Mindfulness meditation empirically empty

As the New York Times story notes, mindfulness meditation has been the hot stock in psychotherapy. But, that hype may be nothing more than, well, hype:

So far, the evidence that mindfulness meditation helps relieve psychiatric symptoms is thin, and in some cases, it may make people worse, some studies suggest. Many researchers now worry that the enthusiasm for Buddhist practice will run so far ahead of the science that this promising psychological tool could turn into another fad.

“I’m very open to the possibility that this approach could be effective, and it certainly should be studied,” said Scott Lilienfeld, a psychology professor at Emory. “What concerns me is the hype, the talk about changing the world, this allure of the guru that the field of psychotherapy has a tendency to cultivate.”

First, the research is too sketchy. Second, results that we do have so far say it could help depression, for example — or could worsen it.

To me, the first point reflects a larger problem with brain sciences in general.

Two many newspaper reporters write stories — and too many researchers phrase their comments in the same way — about how “fMRI shows depression does this to your brain,” or claims that go far beyond even that.

No, all fMRI does is show increased blood activity and oxygenation in a certain part of the brain. Even with that, it measures more of input into a brain area than output from it.

As Wikipedia notes, fMRI also has temporal resolution problems, doesn’t do much in the way of measuring distributed brain function across neural networks, and says nothing about the “how” or “why” of brain function, just the “that/where.”

And, while a network of companies called Big MedTech doesn’t trip off the tongue like Big Pharma, nonetheless, companies have big money invested in selling fMRI machines.