Emotions

Modulate Brain Processing of Emotions with Religious Chanting

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Modulate Brain Processing of Emotions with Religious Chanting

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Mantras – properly practiced –  turn negative emotions into life-enriching creativity. It’s that simple and that powerful.” – Eric Klein

 

Alternative and Complementary techniques have been growing in acceptance and use over the last couple of decades. With good reason. They have been found to be beneficial for physical and mental health. Contemplative practices have been shown to improve health and well-being. These include mindfulness practices, meditation, yoga, mindful movement practices such as tai chi and qigong, and spiritual practices such as contemplative prayer. These practices, when engaged in over a period of time, have been shown to change brain structure and electrical activity relatively permanently in a process known as neuroplasticity.

 

One ancient practice that is again receiving acceptance and use is chanting. It is a very common component of many contemplative practices. Chanting is claimed to be helpful in contemplative practice and to help improve physical and mental well-being. But, there is very little empirical research on chanting or their effectiveness. One problem in studying chanting is that they are embedded in a contemplative practice. It is difficult then to separate the effects of the chanting from that of the overall practice. So, it is important to study the effects of chanting while isolating and extracting them from the practices.

 

Contemplative practices have also been shown to improve emotion regulation, allowing the practitioner to completely feel emotions but reducing the reactivity to them. Emotions, however are difficult to measure directly. One method to indirectly observe information processing in the brain is to measure the changes in the electrical activity that occur in response to specific stimuli. These are called event-related potentials or ERPs. The signal following a stimulus changes over time. The fluctuations of the signal after specific periods of time are thought to measure different aspects of the nervous system’s processing of the stimulus.

 

The N100 response in the ERP is a negative going response occurring around a tenth of a second following a visual stimulus presentation. The N100 response has been associated with the engagement of visual attention. So, the N100 response is often used as a measure of brain attentional engagement with the larger the negative change the greater the attentional focus. The late positive potential (LPP) response in the ERP is a positive going response occurring between 3 and 6 tenths of a second following stimulus presentation. The LPP response has been associated with the presence of emotional information. As such, these electrical responses can be used to measure the brains response to emotional laden stimuli and can perhaps measure brain process of emotion regulation.

 

In today’s Research News article “Repetitive Religious Chanting Modulates the Late-Stage Brain Response to Fear- and Stress-Provoking Pictures.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5223166/

Gao and colleagues studied isolated chanting effects on emotion processing in the brain by recording event-related potentials, ERPs to emotion laden pictures while chanting. They recruited male and female adult, 42-50 years of age, Buddhists who had extensive experience with Buddhist chanting. They were presented with either neutral or emotionally negative pictures for 2 seconds while chanting for 20 seconds a religious chant, the word “Buddha”, or a secular chant, the words “Santa Claus”, or no chant. During each of the six, randomly presented conditions brain electrical activity was monitored with EEG electrodes and the electrical responses to the pictures was recorded (Event-Related Potentials, ERPs). To measure the physiological changes corresponding to negative emotions, electrocardiogram and galvanic skin response data were also collected.

 

They found that the N100 component was increased by viewing emotionally negative pictures but did not differ between chanting conditions. Hence, the negative pictures engaged visual attention equally regardless of chanting. They found that the LPP was strongest in the central-parietal regions of the brain. Viewing neutral pictures did not affect the LPP, but emotionally negative pictures produced a much smaller LPP responses, except in the chanting “Buddha” condition. This was not true for either no chant or chanting “Santa Clause.” Hence, the smaller late positive potential (LPP) in response to emotionally negative pictures while chanting “Buddha” was the same as that to neutral pictures. This indicates that emotion regulation is improved when engaging in the religious but not secular chanting.

 

These findings are interesting. Although the ERP is an indirect measure of brain activity to emotional stimuli, the late positive potential is associated with emotion regulation. The results suggest then that the smaller LPP response to emotionally negative pictures while chanting “Buddha”, is indicative of better emotion processing when engaged in a chant that has religious significance. Hence, the results suggest that religious chanting improves the important processes of regulating the responses to emotions. This suggests that spiritually significant activity may better prepare individuals to respond appropriately to their emotions.

 

So, modulate brain processing of emotions with religious chanting.

 

“The scans showed decreased blood flow to the parts of the brain that control emotion while chanting Om, when compared to another phrase. This suggests that the different forms of chanting prescribed in various mindfulness techniques (yoga or mindfulness meditation) can help manage negative emotions when practiced regularly.” – Pavitra Jayaraman

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts and on Twitter @MindfulResearch

 

Study Summary

Gao, J., Fan, J., Wu, B. W., Halkias, G. T., Chau, M., Fung, P. C., … Sik, H. (2016). Repetitive Religious Chanting Modulates the Late-Stage Brain Response to Fear- and Stress-Provoking Pictures. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 2055. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02055

 

