Pain
June 4, 2007
Natalia E. Morone, Carol M. Greco, Debra K. Weiner
544 citations
An eight-week mindfulness meditation program is feasible for older adults aged 65 and older with chronic low back pain. In this pilot randomized trial, 37 participants were assigned to either the meditation program or a wait-list control. At the end of the intervention, 81% completed assessments, average class attendance was 6.7 out of 8 sessions, and participants meditated about 4.3 days per week for an average of 31.6 minutes per day. Compared to the control group, the meditation group showed significant improvements in pain acceptance (specifically the total score and activities engagement subscale) and physical function. The program may lead to better pain acceptance and physical function.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 5, 2015
Adrienne A. Taren, Peter J. Gianaros, Carol M. Greco et al.
232 citations
Higher perceived stress over the past month is associated with greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) in a sample of 130 community adults. A subsequent randomized controlled trial with 35 stressed unemployed adults showed that a 3-day intensive mindfulness meditation training, compared to a relaxation training without mindfulness, reduced right amygdala-sgACC connectivity. The findings suggest that mindfulness meditation training may reverse stress-related increases in amygdala-sgACC connectivity, indicating a neural pathway for stress reduction.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
December 1, 2018
Emily K. Lindsay, Brian Chin, Carol M. Greco et al.
221 citations
Mindfulness interventions that train both monitoring of present-moment experiences and an accepting orientation toward them (Monitor + Accept) boost positive emotions in daily life, while training monitoring alone does not. Across two randomized controlled trials with stressed community adults, those who received Monitor + Accept training reported greater positive affect after the intervention compared with those who received monitoring-only training or no treatment. The effect appeared in end-of-day positive affect in an 8-week group-based study and in both end-of-day and momentary positive affect in a 2-week smartphone-based study. All active interventions reduced negative affect. Acceptance skills are a central mechanism for increasing positive emotions through mindfulness.
Psychosomatic Medicine
March 22, 2017
Adrienne A. Taren, Peter J. Gianaros, Carol M. Greco et al.
212 citations
Three days of intensive mindfulness meditation training, compared with relaxation training, strengthened functional connections between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and brain regions involved in executive control. In adults with high psychological distress, resting-state functional connectivity increased between left dlPFC and the right inferior frontal gyrus, right middle frontal gyrus, right supplementary eye field, right parietal cortex, and left middle temporal gyrus, and between right dlPFC and right middle frontal gyrus. These results suggest that even brief mindfulness training can enhance neural circuit connectivity underlying executive function, extending prior work on active meditation by identifying specific resting-state networks affected in distressed individuals.
Health Psychology
May 23, 2019
Brian Chin, Emily K. Lindsay, Carol M. Greco et al.
107 citations
Training in both monitoring and acceptance skills—but not monitoring skills alone—reduced stress and increased nonjudgment in daily life. Stressed community adults who completed an 8-week mindfulness program that included acceptance training reported lower stress ratings and fewer stress episodes compared with those who received only monitoring training or no treatment. The findings suggest that acceptance skills may be a necessary active ingredient for stress resilience.
PLoS One
July 11, 2019
Daniella K. Villalba, Emily K. Lindsay, Anna L. Marsland et al.
59 citations
Two randomized controlled trials tested whether mindfulness training reduces inflammation, measured by C-Reactive Protein (CRP), in stressed community adults. One trial used a 2-week smartphone-based intervention; the other used an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. Training that combined attention monitoring with acceptance skills did not lower CRP compared to training without acceptance or to a control condition. Exploratory analyses combining data from both studies suggested that either mindfulness approach might reduce CRP in midlife-to-older adults and individuals with high body mass index, populations at risk for systemic inflammation.
Journal of Experimental Psychology General
September 24, 2020
Brian Chin, Emily K. Lindsay, Carol M. Greco et al.
