Scientists scanned people's brains before and after 45 days of yoga. Here's what changed

What happens in the brain after 45 days of yoga? Researchers combined mood and memory tests with brain scans to investigate how a standardized routine of postures, breathing, and meditation affects the mind.

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Can a standardized yoga routine combining postures, breathing, relaxation, and meditation change how brain regions communicate and improve mood and sleep?

Yoga for the brain

Non-communicable diseases and mental health disorders exert a heavy burden on health systems around the globe, which is exacerbated by the aging global population, ongoing stress, and sedentary routines. Yoga is an ancient Indian practice that targets the body and the mind to promote healthy living. Studies among healthy people who practice yoga report lower inflammation, less stress, better quality of life, and healthier aging; some research also suggests improvements in working memory, attention span, and mental speed.

Yoga is taught in many styles that weigh postures, breathing, and meditation differently, and outcomes depend on how often, how intensely, and how long people practice. While previous studies have linked yoga to changes in brain function, differences in yoga styles and assessment methods make comparisons difficult. Randomized neuroimaging studies using the standardized Common Yoga Protocol remain limited.

About the study

In this study, the researchers conducted an open-label randomized controlled trial at a university in Pune, India, between October 2023 and January 2025 to examine the effects of the Common Yoga Protocol (CYP), a routine designed by experts and suitable for all ages. Healthy adults aged 18 to 55 were recruited through campus appeals and flyers. They had to read Hindi or English, attend yoga classes, and consent to brain scanning. Those with major neurological or psychiatric illness, recent surgery, poorly controlled chronic conditions, prior yoga experience, current exercise training, alcohol, tobacco, or narcotic use, scanner-incompatible implants, or pregnancy were excluded.

After consent and baseline testing, 139 adults were randomly assigned, using sealed envelopes, to a yoga group or a control group, and 25 in each group were randomly selected for brain imaging.

The yoga group followed CYP for 45 days under one instructor. Sessions averaged 50 minutes and combined loosening exercises, postures, breathing practices, guided relaxation (yoga nidra), and meditation. The waitlist group received general advice on staying active and was offered yoga afterward.

Participants were scheduled for assessments at the start and after 45 days. The main outcome was mood, measured with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Other measures covered processing speed, short-term memory, and sleep quality. The main analyses included all 139 randomized participants, with missing values replaced by each group's median scores. The imaging subgroup underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with eyes closed to examine how large brain networks communicate. The researchers then analyzed brain imaging data while accounting for age, sex, and education.

Major findings

After 45 days of CYP, the yoga group showed improvements in mood, sleep, and performance on selected short-term verbal memory tests, alongside changes in functional connectivity across several brain networks.

A total of 125 participants completed the study. Compared with the control group, people practicing yoga reported positive affect scores about 4 points higher, reflecting feelings such as interest, enthusiasm, and alertness, and negative affect scores about 3.5 points lower on the PANAS questionnaire.

The sleep quality score was also about 1.2 points lower than in controls after adjusting for baseline scores, indicating better self-reported sleep. On a test requiring participants to repeat strings of numbers, the yoga group performed better on the forward version and on the combined score, indicating better short-term verbal recall. But performance on the backward repeat version of the same test and on the symbol matching test did not differ between groups.

Brain scans from a small subgroup of 43 participants showed that yoga changed resting-state functional connectivity in networks tied to movement, attention, language, and the cerebellum, which is involved in coordination. The left and right lateral sensorimotor networks showed closer links with frontal gyri, which are areas involved in motor planning and higher cognitive functions.

Connectivity between a salience network region and the right frontal pole stayed relatively stable in the yoga group while it increased in the control group. Language-related regions showed stronger connections with visual areas, and the dorsal attention network linked more with the precuneus, associated with self-referential processing, and the superior parietal lobule, involved in spatial attention. A smaller increase in the link between the dorsal attention network and the precuneus was associated with greater improvements in positive affect, but this did not establish cause and effect.

Cerebellar connections with frontal and temporal regions also changed, but functional connectivity findings do not establish that the brain became more efficient or that cognition improved across all domains.

Two serious health events occurred during the trial, but the authors stated that they were unrelated to the intervention.

Because the control group had no comparable group activity, such as the yoga sessions, social participation and interactions in the yoga group may also have contributed to the observed benefits. Because participants knew which group they were in, expectations could have influenced their responses to the mood and sleep questionnaires.

Conclusions

Overall, the trial provided preliminary evidence that 45 days of a standardized yoga routine improved mood, sleep quality, and selected short-term memory measures in healthy adults while altering resting-state functional connectivity between different regions of the brain. The findings suggest that sustained yoga practice could support cognitive health over time, but the study did not examine cognitive decline or dementia prevention. The authors also called for larger, multicenter studies, longer practice periods, and follow-ups to learn how long the changes lasted.

Source:

Journal reference:

• Chaturvedi, S., Rao, P., Rao, R., Rohatgi, S., Rachalwar, V., Shejwal, B., Vadiraja, H. S., & Patwardhan, B. (2026). Common yoga protocol improves cognitive functions and neural connectivity: A randomized controlled fMRI study in healthy adults. Scientific Reports, 16(1), Article 36893. DOI:10.1038/s41598-026-76430-y, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-76430-y