Abstract

Chanting and praying are among the most popular religious activities, which are said to be able to alleviate people’s negative emotions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this mental exercise and its temporal course have hardly been investigated. Here, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the effects of chanting the name of a Buddha (Amitābha) on the brain’s response to viewing negative pictures that were fear- and stress-provoking. We recorded and analyzed electroencephalography (EEG) data from 21 Buddhists with chanting experience as they viewed negative and neutral pictures. Participants were instructed to chant the names of Amitābha or Santa Claus silently to themselves or simply remain silent (no-chanting condition) during picture viewing. To measure the physiological changes corresponding to negative emotions, electrocardiogram and galvanic skin response data were also collected. Results showed that viewing negative pictures (vs. neutral pictures) increased the amplitude of the N1 component in all the chanting conditions. The amplitude of late positive potential (LPP) also increased when the negative pictures were viewed under the no-chanting and the Santa Claus condition. However, increased LPP was not observed when chanting Amitābha. The ERP source analysis confirmed this finding and showed that increased LPP mainly originated from the central-parietal regions of the brain. In addition, the participants’ heart rates decreased significantly when viewing negative pictures in the Santa Claus condition. The no-chanting condition had a similar decreasing trend although not significant. However, while chanting Amitābha and viewing negative pictures participants’ heart rate did not differ significantly from that observed during neutral picture viewing. It is possible that the chanting of Amitābha might have helped the participants to develop a religious schema and neutralized the effect of the negative stimuli. These findings echo similar research findings on Christian religious practices and brain responses to negative stimuli. Hence, prayer/religious practices may have cross-cultural universality in emotion regulation. This study shows for the first time that Buddhist chanting, or in a broader sense, repetition of religious prayers will not modulate brain responses to negative stimuli during the early perceptual stage, but only during the late-stage emotional/cognitive processing.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5223166/

Control Your Emotions with Mindfulness

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Control Your Emotions with Mindfulness

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Feelings are often labelled as positive (happy, confident, joyful, brave, etc) or negative (sad, scared, hurt, angry etc). In mindfulness practice, feelings are not good or bad; they just are what they are – emotions that might be comfortable or uncomfortable, easy or difficult.” – Living Well

 

Mindfulness practice has been shown to produce improved emotion regulation. Practitioners demonstrate the ability to fully sense and experience emotions, but respond to them in more appropriate and adaptive ways. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions. This is a very important consequence of mindfulness. Humans are very emotional creatures and these emotions can be very pleasant, providing the spice of life. But, when they get extreme they can produce misery and even mental illness. The ability of mindfulness training to improve emotion regulation is thought to be the basis for a wide variety of benefits that mindfulness provides to mental health and the treatment of mental illness especially depression and anxiety disorders.

 

There is a widespread problem in the west that many people don’t seem to like themselves. The self-dislike sometimes means that the individual dislikes every aspect of themselves; but most frequently people only don’t like certain aspects of themselves. Often it is there physical appearance, their school achievement, their career, their social behavior, etc. Making matters worse, they tend to overlook their strengths and discount them, focusing instead in the parts that they find problematic. This self-dislike is characteristic of depression. The antidote to self-dislike is self-compassion. Self-compassion is “treating oneself with kindness and understanding when facing suffering, seeing one’s failures as part of the human condition, and having a balanced awareness of painful thoughts and emotions” – Kristin Neff. Self-compassion has been demonstrated to be associated with better mental health.

 

Mindfulness and self-compassion are highly related and both are associated with better physical and mental health. But, it is not known which or both may be responsible for the benefits. In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and Self-compassion as Unique and Common Predictors of Affect in the General Population.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1477031045654150/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5107192/

López and colleagues examine the relative effectiveness of mindfulness and self-compassion to influence depression and both positive and negative emotions. They recruited a large representative national sample (the Netherlands), aged 20 to 96. They completed scales measuring five aspects of mindfulness, observe, describe, act with awareness, non-judgement and non-reactivity; two aspects of self-compassion, positive self-compassion (i.e., self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness) and negative self-compassion (i.e., self-judgment, isolation and over-identification); depression; and positive and negative emotions. They then applied a sophisticated statistical technique, multiple regression analysis, to explore which aspects of mindfulness and self-compassion predicted depression and emotions.

 

They found that the higher the levels of the mindfulness facets of act with awareness and non-judgement and the lower the levels of negative self-compassion, the lower the levels of depression and negative emotions, while the higher the levels the mindfulness facets of describe and non-reactivity and positive self-compassion, the higher the levels of positive emotions. When the combined effects of mindfulness and self-compassion were looked at, they equally predicted depression and negative emotions, but only mindfulness predicted positive emotions.

 

These are interesting results that suggest that mindfulness is associated with lower depression and negative emotions and higher positive emotions, in other words, improved mood and mental health. On the other hand, the results suggest that a harsh negative view of oneself (negative self-compassion) contributes to depression and negative feelings. An inference from these results is that improving mindfulness and self-like may importantly contribute to the mood and mental health of the general population. It remains for future research to determine if actively training mindfulness and self-liking will have these benefits.

 

So, control your emotions with mindfulness.

