes, Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire Acting with Awareness showed a significant Group × Session interaction, F(1,37) = 4.995, p = .032, partial eta squared = .119, with increased awareness in the Heartfulness group, p = .014, and no significant change in controls, p = .541. Functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses showed significant Group × Session interactions across bilateral middle/superior frontal and right angular/supramarginal regions, reflecting decreased activation in controls but increased activation in the Heartfulness group from baseline to post-intervention. These effects survived Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate correction, p = .002–.027, q = .017–.043. These preliminary findings suggest that short-term Heartfulness meditation may be associated with affective symptom reduction and increased mindful awareness, while behavioural attentional gains may be less evident during early practice. Functional magnetic resonance imaging findings provide initial evidence that heart-based meditation may modulate frontoparietal systems involved in cognitive and emotional control. Given the modest sample size and preliminary imaging analyses, these findings should be interpreted cautiously, but support further investigation of Heartfulness meditation as a scalable non-pharmacological approach for affective wellbeing.

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