Can Meditation Change Your Brain’s Relationship With Dopamine and Cravings?
We often think of dopamine as the brain’s pleasure chemical. It’s typically associated with things we enjoy, from eating our favorite foods to scrolling through social media. But dopamine is involved in something a little more complicated than simply feeling good: it also plays an important role in motivation, anticipation, and wanting.
That raises an interesting question: Could meditation change how strongly we respond to the things we crave?
Research suggests it might. 🧐
Dopamine, wanting, and the craving cycle
Dopamine is involved in the brain’s reward and motivation systems. It helps us learn which experiences are worth pursuing and can contribute to the anticipation of rewards.
This is one reason certain experiences can become so compelling. Think about checking your phone for notifications, reaching for a snack when you’re not hungry, or repeatedly opening an app even when you’re not getting much enjoyment from it.
Sometimes, the urge to seek a reward can become stronger than the enjoyment we actually get from it.
This distinction between wanting and liking is important. Dopamine is particularly involved in motivation and wanting, although pleasure itself involves several interacting brain systems.
So what happens when we practice mindfulness instead of automatically responding to those urges?
Study 1: Mindfulness and cravings
A 2018 review published in Clinical Psychology Review examined 30 experimental studies investigating mindfulness and cravings.
The studies looked at cravings involving food, cigarettes, and alcohol. Overall, the findings suggested that mindfulness may help people change their responses to cravings.
One possible explanation is that mindfulness gives us an opportunity to notice an urge without immediately acting on it.
For example, instead of automatically reaching for a snack when a craving appears, someone might pause, recognize the craving, and allow it to pass without responding.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the craving disappears. It may mean the person becomes less compelled to act on it.
Read the review: Mindfulness and Craving: Effects and Mechanisms
Study 2: What happens in the brain when smokers practice mindfulness?
A 2024 study published in Addictive Behaviors investigated how mindfulness affects cigarette cravings and related brain activity.
Researchers recruited 46 men, including 23 smokers and 23 nonsmokers. During brain scans, participants were exposed to smoking-related images. Smokers were asked to either practice a mindfulness strategy or simply look at the images.
The researchers found that mindfulness reduced craving during the later part of the exposure period.
Brain scans also showed reduced activity in several regions associated with reward, emotion, and internal bodily awareness, including the ventral striatum, insula, and amygdala.
The ventral striatum is particularly interesting because it’s involved in reward processing and motivation.
These findings suggest that mindfulness may change how the brain responds to cues associated with something a person craves.
However, the study did not directly measure dopamine levels, so we can’t conclude that mindfulness reduced dopamine.
Study 3: Meditation and internet gaming cravings
A 2024 randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open examined mindfulness meditation in adults with internet gaming disorder.
Researchers assigned 64 participants to either a mindfulness meditation program or progressive muscle relaxation. Both groups completed eight training sessions over four weeks.
The mindfulness group experienced greater reductions in gaming cravings and addiction severity than the relaxation group.
Brain scans also revealed changes in activity in several regions associated with craving and reward processing. Researchers suggested that improved communication between brain regions involved in executive control and reward processing might help explain the reduction in cravings.
In simpler terms, mindfulness may help strengthen the brain’s ability to regulate urges rather than automatically responding to them.
It’s worth noting that this study involved people with internet gaming disorder, so we shouldn’t assume the same effects would occur in everyone who meditates.
So, does meditation actually change dopamine?
This is where the research gets interesting, but also where we need to be careful.
The studies discussed here provide evidence that mindfulness can influence cravings and activity in brain regions involved in reward processing and motivation.
But they don’t establish that meditation increases or decreases dopamine levels.
Instead, they point toward a potentially more interesting effect: mindfulness may help change how we respond to the things we want.
Rather than automatically following every urge, we may become better at recognizing cravings, tolerating them, and choosing whether to act on them.
That doesn’t mean we stop enjoying rewarding experiences. It may mean we become less controlled by the urge to seek them.
And perhaps that’s one of the more useful things meditation can teach us: we don’t have to act on every craving just because we experience it.