 

“The skills involved in emotion regulation may be fostered by becoming aware of emotions and by learning how to manage them without pushing them away or getting tangled up in them. Emotions are not static. Therefore, to train in the skills of emotion awareness, identification, and management, it is useful to practice noticing them “on the spot.” Mindfulness is the practice of purposeful attention without judgment. Mindfulness meditation is simply the practice of being aware of present-moment experience without trying to push it away or over-engage. Mindfulness helps train the mind to pay attention and notice, so that action can be taken with greater reflection.” – Learning to Breathe

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts and Twitter @MindfulResearch

 

Study Summary

López, A., Sanderman, R., & Schroevers, M. J. (2016). Mindfulness and Self-compassion as Unique and Common Predictors of Affect in the General Population. Mindfulness, 7(6), 1289–1296. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0568-y

 

Abstract

In contrast to the increased research interest in the benefits of mindfulness and self-compassion, relatively few studies have examined their unique and combined effects in predicting affect. This cross-sectional study examined the predictive value of mindfulness and self-compassion for depressive symptoms, negative affect, and positive affect in a large representative sample of community adults (N = 1736). The Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) was used as a measure of mindfulness and the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) as a measure of self-compassion. Five FFMQ facets were explored: observe, describe, act with awareness, non-judgment, and non-reactivity. Two SCS facets were explored: its positive items (SCS Pos) and its negative items (SCS Neg). When simultaneously examining all seven facets of mindfulness and self-compassion, three of the five FFMQ facets and SCS Neg significantly predicted both depressive symptoms and negative affect, with SCS Neg and act with awareness being the strongest predictors. These findings suggest that a harsh attitude towards oneself and a lack of attention when acting have the greatest value in predicting the presence of psychological symptoms. With respect to positive affect, four of the five FFMQ facets (except non-judgment) were significant predictors, with no unique predictive value of the two SCS’s facets, suggesting that mindfulness is a more important predictor of positive affect than self-compassion, as measured by the FFMQ and SCS.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5107192/

 

Improve Personality and Well-being with a Meditation Retreat

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Improve Personality and Well-being with a Meditation Retreat

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Even if you’re terrified, even if you have no interest in being a monk and you’re not an extremist by nature, I know that sitting in silence for 10 days will blow your mind.” – MeiMei Fox

 

Retreat can be a powerful experience. But, in some ways, is like being on vacation. Everything is taken care of, beds made, towels and linens provided, all meals prepared, and time is dictated by a detailed schedule of meditations, talks, question and answer periods, and reflective time. All the individual has to do is show up, meditate, relax, contemplate and listen. The retreatants are terribly spoiled! That seeming ease, however, is deceptive. Retreat is actually quite difficult and challenging. It can be very tiring as it can run from early in the morning till late at night every day. It can also be physically challenging as engaging in sitting meditation repeatedly over the day is guaranteed to produce many aches and pains in the legs, back, and neck. But the real challenges are psychological, emotional, and spiritual. Retreat can be a real test.

 

Retreat isn’t all relaxation and fun. Far from it. The darkness can descend. During silent retreat, deep emotional issues can emerge and may even overwhelm the individual. Many participants will spontaneously burst out in tears. Others may become overwhelmed with fear and anxiety and break out in cold sweats, and still others are sleepless and tormented. How can this be, that something so seemingly peaceful as silent retreat can be so emotionally wrenching? The secret is that the situation removes the minds ability to hide and distract.

 

Humans have done a tremendous job of providing distractions for the mind including books, movies, magazines, music, television, sports, amusement parks, surfing the internet, tweeting, texting, etc. Any time troubling thoughts or memories of traumatic experiences begin to emerge in everyday life, the subject can easily be changed by engaging in a distraction. So, the issues never have to truly be confronted. But, in silent retreat there is no escape. Difficult issues emerge and there is no place to hide. They must be confronted and experienced. For some people this may be the first time in their entire life that they’ve had to directly face themselves and their darkest thoughts. It’s no wonder that retreat can be so wrenching.

 

With all these difficulties, why would anyone want to put themselves through such an ordeal and go on a meditation retreat? People go because retreat has many profound and sometimes life altering benefits. The benefits of retreat were investigated in today’s Research News article “Psychological Effects of a 1-Month Meditation Retreat on Experienced Meditators.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1469065896450665/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01935/full?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Psychology-w51-2016

Montero-Marin and colleagues recruited experienced meditators who participated in a 1-month Vipassana meditation retreat, with 8-9 hours of meditation and 1-2 hours of teaching each day, and compared them to a control group of experienced meditators matched on gender, age, ethnicity, educational, and type of meditation practice. They were measured before and after the retreat for non-attachment, decentering, mindfulness, loving kindness, compassion, joy, and acceptance toward both the self and others, positive and negative affect, satisfaction with life, temperament, and character.

 

They found that following the retreat participants, compared to controls, showed increased non-attachment, observing, mindfulness, positive-affect, balance-affect, and cooperativeness; and decreased describing, negative-others, reward-dependence and self-directedness. Employing a sophisticated statistical technique, they were able to show that non-attachment had a mediating role in decentring, acting aware, non-reactivity, negative-affect, balance-affect and self-directedness; and a moderating role in describing and positive others, with both mediating and moderating effects on satisfaction with life. Hence, attending a 1-month retreat produced improvements in non-attachment, which, in turn, produced improvements in mindfulness, positive emotions, temperament and character.