49 citations
An 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention that included both monitoring and acceptance skills, and a modified version that focused on monitoring skills only, both improved momentary and trait attentional control compared with no treatment. Improvements in momentary attentional control partially accounted for gains in trait attentional control. Performance on a dichotic listening sustained-attention task did not improve. The results suggest that present-focused monitoring skills training is a key driver of mindfulness-related improvements in attentional control.
Psychosomatic Medicine
March 3, 2021
Emily K. Lindsay, J. David Creswell, Harrison J. Stern et al.
18 citations
An 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program buffered increases in glucocorticoid resistance (GCR)—a measure of immune cells' reduced sensitivity to anti-inflammatory signals—among lonely older adults aged 65–85, compared with a matched health enhancement program. GCR increased in the control group from before to after the intervention, while the MBSR group showed a small, nonsignificant reduction. The between-group difference was moderate immediately after the program but was not maintained at a 3-month follow-up. The findings suggest MBSR may protect against short-term declines in immune regulation in at-risk older adults.
August 21, 2018
Emily K. Lindsay, Brian Chin, Carol M. Greco et al.
9 citations
Training in both monitoring present-moment experiences and accepting them boosts positive emotions more than monitoring alone. In two randomized trials with stressed community adults, a mindfulness intervention that taught monitoring plus acceptance skills increased daily positive affect, while a structurally equivalent intervention teaching only monitoring did not. The acceptance-focused intervention raised end-of-day positive affect in an 8-week group-based study and both end-of-day and momentary positive affect in a 2-week smartphone-based study. All active interventions reduced negative affect. These results indicate that cultivating acceptance toward present-moment experiences is a key mechanism through which mindfulness interventions enhance positive emotions in everyday life.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
December 20, 2022
Jeehyun Kim, Xiyuan Jiang, Dylan Forenzo et al.
4 citations
A 20-minute guided mindfulness meditation session does not significantly improve control of a sensorimotor rhythm-based brain-computer interface. Thirty-seven subjects performed cursor control tasks before and after either a meditation exercise or a control condition of listening to a journal article. No significant change in BCI performance or EEG control signal occurred in either group, and the difference between groups was not significant. The findings suggest that longer meditation practice is needed to enhance SMR-based BCI control.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
September 9, 2020
Xiyuan Jiang, Emily Lopez, James Stieger et al.
2 citations
preprint
Meditators outperformed non-meditators in brain-computer interface (BCI) cursor control tasks using motor imagery. Experienced meditators showed better performance in both 1-dimensional and 2-dimensional tasks, and fewer meditators were unable to generate decodable EEG signals. Meditators also had higher sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) predictor values and were better able to produce decodable EEG signals for SMR-based BCI control, suggesting meditation training may improve BCI performance.
The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences
November 5, 2025
Janine M. Dutcher, Kirk W Brown, Emily K. Lindsay et al.
Loneliness is a major risk factor for illness and early death in older adults, yet interventions that simply increase social contact have shown limited success. Two randomized controlled trials tested whether an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program could reduce loneliness in older adults. In the first trial, MBSR significantly reduced loneliness compared to a waitlist control. In the second trial, both MBSR and a Health Enhancement Program (HEP) reduced loneliness to a similar degree, with no significant difference between them. Neither depressive symptoms, stress, sex, age, nor homework completion influenced the results. Both MBSR and HEP appear to be promising approaches for reducing loneliness in older adults, with effects lasting months.
Biological Psychiatry
July 1, 2016
J David Creswell, Adrienne A. Taren, Emily K. Lindsay et al.
A 3-day intensive mindfulness meditation training, compared with relaxation training, increased resting-state functional connectivity between the default mode network and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in stressed unemployed adults. These brain connectivity changes statistically explained 30% of the mindfulness meditation training effects on reducing interleukin-6, a marker of systemic inflammation, at 4-month follow-up. The findings suggest that mindfulness meditation may improve inflammatory health markers by strengthening brain networks involved in executive control.