Many contemplative traditions emphasize social benefits of contemplative practice, yet more research is needed to determine whether and how contemplative training supports social well-being. Recent advances in understanding social emotion regulation (SER) highlight the importance of both intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies, and offer exciting new approaches and methods for investigating social effects of contemplative practice. …
Continue reading “Effects of Mindful Compassion Training on social emotion regulation in daily life”
Evidence for the therapeutic effects of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been demonstrated primarily in high-socioeconomic, White samples. The under-representation of socioeconomically and racially and ethnically diverse samples in MBI studies has raised questions about the approachability and cultural relevancy of MBIs for these communities. Further, among the few studies that have included diverse samples, scores …
Continue reading “Mindfulness for the masses: Understanding the approachability of mindfulness-based interventions and measurement of mindfulness among understudied diverse communities”
Ethics stem from concern about the rights and welfare of others, and require the capacity to be aware of the potential for moral violations. Here, we posit that mindfulness meditation, with its ability to enhance awareness of and attention to internal and external stimuli, influences moral reasoning and decision-making, and thereby contributes to ethical behavior. …
Continue reading “A neuroscientific account of embodied ethics: Mindfulness training related improvements In moral reasoning”
Imagine feeling intense stress: palms sweaty, heart racing, breathing shallow. Sensations of the body often come to the forefront when describing experiences of emotion or stress, yet these physiological changes are separate from the subjective ‘feeling’ of these states that we experience mentally. My previous work has shown that individuals whose subjective experience tracks strongly …
Continue reading “Is knowing the body knowing the mind? Mind-body coherence, interoception, and contemplative training”
Many mothers are diagnosed with anxiety or depression after childbirth. Child development and mother’s mental health are closely linked. Partners, too, are often distressed in these families. Relationship conflicts are a predictor of mother’s depression and negatively affect the child. Our goal is to explore the effect of including partners in a mindfulness program along …
Continue reading “Mindfulness-based intervention for both parents in families with mothers who have postpartum depression and anxiety”
Mindfulness is suggested to contribute to emotion regulation by enhancing a person’s mind-body-environment connection. Mindfulness has also been suggested to enhance awareness of distinct embodied states’ reward values – eg. people typically prefer joy over fear – and promote autonomous shifting towards more rewarding states, naturally contributing to emotion regulation. Our aim is to develop …
Continue reading “Linking embodiment with the neural circuitry of mindfulness and reward”
Up to 60% of women enrolled in substance use treatment meet criteria for both substance use disorder (SUD) and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), presenting with more severe clinical profiles and psychiatric disorders, higher relapse rates, and lower treatment gains and compliance with aftercare than women with either disorder alone. Although evidence suggests treating SUD …
Continue reading “Long-term sustainability of mindfulness practice and treatment gains in women with co-occurring substance use disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder following a mindfulness-based relapse prevention program”
The Mindfulness-to-Meaning theory proposes that the established relationship between mindfulness and measures of wellbeing may be due to its effects on emotion regulation. More specifically, they argue that the practice of mindfulness evokes more flexible awareness and the ability to suspend our automatic thoughts, emotions, and actions in-the-moment. As such, it can help create distance …
Continue reading “Mindfulness-to-Meaning theory and eudaimonic appraisals of positive autobiographical events”
The goal of this study is to investigate the first-person experiences of craving –thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, etc. –and link these experiences to brain activation patterns, to gain insights into craving and how to extinguish it. This study will use a novel technology, real time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) “neurofeedback,” in which brain activation …
Continue reading “A real-time fMRI study to link subjective experience with brain network dynamics during craving”
Francisco Varela believed that the present moment of experience coincided with transient patterns of synchronous oscillations between different neuronal populations. Our findings suggest that these transient patterns of synchronous oscillations throughout the brain are modulated by breathing (e.g., breathing as an organizing principle for neuronal oscillations). While current neuroscientific methods of brain stimulation are limited, …
Continue reading “Intracranial circuits underlying Deep Slow Breathing and its palliative effects”