 

These are important results demonstrating the ability of participation in retreat to powerfully affect an individual beyond what is accomplished by long-term experience meditating. Concentrated practice over an extended period during retreat appears to magnify the effects of meditation, producing even greater positive benefits to the individual. Hence, even though retreat can be difficult, physically and emotionally, it is clear that its benefits, for many, far exceed its costs. This isn’t even considering the powerful spiritual experiences that can occur during retreat. This might account for the popularity of retreat and why it has been seen as an essential component of practice over hundreds of years.

 

So, improve personality and well-being with a meditation retreat.

 

“The retreat helped me realize that I’m full of desire, of longings for raw experience, and unbelievably controlling of how my life is lived. It sounds simple, but one week of silence may give you a hint, maybe more reliably than almost anything else, of who you are.” – Tim Wu

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Montero-Marin J, Puebla-Guedea M, Herrera-Mercadal P, Cebolla A, Soler J, Demarzo M, Vazquez C, Rodríguez-Bornaetxea F and García-Campayo J (2016) Psychological Effects of a 1-Month Meditation Retreat on Experienced Meditators: The Role of Non-attachment. Front. Psychol. 7:1935. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01935

 

Background: There are few studies devoted to assessing the impact of meditation-intensive retreats on the well-being, positive psychology, and personality of experienced meditators. We aimed to assess whether a 1-month Vipassana retreat: (a) would increase mindfulness and well-being; (b) would increase prosocial personality traits; and (c) whether psychological changes would be mediated and/or moderated by non-attachment.

Method: A controlled, non-randomized, pre-post-intervention trial was used. The intervention group was a convenience sample (n = 19) of experienced meditators who participated in a 1-month Vipassana meditation retreat. The control group (n = 19) comprised matched experienced meditators who did not take part in the retreat. During the retreat, the mean duration of daily practice was 8–9 h, the diet was vegetarian and silence was compulsory. The Experiences Questionnaire (EQ), Non-attachment Scale (NAS), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), Temperament Character Inventory Revised (TCI-R-67), Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Self-Other Four Immeasurables (SOFI) and the MINDSENS Composite Index were administered. ANCOVAs and linear regression models were used to assess pre-post changes and mediation/moderation effects.

Results: Compared to controls, retreatants showed increases in non-attachment, observing, MINDSENS, positive-affect, balance-affect, and cooperativeness; and decreases in describing, negative-others, reward-dependence and self-directedness. Non-attachment had a mediating role in decentring, acting aware, non-reactivity, negative-affect, balance-affect and self-directedness; and a moderating role in describing and positive others, with both mediating and moderating effects on satisfaction with life.

Conclusions: A 1-month Vipassana meditation retreat seems to yield improvements in mindfulness, well-being, and personality, even in experienced meditators. Non-attachment might facilitate psychological improvements of meditation, making it possible to overcome possible ceiling effects ascribed to non-intensive practices.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01935/full?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Psychology-w51-2016

Improve Neural Regulation of Negative Emotions with Mindfulness

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Improve Neural Regulation of Negative Emotions with Mindfulness

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Meditation might help depression, stress and anxiety but it’s not a ‘positive thinking’ tool that pretends everything is fine when it isn’t. It’s a way of being able to be with things as they are, in pain or in grief. It’s a way of being able to experience those inevitable parts of life, without your brain running away with its thoughts and making things worse, or pushing them away and resisting them.  It’s a way of being happy when we are happy, and to be fully present with our happiness, without holding onto that feeling too tightly because we fear the alternative.  And that’s where true peace lives.” – Ruth Rosselson

 

We’re very emotional creatures. Without emotion, life is flat and uninteresting. They are so important to us that they affect mostly everything that we do and say and can even be determinants of life or death. Anger, fear, and hate can lead to murderous consequences. Anxiety and depression can lead to suicide. At the same time love, joy, and happiness can make life worth living. Our emotions also affect us physically with positive emotions associated with health, well-being, and longevity and negative emotions associated with stress, disease, and shorter life spans.

 

There is a prevalent popular notion that to effectively deal with negative emotions such as grief and sadness, they have to be fully expressed and experienced. This is in general true as repression of powerful emotions can have long-term negative consequences. But, overexpressing emotions such that they become a focus of worry and rumination also has negative consequences. So, the key to dealing with powerful negative emotions is the middle way, to allow their expression, but then letting them go and moving on. A method to enhance this middle way is mindfulness. It has been shown to improve emotion regulation. People either spontaneously high in mindfulness or trained in mindfulness are better able to be completely in touch with their emotions and feel them completely, while being able to respond to them more appropriately and adaptively. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions. The ability of mindfulness training to improve emotion regulation is thought to be the basis for a wide variety of benefits that mindfulness provides to mental health.

 

Mindfulness appears to act on emotions by producing relatively permanent changes to the nervous system, increasing the activity, size, and connectivity of some structures while decreasing it for others in a process known as neuroplasticity. So, mindfulness practice appears to affect emotion regulation by producing neuroplastic changes to the structures of the nervous system that underlie emotion. In today’s Research News article “Minding One’s Emotions: Mindfulness Training Alters the Neural Expression of Sadness.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1456402104383711/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017873/

Farb and colleagues investigate the nervous system’s response to a negative emotion, sadness, in people trained in mindfulness. They recruited participants and randomly assigned them to either receive an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or to a wait-list control group. Before and after training the participants were measured for anxiety, depression, and symptoms of psychopathology. Following training the participants had sadness induced by having them watch 3-min film clips from sad vs. neutral movies. They watched the movies while their brains were scanned with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (f-MRI).

