Effects of mindful-attention and compassion meditation training on amygdala response to emotional stimuli in an ordinary, non-meditative state
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience January 1, 2012 Gaelle Desbordes, Lobsang Negi, Thaddeus W W Pace et al. 445 citations
Eight weeks of mindfulness meditation training reduced right amygdala activation in healthy adults when viewing positive emotional images, even when they were not actively meditating. A compassion-based meditation program showed a trend toward increased right amygdala response to negative images, which correlated with lower depression scores. No changes occurred in a control group. The results suggest meditation training can alter emotional processing in the brain during ordinary, non-meditative states, indicating that such training may produce lasting, process-specific changes in mental function rather than only task-specific effects.