Hippocampal-somatomotor coactivation and perceived benefit following Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Life in healthcare students: An exploratory randomized study

Mindfulness-based interventions are known to enhance emotion regulation and stress management, yet their neural mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Effective coping strategies for emotion regulation and stress management would be particularly beneficial for healthcare students, frequently exposed to highly stressful situations. Based on prior work implicating hippocampal-somatomotor dynamics in emotion regulation, we tested whether Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Life (MBCT-L) modulates hippocampal micro-coactivation patterns (μCAPs) in healthcare students. In a randomized controlled study including 161 healthcare students, 57 participants (39 females; mean age: 23±5 years old) completed resting-state fMRI before and after the 8-weeks intervention and were allocated to MBCT-L (N = 24) or a no-intervention control (N = 33) condition. Hippocampus-seeded CAPs analysis identified six recurrent patterns, including a somatomotor network. MBCT-L improved self-reported mindfulness, but no significant Group × Time interaction for hippocampus-somatomotor coactivation or resting physiological measures was found. In the MBCT-L group, higher hippocampus-somatomotor co-activity was associated with higher perceived importance of the intervention, perceived long-lasting benefits, and post-intervention mindfulness scores. This study suggests that the capacity to up-regulate hippocampus-somatomotor coactivation may index part of the individual benefit derived from mindfulness, supporting its role as a tool for emotion regulation and stress management.