 

They found that MBSR produced significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and in symptoms of psychopathology that were not apparent in the wait-list control group. Watching the sad movie clips, the sadness induction, produced a significant increase in sadness and in the activity in the brain structures associated with the Default Mode Network (DMN) that normally gets activated by self-reflective and ruminating thinking. Significantly, they found that the group who received MBSR training had a significantly lower neural response in the DMN to the sadness induction. This occurred in spite of the fact that the sadness induction produced equivalent increases in sadness in both groups. At the same time, the MBSR group showed a greater activation of the visceral and somatosensory areas of the cortex.

 

These findings suggest that mindfulness training improves mental health by altering the neural response to negative emotional states, in this case sadness. The fact that the responses of the visceral and somatosensory areas were heightened in the mindfulness trained participants suggests that they felt the emotional state more deeply. At the same time, the reduced activation of the Default Mode Network (DMN) in the mindfulness trained participants suggests that sadness produced less self-reflection, worry, and rumination. This suggests that the brain better regulates the response to the emotions after mindfulness training. Hence the finding suggest that mindfulness training improves the brain’s emotion regulation processes and thereby reduces anxiety, depression and the symptoms of psychopathology.

 

So, improve neural regulation of negative emotions with mindfulness.

 

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it – always.”- Mahatma Gandhi

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Farb, N. A. S., Anderson, A. K., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., & Segal, Z. V. (2010). Minding One’s Emotions: Mindfulness Training Alters the Neural Expression of Sadness. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 10(1), 25–33. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0017151

 

Abstract

Recovery from emotional challenge and increased tolerance of negative affect are both hallmarks of mental health. Mindfulness training (MT) has been shown to facilitate these outcomes, yet little is known about its mechanisms of action. The present study employed functional MRI (fMRI) to compare neural reactivity to sadness provocation in participants completing 8 weeks of MT and waitlisted controls. Sadness resulted in widespread recruitment of regions associated with self-referential processes along the cortical midline. Despite equivalent self-reported sadness, MT participants demonstrated a distinct neural response, with greater right-lateralized recruitment, including visceral and somatosensory areas associated with body sensation. The greater somatic recruitment observed in the MT group during evoked sadness was associated with decreased depression scores. Restoring balance between affective and sensory neural networks—supporting conceptual and body based representations of emotion— could be one path through which mindfulness reduces vulnerability to dysphoric reactivity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017873/

 

Meditation Improves Well-Being but How You Meditate Can Make a Difference

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“science confirms the experience of millions of practitioners: meditation will keep you healthy, help prevent multiple diseases, make you happier, and improve your performance in basically any task, physical or mental.” – Giovanni Dienstmann

 

Meditation training has been shown to improve health and well-being. It has also been found to be effective for a large array of medical and psychiatric conditions, either stand-alone or in combination with more traditional therapies. As a result, meditation training has been called the third wave of therapies. One problem with understanding meditation effects is that there are, a wide variety of meditation techniques and it is not known which work best for improving different conditions.

 

Four types of meditation are the most commonly used practices for research purposes. In body scan meditation, the individual focuses on the feelings and sensations of specific parts of the body, systematically moving attention from one area to another. Loving kindness meditation is designed to develop kindness and compassion to oneself and others. The individual systematically pictures different individuals from self, to close friends, to enemies and wishes them happiness, well-being, safety, peace, and ease of well-being. In focused attention meditation, the individual practices paying attention to a single meditation object, learns to filter out distracting stimuli, including thoughts, and learns to stay focused on the present moment, filtering out thoughts centered around the past or future. On the other hand, in open monitoring meditation, the individual opens up awareness to everything that’s being experienced regardless of its origin. These include bodily sensations, external stimuli, and even thoughts. The meditator just observes these stimuli and lets them arise, and fall away without paying them any further attention.

 

These techniques have common properties of restful focused attention, but there are large differences. These differences are likely to produce different effects on the practitioner. In today’s Research News article “Phenomenological Fingerprints of Four Meditations: Differential State Changes in Affect, Mind-Wandering, Meta-Cognition, and Interoception Before and After Daily Practice Across 9 Months of Training.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1440840735939848/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-016-0594-9

Kok and Singer examine the similarities and differences between the effects of body scan meditation, loving kindness meditation, focused attention meditation, and open monitoring meditation. They recruited normal adults aged between 20 to 55 and randomly assigned them to three different orders of conditions in a complex research design. Training in each meditation type was conducted for 13 weeks, including a 3-day retreat at the beginning. The participants reported daily on their feeling states, contents of thought, meta-cognition, and 2 minutes of free writing about their thoughts and feelings.

 

All four meditation practices contain a component of focused breathing meditation, so it’s effects can’t be separated from the other three types. They found that all four meditation practices, consistent with the published literature, produced significant increases in positive feelings, focus on the present moment, and body awareness and decreases in mind wandering.

