People who are naturally more mindful show distinct brain activity when labeling emotional facial expressions. During an affect labeling task, higher dispositional mindfulness was linked to greater activation in prefrontal cortical regions and reduced activity in the amygdala. Strong negative correlations between prefrontal cortex and right amygdala responses appeared only in those with high mindfulness, suggesting that mindful individuals may better regulate negative emotions through cognitive control. This pattern points to a possible neurocognitive mechanism—enhanced prefrontal regulation of affect via labeling—that could explain how mindfulness meditation reduces negative affect and improves health.
Among 27 normal young adults, dispositional mindfulness was negatively correlated with resting neural activity in self-referential processing areas and in the amygdala bilaterally, whereas depressive symptomatology was positively correlated with resting activity in similar areas, including the right amygdala. During viewing of negative emotional faces, amygdala reactivity was positively correlated with depressive symptoms and negatively correlated with mindfulness, an effect largely attributable to differences in resting activity. These findings suggest that mindfulness is linked to intrinsic neural activity and that changes in resting amygdala activity may be a mechanism through which mindfulness-based depression treatments produce therapeutic improvement.
Mindfulness—receptive attentiveness to present-moment experience—may buffer the distress of social rejection. In a functional MRI study, participants reported their trait mindfulness, then played Cyberball, a social rejection game. Those higher in mindfulness reported less distress during rejection. This effect was mediated by lower activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region linked to inhibiting negative affect. Mindfulness also correlated with weaker functional connectivity between that region and the amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, areas involved in generating social distress. The findings suggest mindfulness may aid coping with rejection by not over-activating top-down regulatory mechanisms, potentially fostering more effective long-term emotion regulation.