Impact of mindfulness on the neural responses to emotional pictures in experienced and beginner meditators

In the paper

“the MBSR program led to reduced activation in regions associated with autobiographical memory and increased activity in the right insula (Farb et al., 2010).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Discussion reports reduced activation in cortical midline regions associated with autobiographical memory retrieval in the mindfulness-training group. The Results (‘Deactivating regions’) report greater signal in a region extending into the right insula than in controls, clarifying that this relative increase reflected less sadness-related deactivation, not new activation. Page numbers were not supplied. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Farb et al., 2010 source

In the paper

“They found increased right insular activation for experienced meditators, relative to beginners, during a state of compassion meditation while listening to negative emotional sounds (compared to emotionally positive sounds).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Results report a right-insula Group-by-State-by-Valence interaction: experts showed a stronger response to negative than positive sounds during compassion meditation relative to rest, compared with novices. The Abstract also states that, during meditation, insula activation for negative versus positive sounds was greater in experts than novices. (LLM, conf=0.94)

  cites Lutz et al. (2008) source

In the paper

“it has been demonstrated that mindfulness-based clinical interventions have beneficial outcomes on the treatment of affect-related psychopathology, including major depression (Bondolfi et al., 2010;Teasdale et al., 2000) and anxiety disorders (Goldin and Gross, 2010;Kabat-Zinn et al., 1992;Kim et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Results and Discussion report that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy significantly delayed relapse in patients in remission from recurrent major depression, but did not significantly reduce the 14-month relapse rate. This supports a benefit for depression relapse prevention, not a general claim about treating active major depression. The citing sentence attributes the anxiety-disorder claim to other sources, not Bondolfi et al. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Bondolfi et al., 2010 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Teasdale et al., 2000 source
• Supported

  Goldin and Gross are cited for the anxiety-disorders portion of the sentence, not the major-depression portion. The Results (Clinical Results) report decreased social anxiety and state anxiety after MBSR in patients with social anxiety disorder; the Discussion (Clinical Measures) likewise describes reduced social-anxiety symptoms. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Goldin and Gross, 2010 source

In the paper

“Farb et al. (2007) found that an experiential focus condition (monitoring the self in terms of present-moment circumstances) was associated with deactivations of the ventral and dorsal MPFC compared with a narrative self-focus task (monitoring the self in terms of self-descriptive traits).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Narrative self-focus results (Figure 3) report reduced ventral and dorsal mPFC activity during experiential versus narrative focus, but only in the mindfulness-trained group. The citing sentence omits that qualification; the paper says the reductions were not significant in novices. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Farb et al. (2007) sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“the Group × Condition (F(1, 18) = 0.72, p = .382),Group × Valence × Condition (F(1, 18) = 0.45, p = .747),or Valence × Condition (F(1, 18) = 1.94, p = .17,η 2 = .170)interactions were not significant.”

In the paper

“Surprisingly, the effect of mindfulness did not apply specifically to any valence category or to either group (i.e., no significant interactions were found between condition, valence, or group).”

In the paper

“For beginners, but not experienced meditators, mindfulness induced increased activity in the right medial frontal gyrus (BA 8, k = 486, t =4.86, Z =4.63, x=29, y=20, z =40, P(FWE)= .011,d =0.89), the left medial frontal gyrus (BA 8, k = 218, t =3.98, Z =3.85, x=-26, y=22, z=43, P(FWE) = .007,d = 0.85), the right PCC (BA 31, k =84, t =4.34, Z =4.17, x=11, y=-50, z =22, P(FWE) =.006, d =0.80)”

In the paper

“Within-group analyses revealed that for beginners, but not for experienced meditators, mindfulness induced deactivations in the amygdala, right posterior insula (BA 13), putamen, left anterior insula (BA 13), caudate nucleus, left hippocampus, and right ACC (BA 24).”

In the paper

“No mindfulness-induced deactivations were observed for experienced meditators.”