 

There were also considerable differences in the effects of the meditation practices. Body scan meditation, not surprisingly, produced the greatest increase in body awareness and the greatest decrease in thoughts about past, future, and others, and negative thoughts, in other words less mind wandering. Loving kindness meditation produced the greatest increase in positive thoughts and warm feelings about self and others. Open monitoring meditation produced the greatest increase in thought awareness and decrease in distraction by thoughts. These outcomes are consistent with the targeted contents of the practices.

 

It appears that all meditation types have very positive consequences for the practitioner and at the same time each has its own strengths. These strengths then can be taken advantage of to affect targeted issues for the practitioner. If the problem with the individual is a lack of body awareness then body scan meditation is called for, if it’s negative feelings about self and others, then loving kindness meditation would be best, while if it’s with meta-cognition such as awareness of thoughts, then open monitoring meditation should be the choice. In this way meditation practice, can have even greater benefit for the individual.

 

Regardless, improve well-being with meditation.

 

“If you have a few minutes in the morning or evening (or both), rather than turning on your phone or going online, see what happens if you try quieting down your mind, or at least paying attention to your thoughts and letting them go without reacting to them. If the research is right, just a few minutes of meditation may make a big difference.” – Alice Walton

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Kok, B.E. & Singer, T. Phenomenological Fingerprints of Four Meditations: Differential State Changes in Affect, Mind-Wandering, Meta-Cognition, and Interoception Before and After Daily Practice Across 9 Months of Training. Mindfulness (2016). doi:10.1007/s12671-016-0594-9

 

Abstract

Despite increasing interest in the effects of mental training practices such as meditation, there is much ambiguity regarding whether and to what extent the various types of mental practice have differential effects on psychological change. To address this gap, we compare the effects of four common meditation practices on measures of state change in affect, mind-wandering, meta-cognition, and interoception. In the context of a 9-month mental training program called the ReSource Project, 229 mid-life adults (mean age 41) provided daily reports before and after meditation practice. Participants received training in the following three successive modules: the first module (presence) included breathing meditation and body scan, the second (affect) included loving-kindness meditation, and the third (perspective) included observing-thought meditation. Using multilevel modeling, we found that body scan led to the greatest state increase in interoceptive awareness and the greatest decrease in thought content, loving-kindness meditation led to the greatest increase in feelings of warmth and positive thoughts about others, and observing-thought meditation led to the greatest increase in meta-cognitive awareness. All practices, including breathing meditation, increased positivity of affect, energy, and present focus and decreased thought distraction. Complementary network analysis of intervariate relationships revealed distinct phenomenological clusters of psychological change congruent with the content of each practice. These findings together suggest that although different meditation practices may have common beneficial effects, each practice can also be characterized by a distinct short-term psychological fingerprint, the latter having important implications for the use of meditative practices in different intervention contexts and with different populations.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-016-0594-9

 

Pay Attention with Mindfulness

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“The quality of your attention determines whether you are present and alert, or mentally and/or emotionally distracted. The good news is that it’s possible to train your attention and gain the associated benefits, and practicing mindfulness offers one of the most accessible and effective approaches.” – Deborah David

 

One of the primary effects of mindfulness training is an improvement in the ability to pay attention to the task at hand and ignore interfering stimuli. This is an important consequence of mindfulness training and produces improvements in thinking, reasoning, and creativity. The importance of heightened attentional ability to the individual’s ability to navigate the demands of complex modern life cannot be overstated. It helps at work, in relationships, or simply driving a car. Being effective socially demands accurately assessing the emotional states of other people. This requires attention to the non-verbal subtle signals of facial expression, body posture, and gestures. In this context, attention to these subtleties is a prerequisite for appropriate interactions. As a result, mindfulness improves social interactions.

 

There is evidence that mindfulness training improves attention by altering the brain. It appears That mindfulness training increases the size, connectivity, and activity of areas of the brain that are involved in paying attention. A common method to study the activity of the nervous system is to measure the electrical signal at the scalp above brain regions. Changes in this activity are measurable with mindfulness training. One method to observe information processing in the brain is to measure the changes in the electrical activity that occur in response to specific stimuli. These are called evoked potentials or ERPs. The signal following a stimulus changes over time. The fluctuations of the signal after specific periods of time are thought to measure different aspects of the nervous system’s processing of the stimulus.

 

The N100 response in the evoked potential (ERP) is a negative going response occurring around a tenth of a second following a visual stimulus presentation. The N100 response has been associated with the engagement of visual attention. So, the N100 response is often used as a measure of brain attentional engagement with the larger the negative change the greater the attentional focus. The N200 response in the evoked potential (ERP) generally follows shortly after the N100 response. It is a negative change that is maximally measured over the frontal lobe. The N200 response has been associated with the resolution of conflicting response expectations. The P300 response occurs around a quarter of a second following the stimulus presentation. It is a positive change that is maximally measured over the central frontal lobe. The P300 response has been associated with holding back expected actions (response inhibition).

 

The relationship of mindfulness to the brain’s processing of social/emotional stimuli was investigated in today’s Research News article “Trait Mindfulness Predicts Efficient Top-Down Attention to and Discrimination of Facial Expressions.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1433674869989768/?type=3&theater

or see summary below. Quaglia and colleagues recruited college students and measured their levels of mindfulness, social anxiety, and attentional control. The participants’ EEG was measured while performing a go/no-go task in which they were asked to press a button to a picture of a face if it expressed a target emotion (happy, neutral, or fearful) and refrain from responding if a different emotion was being portrayed.

