Psychoneuroendocrinology
2020
H. Friedman, Douglas A. MacDonald, Nicholas J. L. Brown et al.
The recent paper by Le Nguyen et al. (2019) makes the extraordinary claim that loving-kindness meditation (LKM) slows biological aging. Unfortunately, its headline-grabbing title lacks compelling evidence. This paper shows telomere length (TL) decreased considerably in a control group over a very short time period, as compared to a LKM group, while a mindfulness meditation (MM) group was...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2020
Rachel V Aaron, Scott D. Blain, Matthew A. Snodgress et al.
Alexithymia, or a reduced ability to label and describe one's emotions, is a transdiagnostic construct associated with poor psychosocial outcomes. Currently, the mechanisms underlying affective deficits associated with alexithymia are unclear, hindering targeted treatment delivery. Recent research suggests deficient interoceptive awareness, or reduced awareness of one's internal bodily state,...
Mindfulness
2020
Ariel J Lang, Pollyanna Casmar, Samantha Hurst et al.
Compassion meditation (CM) is a contemplative practice that is intended to cultivate the ability to extend and sustain compassion toward self and others. Although research documents the benefits of CM in healthy populations, its use in the context of psychopathology is largely unexamined. The purpose of this study was to refine and initially evaluate a CM protocol, Cognitively Based Compassion...
Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences
2020
Xiaomin Chu, Y. Lou, Zijun Wang et al.
To study the effect of mindfulness based cognitive therapy on the mental health and quality of life of breast cancer patients. A total of 84 breast cancer patients who underwent the surgical resection in the department of breast surgery in our hospital from August 2017 to August 2018 were selected. The 84 patients were randomly divided into the mindfulness based cognitive therapy intervention...
PLoS One
2020
Larissa Lusnig, Ralph Radach, Christina J Mueller et al.
There is ample evidence that meditation can regulate emotions. It is questionable, however, whether meditation can down-regulate sensitivity to emotional experience in high-level cognitive representations such as words. The present study shows that adept Zen meditators rated the emotional valence of (low-arousal) positive and (high- and low-arousal) negative nouns significantly more neutral...
Stress
2020
Bonnie Klimes-Dougan, Li Shen Chong, Ali Samikoglu et al.
Transcendental meditation (TM) is effective in alleviating stress and anxiety and promoting well-being. While the underlying biological mechanisms of TM are not yet fully explored, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis represents an index providing important clues embodying the stress system cascade. In this pilot study, young adults were randomly assigned to TM training followed by 8...
Frontiers in Psychology
2020
Jesus Montero-Marin, Marta Puebla-Guedea, Paola Herrera-Mercadal et al.
correction
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01935.].
Frontiers in Psychology
2020
Sabrina Venditti, Loredana Verdone, Anna Reale et al.
Many studies have consistently demonstrated an epigenetic link between environmental stimuli and physiological as well as cognitive responses. Epigenetic mechanisms represent a way to regulate gene activity in real time without modifying the DNA sequence, thus allowing the genome to adapt its functions to changing environmental contexts. Factors such as lifestyle, behavior, and the practice of...
Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology
2020
Yang-Qian Shen, Hui Zhou, Xiao Chen et al.
Meditation is a type of mental training commonly applied in clinical settings and also practiced for general well-being. Brain functional connectivity (FC) patterns associated with meditation have revealed its brain mechanisms. However, the variety of FC methods applied has made it difficult to identify brain communication patterns associated with meditation. Here we carried out a...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2020
Helen Y. Weng, Jarrod A Lewis-Peacock, Frederick M Hecht et al.
9 citations
Meditation practices are often used to cultivate interoception or internally-oriented attention to bodily sensations, which may improve health via cognitive and emotional regulation of bodily signals. However, it remains unclear how meditation impacts internal attention (IA) states due to lack of measurement tools that can objectively assess mental states during meditation practice itself, and...