Objectives: Individuals with a childhood maltreatment history tend to have various psychological symptoms and impaired social functioning. This study aimed to investigate the related therapeutic effects of a mindfulness-based intervention in this population. Methods: We analyzed self-report questionnaire scores of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), Non-Attachment Scale (NAS), Adult...
Adherence determines the success and benefits of mental training (e.g., meditation) programs. It is unclear why some participants engage more actively in programs for mental training than others. Understanding neurobiological factors that predict adherence is necessary for understanding elements of learning and to inform better designs for new learning regimens. Clustering patterns in brain...
Individuals who were maltreated during childhood are faced with increased risks for developing various psychological symptoms that are particularly resistant to traditional treatments. This pilot study investigated the effects of a mindfulness based behavioral intervention for young adults with childhood maltreatment history. This study looked at self-report psychological questionnaires from 20...
In light of a growing interest in contemplative practices such as meditation, the emerging field of contemplative science has been challenged to describe and objectively measure how these practices affect health and well-being. While “mindfulness” itself has been proposed as a measurable outcome of contemplative practices, this concept encompasses multiple components, some of which, as we...
One potential pathway by which mindfulness-based meditation improves health outcomes is through changes in cognitive functioning. Here, we summarize and comment upon three systematic reviews conducted over the last seven years that have had the goal of identifying the impact of mindfulness on cognitive outcomes. In our analysis, we identified a number of methodological limitations and potential...
Large-scale brain networks exhibit changes in functional connectivity during the aging process. Recent literature data suggests that Yoga and other contemplative practices may revert, at least in part, some of the aging effects in brain functional connectivity, including of the Default Mode Network (DMN). The aim of this cross-sectional investigation was to compare resting-state functional...
Background: The role of hippocampus in context-dependent recall of extinction is well recognized. However, little is known about how intervention-induced changes in hippocampal networks relate to improvements in extinction learning. In this study, we hypothesized that mindfulness training creates an optimal exposure condition by heightening attention and awareness of present moment sensory...
Mindfulness meditation has been primarily studied within the context of individual’s psychological well being and/or in relation to it’s potential to enhance cognitive skills such as attention and working memory. However, in Buddhism, mindfulness is used as a tool to cultivate wholesome actions, and as a means to promote virtuous, prosocial qualities. In this article, we postulate that...
One potential pathway by which mindfulness-based meditation improves health outcomes is through changes in cognitive functioning. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) was conducted with a focus on assessing the state of the evidence for effects on cognitive processes and associated assays. Here, we comment on confounding issues...
Depression is associated with high levels of mind-wandering and low levels of self-compassion. However, little is known about whether and how these two factors interact with one another to influence depressive symptoms. The current study examined the interaction between mind-wandering, self-compassion and depressive symptoms in a depressed sample and tested the effects of an eight-week...
OBJECTIVE: We investigated common and dissociable neural and psychological correlates of two widely used meditation-based stress reduction programs. METHODS: Participants were randomized to the Relaxation Response (RR; n = 18; 56% female) or the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR; n = 16; 56% female) programs. Both programs use a "bodyscan" meditation; however, the RR program explicitly...
Proactive interference occurs when previously relevant information interferes with retaining newer material. Overcoming proactive interference has been linked to the hippocampus and deemed critical for cognitive functioning. However, little is known about whether and how this ability can be improved or about the neural correlates of such improvement. Mindfulness training emphasizes focusing on...
In response to our article, Davidson and Dahl offer commentary and advice regarding additional topics crucial to a comprehensive prescriptive agenda for future research on mindfulness and meditation. Their commentary raises further challenges and provides an important complement to our article. More consideration of these issues is especially welcome because limited space precluded us from...
Chronic pain is a disabling illness, often comorbid with depression. We performed a randomized controlled pilot study on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) targeting depression in a chronic pain population. Participants with chronic pain lasting ≥ 3 months; DSM-IV major depressive disorder (MDD), dysthymic disorder, or depressive disorder not otherwise specified; and a 16-item Quick...
During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism....
Yoga, a mind-body activity that requires attentional engagement, has been associated with positive changes in brain structure and function, especially in areas related to awareness, attention, executive functions and memory. Normal aging, on the other hand, has also been associated with structural and functional brain changes, but these generally involve decreased cognitive functions. The aim...
An impaired ability to suppress currently irrelevant mental-sets is a key cognitive deficit in depression. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) was specifically designed to help depressed individuals avoid getting caught in such irrelevant mental-sets. In the current study, a group assigned to MBCT plus treatment-as-usual (n = 22) exhibited significantly lower depression scores and...
Body awareness has been proposed as one of the major mechanisms of mindfulness interventions, and it has been shown that chronic pain and depression are associated with decreased levels of body awareness. We investigated the effect of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on body awareness in patients with chronic pain and comorbid active depression compared to treatment as usual (TAU; N =...
Mindfulness has been suggested to impact emotional learning, but research on these processes is scarce. The classical fear conditioning/extinction/extinction retention paradigm is a well-known method for assessing emotional learning. The present study tested the impact of mindfulness training on fear conditioning and extinction memory and further investigated whether changes in white matter...
Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management...
There has been a growing interest in understanding how contemplative practices affect brain functional organization. However, most studies have restricted their exploration to predefined networks. Furthermore, scientific comparisons of different contemplative traditions are largely lacking. Here we explored differences in whole brain resting state functional connectivity between experienced...
Numerous studies have documented the normal age-related decline of neural structure, function, and cognitive performance. Preliminary evidence suggests that meditation may reduce decline in specific cognitive domains and in brain structure. Here we extended this research by investigating the relation between age and fluid intelligence and resting state brain functional network architecture...
Individuals can improve their levels of psychological well-being (PWB) through utilization of psychological interventions, including the practice of mindfulness meditation, which is defined as the non-judgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment. We recently reported that an 8-week-mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course lead to increases in gray matter concentration in...
With a rapidly aging society it becomes increasingly important to counter normal age-related decline in cognitive functioning. Growing evidence suggests that cognitive training programs may have the potential to counteract this decline. On the basis of a growing body of research that shows that meditation has positive effects on cognition in younger and middle-aged adults, meditation may be...
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a condition characterized by worry and physiological arousal symptoms that causes significant disabilities in patients' lives. In order to improve psychotherapeutic interventions, a careful characterization of the deficiencies of this population as well as factors that ameliorate disability is crucial. Variables that have not traditionally been the focus of...