In the paper

“Finally, for all activation loci reported, Cohen's D effect sizes (d) ranged from 0.54 to 1.24, which constitute medium to large effects according to established benchmarks (small: 0.20, medium: 0.50, large: 0.80; Cohen, 1992).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cohen, 1992 source

In the paper

“revealing mindfulness-induced deactivations (at a more liberal threshold of p b 0.005 uncorrected) in the left amygdala (k = 22, t = 3.82, Z = 3.70, x = -27, y = -1, z = -18, P (FWE) = .010,d = 0.70) and right amygdala (k = 13, t = 3.53, Z = 3.43, x = 27, y = -1, z = -16, P(FWE) = .012,d = 0.65) for beginners, but not for experienced meditators.”

In the paper

“Regression analyses with the number of hours of meditation practice on the contrasts reported above were also computed, but no significant activations for either group, nor between groups were found”

In the paper

“For experienced meditators, mindfulness induced a deactivation of the right MPFC (though this was a sub-threshold trend at a more liberal threshold of p b .005)(BA 10, k = 36, t = 3.14, Z = 3.07, x = 13, y = 49, z = 9, P (uncorr.)= .001,d = 0.58) in experienced, but not in beginner meditators.”

In the paper

“For neutral pictures, a significant effect of mindfulness was also found (F(1, 18) = 5.40, p = .031,η 2 = .22;M = 0.62, SD = 0.49 for the Baseline condition; M = 0.44, SD = 0.37, for the Mindful condition), but this result may have been due to the little variability observed for neutral pictures”

In the paper

“mindfulness was shown to be associated with increased MPFC/LPFC activation and reduced amygdalar activation during affect labeling”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Creswell et al., 2007 source

In the paper

“Mindfulness meditation practiced following a sad mood induction was also shown to decrease dysphoric mood states (Broderick, 2005).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Broderick, 2005 source

In the paper

“Volumes deviating in translation by more than 3 mm, which only occurred at the very beginning or very end of a given session, were considered outliers and were excluded from the analyses.”

In the paper

“There were no significant between-group differences with respect to age (p N 0.05) or to the ratio of male/female participants (p N 0.05).”

In the paper

“No univariate or multivariate outliers were detected.”

In the paper

“Creswell et al. (2007) found that participants high in trait mindfulness also had negative correlations between areas of the PFC (MPFC and LPFC) and the right amygdala, but not those low in trait mindfulness.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Creswell et al. (2007) source

In the paper

“All variables were normally distributed, with skewness and kurtosis values ranging from -1.5 to 1.5.”

In the paper

“These findings suggest that the long-term practice of mindfulness leads to emotional stability by promoting acceptance of emotional states and enhanced present-moment awareness, rather than by eliciting control over low-level affective cerebral systems from higher-order cortical brain regions.”

In the paper

“These findings are consistent with evidence that the MPFC, through its inhibitory downstream connections to the amygdala, is implicated in the extinction of conditioned fear as well as the dampening of negative affect (Amaral et al., 1992;Davidson, 1998).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Amaral et al., 1992
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Davidson, 1998 source

In the paper

“The assumptions for conducting a mixed-measure ANOVA, such as homogeneity of variance between groups and linearity, were met.”

In the paper

“Brefczynski-Lewis et al. (2007) found a negative correlation between the number of hours of meditation training and right amygdala activation during concentration meditation in a group of experienced meditators while processing negative emotional sounds.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Brefczynski-Lewis et al. (2007) source

In the paper

“Due to response box failure on certain trials, some stimuli were missing emotional intensity ratings (with no more than 25% of participant ratings missing for any given stimulus), which were distributed at random across groups.These missing values were replaced with the group's corresponding mean value to avoid losing statistical power.”

In the paper

“Only one individual had two days of meditation practice prior to testing (due to scheduling restraints), but reported compensating accordingly by practicing additional time each day.In all other participants, 100% compliance was observed.”

In the paper

“there are some reports that meditative states are associated with increased activation in various prefrontal cortical areas.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Newberg et al., 2001 source

In the paper

“most emotional self-regulation strategies aim at altering emotional states, whereas mindfulness is based on accepting emotional states as they are (Kabat-Zinn, 1994).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Kabat-Zinn, 1994

In the paper

“Two participants in each group only had data for two runs (one from each condition) due to testing constraints or excessive movement; however, the number of degrees of freedom was adjusted accordingly in the group analyses.”

