PLoS One
May 15, 2012
A Chiesa, A Chiesa, A Chiesa et al.
217 citations
Two experiments tested whether mindfulness practice reduces cognitive rigidity using a water jar task where initial problems required a complex formula, but later problems also allowed a simpler solution. Experienced meditators showed significantly less persistence with the complex formula compared to non-meditators in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, non-meditators who completed an eight-session mindfulness program also had lower rigidity scores than a waiting list group. The authors conclude that mindfulness meditation reduces the tendency to be blinded by past experience, promoting more adaptive and flexible problem-solving.
Focus (Am Psychiatr Publ)
January 24, 2018
Benjamin G. Shapero, Jonathan Greenberg, Paola Pedrelli et al.
165 citations
Mindfulness meditation, a practice with deep roots in eastern traditions, has gained widespread public and scientific interest. Mindfulness is a natural state of present-moment awareness, and interventions have been developed to train this skill. This review discusses the concept of mindfulness and its use in treating psychiatric disorders. It identifies which patients benefit from mindfulness-based interventions and summarizes how they work, including cognitive, psychological, and neural mechanisms that drive clinical improvements. The review offers a foundation for incorporating these interventions into clinical practice.
Brain Imaging and Behavior
March 17, 2018
Jonathan Greenberg, Victoria Romero, Seth Elkin-Frankston et al.
69 citations
Proactive interference—when old information disrupts learning new material—can be reduced by mindfulness training. In a randomized trial, 79 participants completed either a 4-week web-based mindfulness program or a creative writing control. The mindfulness group showed lower proactive interference error rates after training. No group differences in hippocampal volume emerged, but improvements in proactive interference were linked to volume increases in the left hippocampus. These findings suggest mindfulness training protects against proactive interference, with benefits tied to hippocampal structural changes, and may have implications for conditions like aging, depression, PTSD, and childhood adversity where working memory and hippocampal volume are compromised.
Psychosomatic Medicine
April 11, 2018
Gunes Sevinc, Britta K. Hölzel, Javeria A. Hashmi et al.
65 citations
Two meditation-based stress reduction programs—Relaxation Response (RR) and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)—both reduced stress, with MBSR showing a larger effect (Cohen's d = 1.02) than RR (Cohen's d = 0.50). Both programs activated shared neural pathways between ventromedial prefrontal regions and supplementary motor areas. However, the RR bodyscan meditation, which emphasizes physical relaxation, showed stronger connectivity between the right inferior frontal gyrus (involved in inhibition and control) and supplementary motor areas. The MBSR program, which emphasizes mindful awareness without explicit relaxation, uniquely improved self-compassion and rumination and showed connectivity between the right anterior insula (sensory awareness and salience) and pregenual anterior cingulate during meditation. These distinct neural patterns align with each program's theoretical focus.
Spirituality in Clinical Practice
August 2, 2018
Jonathan Greenberg, Tanya Datta, Benjamin G. Shapero et al.
37 citations
Depression is linked to high levels of mind-wandering and low self-compassion. In a depressed sample, mind-wandering was associated with higher depressive symptoms only among those with low self-compassion. Self-compassion predicted improvement in depression. An eight-week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) program increased self-compassion and reduced mind-wandering compared to a treatment-as-usual control group. Longitudinally, increases in mind-wandering were linked to increases in depressive symptoms only among those whose self-compassion decreased. Self-compassion can protect against the harmful effects of mind-wandering in depression, and MBCT effectively targets both protective and risk factors for depression.
Brain and Behavior
September 18, 2020
Gunes Sevinc, Jonathan Greenberg, Britta K. Hölzel et al.
24 citations
Mindfulness meditation training is linked to structural changes in the hippocampus, specifically the subiculum, which are associated with reduced connectivity between the hippocampus and lateral occipital regions during the retrieval of extinguished fear memories. This reduced connectivity correlates with decreases in self-reported anxiety after mindfulness training. The findings suggest that the subiculum plays a key role in regulating interactions with contextual cues during memory retrieval, and that mindfulness training may foster resilience by altering these brain circuits.
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
November 9, 2016
Jonathan Greenberg, Benjamin G. Shapero, David Mischoulon et al.
17 citations
Depressed individuals often struggle to suppress irrelevant mental sets, a cognitive deficit linked to the disorder. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) plus treatment-as-usual, compared to a wait-list plus treatment-as-usual control, led to significantly lower depression scores and greater improvements in the ability to suppress irrelevant mental sets. Improvements in mental-set suppression were associated with reductions in depression. This provides initial evidence that MBCT can enhance this cognitive function and that such enhancement relates to depressive symptom relief.
Behavioral Sleep Medicine
January 1, 2025
Nathaniel R Choukas, Emily C Woodworth, Heena R Manglani et al.
2 citations
Mindfulness-based interventions improve sleep disturbance across healthy and clinical populations. A meta-regression of 40 randomized controlled trials found that these interventions produced significant reductions in sleep disturbance (standardized mean difference = -0.523) and in psychosocial factors such as stress and depression. Reductions in sleep disturbance were linked to reductions in stress and depression, suggesting these psychosocial factors may be important mechanisms. The analysis also indicates that participant and methodological factors play a role. Future research should include additional measures and examine longitudinal associations to identify the active ingredients of mindfulness-based interventions.
Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)
January 1, 2020
Marzie Saghayi, Jonathan Greenberg, Christopher O'Grady et al.
Greater system segregation and clustering of brain connections measured in resting-state fMRI scans predict adherence to both meditation and creative writing programs. At a local level, regions in subcortical circuitry such as striatum and accumbens predicted adherence in all subjects. Adherence to meditation was predicted by connectivity within the local network of the anterior insula and default mode network; in the writing program, adherence was predicted by network neighborhood of frontal and temporal regions. Four machine learning methods classified individual capacity for adherence with reasonable accuracy. These findings indicate that adherence to mental training programs is associated with organizational patterns of brain connectivity.