 

They found that the higher the levels of the students’ mindfulness the faster they responded to the faces. In addition, they found that the higher the levels of mindfulness the larger the N100 and N200 responses. With the P300 response, high levels of mindfulness were only found to be associated with larger responses on no-go trials, when they withheld a response to a non-target emotion. There was no difference in the P300 response to go trials.

 

These results suggest that mindfulness improves attention to emotionally significant stimuli and does so by heightening the brain’s response to these stimuli.. This is supported by the faster response times by highly mindful participants. In, addition, the neural responses indicate better processing with the heightened N100 and N200 responses indicating greater attention and better decision processes while the heightened P300 response indicating better ability to withhold responses to stimuli when appropriate. Hence, the results suggest that attention to and responding to emotionally significant stimuli is improved with mindfulness. This may be one of the mechanisms by which mindfulness improves emotion regulation in general.

 

So, pay attention with mindfulness.

 

“Mindfulness refines our attention so that we can connect more fully and directly with whatever life brings. So many times our perception of what is happening is distorted by bias, habits, fears, or desires. Mindfulness helps us see through these and be much more aware of what actually is.” – Sharon Salzberg

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Jordan T. Quaglia, Robert J. Goodman, Kirk Warren Brown. Trait Mindfulness Predicts Efficient Top-Down Attention to and Discrimination of Facial Expressions. J. Pers. Volume 84, Issue 3, June 2016, Pages 393–404

 

Abstract

In social situations, skillful regulation of emotion and behavior depends on efficiently discerning others’ emotions. Identifying factors that promote timely and accurate discernment of facial expressions can therefore advance understanding of social emotion regulation and behavior. The present research examined whether trait mindfulness predicts neural and behavioral markers of early top-down attention to, and efficient discrimination of, socioemotional stimuli. Attention-based event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses were recorded while participants (N = 62; White; 67% female; Mage= 19.09 years, SD = 2.14 years) completed an emotional go/no-go task involving happy, neutral, and fearful facial expressions. Mindfulness predicted larger (more negative) N100 and N200 ERP amplitudes to both go and no-go stimuli. Mindfulness also predicted faster response time that was not attributable to a speed-accuracy trade-off. Significant relations held after accounting for attentional control or social anxiety. This study adds neurophysiological support for foundational accounts that mindfulness entails moment-to-moment attention with lower tendencies toward habitual patterns of responding. Mindfulness may enhance the quality of social behavior in socioemotional contexts by promoting efficient top-down attention to and discrimination of others’ emotions, alongside greater monitoring and inhibition of automatic response tendencies.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.shsu.edu/doi/10.1111/jopy.12167/full

 

 

Improve Control of Emotions with Meditation Practice

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Improve Control of Emotions with Meditation Practice

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing.” – Gaëlle Desbordes

 

Mindfulness practice has been shown to produce improved emotion regulation. Practitioners demonstrate the ability to fully sense and experience emotions, but respond to them in more appropriate and adaptive ways. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions. This is a very important consequence of mindfulness. Humans are very emotional creatures and these emotions can be very pleasant, providing the spice of life. But, when they get extreme they can produce misery and even mental illness. The ability of mindfulness training to improve emotion regulation is thought to be the basis for a wide variety of benefits that mindfulness provides to mental health and the treatment of mental illness especially depression and anxiety disorders.

 

The immediate state of mindfulness has been shown to produce positive consequences but the development of long-term (trait) mindfulness has enduring benefits. It appears to do so, by producing relatively permanent changes to the nervous system, increasing the activity, size, and connectivity of some structures while decreasing it for others in a process known as neuroplasticity. So, mindfulness practice appears to affect emotion regulation by producing neuroplastic changes to the structures of the nervous system that underlie emotion.

 

One way to investigate the changes in the brain’s processing of emotions is to measure the nervous systems electrical responses to emotional stimuli, known as event related potentials (ERP). In today’s Research News article “Deconstructing the Emotion Regulatory Properties of Mindfulness: An Electrophysiological Investigation.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1383896588300930/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5013076/

Lin and colleagues investigate the effects of short-term mindfulness vs. long-term mindfulness practice on the electrical response to the nervous system to emotional stimuli (ERP) called the late positive potential (LPP). It is recorded from the Parietal Lobe of the cortex and is a positive voltage occurring 300–800 milliseconds after the presentation of emotionally evocative stimuli and lasts for several seconds. The LPP is greater with more emotionally evocative stimuli. So, the LPP can index the magnitude of individual’s emotional responding. Lin and colleagues randomly assigned female college students who had not previously meditated to either receive a 20-minute guided meditation or a lecture on learning a second language. They were further randomly subdivided to view pictures either mindfully or “naturally.” There were three kinds of pictures presented, emotionally negative high arousing, negative low arousing, or neutral. Participants were also measured for trait mindfulness.

