Long-term breathing training (8-week mindfulness program) reduces delta and alpha functional connectivity in the left frontal region, while short-term breath counting reduces gamma functional connectivity in the same region. These patterns suggest that breathing practices engage approach-motivation emotion regulation, as indicated by left frontal asymmetry. The findings support the use of both long-term training and brief digital interventions for emotion regulation. Study 1 involved 31 participants; Study 2 involved 51 participants using a virtual reality platform.
Electroencephalography (EEG) effective connectivity can predict whether someone has experience with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Machine learning algorithms classified participants' MBSR history using gamma-band brain connectivity. The decision tree algorithm achieved the highest prediction accuracy of 91.7% during resting state, outperforming classifications during focus-breathing and body-scan sessions. Support vector machine and naïve Bayes classifiers also showed significant accuracies above chance across all three sessions. Preserving just four EEG channels (F7, F8, T7, P7) out of 19 yielded 83.3% accuracy. Connectivity features predominantly in the frontal lobe contributed most to classifier construction, consistent with existing mindfulness literature.