A randomized trial with 130 participants tested whether the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) validly measures dispositional mindfulness. The study included three groups: mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), an active control condition (Health Enhancement Program, HEP) that did not teach mindfulness meditation, and a waitlist control. At baseline, FFMQ facets correlated with measures of psychological symptoms and well-being, providing partial evidence for convergent validity. FFMQ scores increased for MBSR relative to the waitlist, but they also increased for HEP relative to the waitlist, and MBSR and HEP did not differ from each other. The FFMQ thus failed to show discriminant validity, raising questions about its ability to specifically measure mindfulness.
Long-term mindfulness meditation practitioners have slower baseline respiration rates than non-meditators, and more intensive retreat practice—but not routine daily practice—is linked to slower breathing, independent of age, gender, and body measures like height, weight, and BMI. Full days of meditation did not immediately change baseline respiration, suggesting the effects are long-term rather than acute. These findings point to stable, generalized changes in respiration from sustained mindfulness training.
Mindfulness meditation training is linked to reduced amygdala reactivity to positive emotional pictures, but not to negative ones, in healthy adults. Long-term meditators (average 9,081 lifetime hours) showed less amygdala response to positive images. In a randomized trial, an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course also reduced amygdala reactivity to positive pictures compared to an active control, and increased connectivity between the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), a region involved in emotion regulation. Lower amygdala reactivity to negative pictures was associated with more retreat practice hours in long-term meditators, but not with MBSR practice time. These findings suggest meditation improves emotional responding through reduced amygdala reactivity and enhanced amygdala-VMPFC coupling.
Compassion meditation trains people to feel compassion for themselves and others, and may lead to more prosocial behavior. An emotion-regulation model proposes three processes that change how people respond to suffering: increasing empathy, decreasing avoidance, and increasing compassionate responses. These changes may transfer to everyday behavior, making prosocial actions more likely even when not meditating. The authors review neuroscientific and behavioral evidence that supports this model and suggest directions for future research to test it further.