Visual Attention to Suffering After Compassion Training Is Associated With Decreased Amygdala Responses.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2018 Helen Y. Weng, Regina C Lapate, Diane E Stodola et al.
Two weeks of compassion meditation training, compared with reappraisal training, increased healthy adults' visual preference for images of suffering. Greater visual preference for suffering in the compassion group was linked to decreased activity in the amygdala, a brain region associated with negative valence and fear responses, as well as in the anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex, areas tied to empathic distress. The reappraisal group showed opposite neural effects. Across both time points, engaging in compassion generally led to a visual attention preference for suffering over reappraisal. These findings suggest compassion meditation may foster a more equanimous, nonreactive attention to suffering while dampening aversive neural processing.