In the paper

“These decreased activations found in executive control areas have been proposed to reflect that meditation training is associated with a reduction in cognitive elaboration of aversive stimuli (Grant et al., 2011).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Grant et al., 2011 source

In the paper

“All participants reported having successfully understood the mindfulness exercises.”

In the paper

“the results of this study suggest that with extensive meditation training, the mindfulness-induced emotional intensity attenuations may be achieved by accepting and fully experiencing emotional responses in the present moment without interference from internal thought and self-referent processes, as opposed to directly controlling low-order affective brain systems from higher-order cortical region”

In the paper

“the fact that the attenuating effect of mindfulness also applied to neutral pictures may have been due to the little variability observed for this category of pictures, and thus, very small mean differences may have attained significance.”

In the paper

“the greater mindfulness-induced deactivation of the MPFC and PCC measured herein experienced meditators relative to beginnersmay reflect an adaptive process through which present-moment awareness is enhanced in individuals with long-term meditation experience, and information in the environment is processed with reduced distractibility and interference from self-referent thought or ruminative pro”

In the paper

“The attenuating effects of mindfulness on subjective emotional intensity observed in the present study are consistent with the view that mindfulness-based strategies promote emotional stability and constitute an efficient means of emotional self-regulation (Arch and Craske, 2006;Broderick, 2005).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Arch and Craske, 2006 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Broderick, 2005 source

In the paper

“individuals with generalized anxiety disorder tend to respond to negative mood challenges with greater emotional intensity relative to their control counterparts; they also tend to become overwhelmed by their emotions and understand them poorly (Mennin et al., 2005).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Mennin et al., 2005 source

In the paper

“the fact that mindfulness did not influence amygdala responses for experienced meditators during emotional processing also supports the interpretation that participants with extensive mindfulness training adopted an accepting perspective towards their emotional responses and allowed themselves to fully experience them.”

In the paper

“an interaction between Group and Condition may have failed to attain statistical significance due to reduced power.”

In the paper

“while experienced meditators may have had some degree of amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli in the mindful state, the MPFC (BA 10) deactivations during the Mindful condition indicates that mindfulness altered what happened after their initial response (cognitive elaboration, judgments, etc.), which led to decreased subjective emotional intensity.”

In the paper

“As a result, mindfulness may diminish the need to seek out satisfaction from external positive stimuli, thereby attenuating the emotional intensity perceived from this category of pictures.”

In the paper

“Since the ratings from two participants in the beginners' group were lost due to technical issues”

In the paper

“Thus, mindfulness may decrease the propensity to avoid processing emotions by attenuating the emotional intensity perceived from given events, and constitute an adaptive alternative coping mechanism for populations with anxiety-related traits or psychopathology.”

In the paper

“These activations seemed to have been driven by the group of beginners, as they were situated in the same loci as those found within the group of beginners alone, and were not present in the group of experienced meditators alone.”

In the paper

“although both experienced and beginner meditators showed effects of mindfulness on subjective emotional intensity, differences in brain response patterns suggest that the two groups were in fact processing the stimuli in distinct ways during the Mindful condition.”

In the paper

“due to technical constraints, we were unable to acquire other measures of emotional reactivity, such as galvanic skin response.”

In the paper

“as opposed to beginners who exhibited mindfulness-induced patterns of brain activity related to the voluntary regulation of emotion, the findings of this study indicate that a 'lack of control' over emotional states, i.e. acceptance, is associated with the emotional stability achieved by the long-term practice of mindfulness meditation.”

In the paper

“Our results also demonstrate that for individuals with long-term practice of meditation, mindfulness induces a pattern of brain activity associated with acceptance of emotional stimuli and reduced interference from internal states, possibly reflecting enhanced present-moment awareness.”

In the paper

“These results indicate that extensive mindfulness practice promotes emotional stability and modulates the activity in a number of brain regions implicated in the neural responses to emotional stimuli.”

In the paper

“there may have been differences between the two groups of participants other than mindfulness training (e.g., lifestyle, temperamental predispositions).”

In the paper

“The findings obtained in this study contribute to the understanding of the relationship between mindfulness meditation, brain function, and emotional processing, and have implications for clinical psychological disorders related to affect and anxiety.”