Compassion meditation, a component of the Awareness Training Program, can help regulate negative emotions by modulating brain activity and physiological responses. After seven weeks of training, middle-aged adults with moderate stress who practiced compassion meditation showed greater prefrontal brain activity (measured by the N400 component) when viewing negative pictures, compared to a control group. Compassion meditation also increased heart rate variability, indicating better emotional regulation. These effects occurred across stages of attention, cognitive processing, and behavioral response, with the prefrontal lobe playing a key role.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training alters electrical activity in the brain and heart, making them more coordinated. During an 8-week standard MBSR course, EEG recordings showed increased alpha and beta wave power and decreased delta wave power compared to normal rest. Wavelet entropy analysis indicated that MBSR meditation reduces chaotic activity in both EEG and heart rate as a temporary state change, though longer training may be needed for lasting trait changes. For the first time, the data demonstrated that chaotic brain and heart activities become more coordinated during MBSR, suggesting mindfulness enhances mind-body entrainment. Specific 3D brain regions involved in these mental state changes were identified.