Enhancing Meditation Retreats

Support the first ever transcranial focused ultrasound meditation retreat

Imagine attending a meditation retreat where cutting-edge brain stimulation technology lowers the barriers to meditation, allowing you to access its benefits more deeply. This is our vision, using transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) neuromodulation. We need your support to bring to life the first ever ultrasound-enhanced meditation retreat.

How you can support us

We are seeking funds to conduct the first experiment combining tFUS with a meditation retreat. This requires individual MRIs for each participant and dedicated time from our researchers so that we can produce rigorous scientific research from the experiment. By testing our methods in a natural meditation retreat setting, we hope to learn what it takes to lower the barriers to mindfulness training so more people can benefit.

The Problem: Although meditation is beneficial, it is hard

Mindfulness, the practice of focusing attention with clarity, openness, and acceptance towards one’s present experience, has been shown to reduce stress, improve health, and enhance overall life satisfaction. Despite its benefits, developing mindfulness skills can be challenging and time-consuming, particularly for those dealing with depression, chronic pain, or other significant stressors. The difficulty in maintaining a consistent practice often prevents individuals from experiencing the full benefits of mindfulness.

Our Solution: Personalized ultrasound-enhanced meditation

At SEMA Lab, we're exploring how combining mindfulness practice with low-intensity tFUS can enhance mindfulness training. Our previous study showed that temporarily modulating a brain network called the Default Mode Network (DMN) with tFUS improved mindfulness (Lord et al., 2024). We've since refined our approach by incorporating a meditation protocol developed by Shinzen Young and Carnegie Mellon researchers (Lindsay et al, 2018). We created a low-power ultrasound method that increases efficacy by individualizing the protocol for each meditator’s brain (paper in prep).

Previous Crowdfunding Success: Robust modulation of the brain’s default mode network

Thanks to the generous support from our last crowdfunding campaign, SEMA Lab became the first to use tFUS to non-invasively modulate the brain's DMN, an important set of brain areas involved in internal mental processing and mindfulness training. Alongside other grant funding, this campaign helped us test the hypothesis that temporarily reducing DMN connectivity with ultrasound could temporarily enhance mindfulness. We successfully and safely modulated DMN activity in our study, and participants who experienced a change in DMN connectivity also reported increased mindfulness (Lord et al., 2024). This groundbreaking finding lays the foundation for using low-energy focused ultrasound to enhance mindfulness training safely.

Follow-up: We maximized the impact of mindfulness training using an individualized approach

Next, we used a novel individualized approach to applying tFUS to a meditation training protocol developed by Shinzen Young and David Creswell’s group at Carnegie Mellon (link). We hypothesized that tFUS would enhance the effectiveness of the meditation training protocol. The effects were measured using self-reports, mood scales, physiological, and behavioral data, both spontaneously and in response to experimentally induced stress. We compared two groups: one receiving active tFUS with two weeks of meditation training and another receiving sham tFUS with two weeks of meditation training.

Our preliminary results of the mindfulness training enhancement study are promising. We found that the stimulation group sat in meditation longer than the sham group after receiving tFUS. Almost 70% of participants showed significant improvements in their mindfulness skills, as measured by brain imaging, survey data, and stress response. Our researchers are currently preparing the manuscript for publication.

In our analysis, we found that positive responders showed significant alterations in two key brain networks, the default mode, and central executive, both of which are critical networks for mindfulness. Additionally, positive responders showed an improved cortisol response to a stress test.

What’s next? Translating our results to a retreat setting

Building on our momentum, our current crowdfunding campaign is set to test the SEMA protocol in an unprecedented way—by integrating it into an immersive, ten-day meditation retreat led by the renowned Dr. Tucker Peck. We're thrilled to take our groundbreaking protocol beyond the lab and into the real world, where we can explore its potential to enhance well-being in natural settings. If this experiment yields positive results, we'll expand our partnership with meditation retreat centers to further refine our science-driven approach to making mindfulness more accessible. Be part of this pioneering research and help us make mindfulness training accessible to everyone!

Resources

2024

ScienceDaily: Ultrasound technology can be used to boost mindfulness, study finds

Newsweek: Mindfulness Improved by Firing Ultrasound Into the Brain

How to Manage Meditation: Using Ultrasound to Get the Effects of Meditation

BrainMind Summit | Good Vibrations: Ultrasound-Assisted Mindfulness Training

2023

AZPM Video: "SEMA Lab Science Enhanced Mindful Awareness"

University of Arizona News: "Researchers explore the use of ultrasound to achieve mindfulness"

2022

YouTube Interview: "Neuro Technologies to Enhance Cognition"

Guru Viking Podcast: Episode 130 - "Awakened Scientist - Dr. Jay Sanguinetti 2"