Contemplative teachings highlight the benefit of mindfulness practice to the practitioner and to those with whom they interact, yet very few studies on meditation to date have explored whether meditation training improves social interactions and relationships. Examining effects on emotion regulation in social contexts may be key to understanding meditation’s social consequences, for at least …
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Intrinsic neural characteristics predict the effectiveness of MBSR training on fear extinction and stress reduction
The proposed research aims to derive individual neural characteristics from data-driven analysis of resting state fMRI to predict the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training on fear extinction and stress reduction. This project aims to capture the individual variability in the amplitudes of spontaneous brain activity and neural network properties, and relate such variability …
Compassion- and mindfulness-based meditation: Nurturing pro-social behavior and social networks
In previous years, scientists documented many personal benefits resulting from mindfulness- and compassion-based meditation, including increases in health. There was less known, however, regarding the social and relational benefits of meditation. Thus, this project examined whether mindfulness and compassion-based meditation training increased the likelihood that people would act to relieve the suffering of others in …
An investigation of the impact of mindfulness training on the development of attention and working memory in children
The PI will recruit a mentor teacher (with a minimum of 5 years of teaching experience and 1 year of practicing mindfulness) from a school where at least 10 classroom teachers are willing to be assigned to a mindfulness or control condition. The mentor teacher will collect data from computerized measures on attention and working …
Brain mechanisms distinguishing mindfulness meditation-related pain relief from placebo analgesia
We will assess if mindfulness-meditation reduces pain above and beyond the indirect effects associated with these constructs by employing robust comparison conditions (i.e., placebo conditioning, active control intervention). The study under proposed fellowship will provide unique insight into the brain mechanisms supporting modulation of pain by mindfulness meditation and placebo conditioning, an important step in …
The eCALM Study: eTherapy for Cancer AppLying Mindfulness
Elevated stress can exacerbate cancer symptom severity, and after completion of primary cancer treatments, many individuals continue to have significant distress. Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery (MBCR) is an 8-week group psychosocial intervention consisting of training in mindfulness meditation and yoga designed to mitigate stress, pain, and chronic illness. Efficacy research shows face-to-face (F2F) MBCR programs have …
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The neurophenomenology of mindfulness: Metacognitive awareness as a mechanism for adaptive change
A growing body of research implicates meditation and mindfulness training for the adaptive training of executive and affective function. While these findings are exciting, it is surprising that far less attention has been paid to the neurophenomenological aspects of meditation practice. We set out to investigate the role of meta-cognitive awareness in mediating affective and …
Differential effects of mindfulness and yogic breathing on cognitive and emotional processes
Skill and competency in emotion regulation are crucial to well-being and mental health. Research has shown that contemplative practices like meditation may help people decrease stress and increase well-being. However, few studies have examined the impact of such practices on the ability to regulate emotion. Moreover, certain practices may be more suited for some people …
Do white matter changes contribute to improved fear extinction following mindfulness training?
It is well-established that the practice of mindfulness meditation leads to improved emotion regulation as well as to changes in brain structure, but relatively little is known about the relationship between these changes. Brain regions found to be impacted by mindfulness training include the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala. Interestingly, there is …
Breath counting: Developing a behavioral measure of mindfulness
Mindfulness shows promise for improving health, but unbiased measurement of mindfulness is lacking. Currently, the only way to measure how mindful someone is is to ask, and answers may be biased. In contrast, breath counting, a longtime adjunct of mindfulness training, offers an objective measure of accuracy resistant to bias. Here, we show breath counting …
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