 

They found that the late positive potential (LPP) was sensitive to the stimuli with greater positive LPP to the emotionally negative high arousing than the negative low arousing, or neutral stimuli. The brief meditation and trait mindfulness, but not the mindfulness instruction, reduced the magnitude of the response to the emotionally negative high arousing stimuli. They also found that the higher the level of trait mindfulness in the participants the greater the reduction in the response to the emotionally negative high arousing stimuli. These results suggest that mindfulness can reduce neural responses to emotional stimuli and that the greatest responses occur to people high in trait mindfulness. This further suggests that the more the practice, the greater the mindfulness, and the greater the reduction in emotional responding.

 

These findings help us to better understand the processes that result in mindfulness training’s ability to improve emotion regulation. Long-term mindfulness, trait mindfulness, has the most powerful effects while simple one-time meditation practices can produce effects, albeit smaller. All of this suggests that the brain adapts to mindfulness training by altering its responsiveness to emotional stimuli and events making the individual better at regulating their emotions, with the greater the mindfulness produced the greater the improvement.

 

So, improve control of emotions with meditation practice.

 

“As with all emotion, the practice of meditation can stabilize us enough in the midst of fear to help us see more clearly—to distinguish a false threat from a real threat that needs to be acted upon. The type of fear meditation can have the most effect on is the fear (and fears) that we continually generate in our own minds, the product of our rich imagination and our desire to control everything, rather than be tossed around in the risky and stormy world.” – Mindful Staff

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Lin, Y., Fisher, M. E., Roberts, S. M. M., & Moser, J. S. (2016). Deconstructing the Emotion Regulatory Properties of Mindfulness: An Electrophysiological Investigation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 451. http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00451

 

Abstract

The present study sought to uncover the emotion regulatory properties of mindfulness by examining its effects—differentiated as a meditative practice, state of mind and dispositional trait—on the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing emotional processing. Results revealed that mindfulness as a meditative practice produced a reduction in the difference between the LPP response to negative high arousing and neutral stimuli across time. In contrast, a state mindfulness induction (i.e., instructions to attend to the stimuli mindfully) failed to modulate the LPP. Dispositional mindfulness, however, was related to modulation of the LPP as a function of meditation practice. Dispositional mindfulness was associated with a reduction of the LPP response to negative high arousal stimuli and the difference between negative high arousal and neutral stimuli in participants who listened to a control audio recording but not for those who engaged in the guided meditation practice. Together, these findings provide experimental evidence demonstrating that brief mindfulness meditation, but not deliberate engagement in state mindfulness, produces demonstrable changes in emotional processing indicative of reduced emotional reactivity. Importantly, these effects are akin to those observed in individuals with naturally high dispositional mindfulness, suggesting that the benefits of mindfulness can be cultivated through practice.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5013076/

 

Spiral Up Your Mood with Walking Meditation

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walking-meditatio2-gotink

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“One of the most useful and grounding ways of attending to our body is the practice of walking meditation. Walking meditation is a simple and universal practice for developing calm, connectedness, and embodied awareness. It can be practiced regularly, before or after sitting meditation or any time on its own, such as after a busy day at work or on a lazy Sunday morning. The art of walking meditation is to learn to be aware as you walk, to use the natural movement of walking to cultivate mindfulness and wakeful presence.” – Jack Kornfield

 

Contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi / qigong, have been shown to elevate mood in normal individuals and individuals who suffer from mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Two common techniques used with patients with mood disorders are Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Both of these therapies contain a number of mindfulness training techniques including sitting meditation, body scan, and walking meditation. Although the effects of sitting meditation have been well documented, little is known about the effects of walking meditation.

 

It has long been reported that walking in nature elevates mood. It appears intuitively obvious that if it occurred in a beautiful natural place, it would greatly lift the spirits. But, there is little systematic research regarding these effects. It’s possible that conducting walking meditation in nature might potentiate the effects by combining two mood enhancing practices. In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and mood stimulate each other in an upward spiral: a mindful walking intervention using experience sampling.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1355140297843226/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5010615/

Gotink and colleagues studied the effects of waking meditation in nature on the moods of adults who had completed courses in either Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The participants were measured a week before and during a walking meditation retreat of either 1, 3, or 6-days. Walking occurred in nature along the river Rhine in the Netherlands. During the walk their moods (content, cheerful, relaxed, energetic, calm, sad, irritated, insecure, and tense and mindful observing, acting with awareness, non-judgment, and non-reacting) were sampled at random times by responding to a signal on a cell phone which also collected the responses. Before and after the control and walking periods the participants filled out scales measuring depression, anxiety, rumination, and mindfulness.

 

They found that the mindful walking significantly increased positive moods and mindfulness and decreased negative moods. They also found that state mindfulness at one sampling significantly predicted increased positive moods and decreased negative moods at the next sampling. Similarly, positive moods at one sampling significantly predicted increased state mindfulness at the next sampling while negative moods at one sampling significantly predicted decreased state mindfulness at the next sampling. These findings suggest that walking in nature improves mood and that mindfulness increases appear to precede improvements in mood.

 

These are interesting findings. They demonstrate that the experience sampling method can be employed to monitor the growth in mindfulness and mood during walking in a natural setting. They further suggest that walking in nature produces an upward spiral of mindfulness and mood enhancement where increased mindfulness at one moment increases mood at the next which increases mindfulness at the next which increases mood at the next and so on.

 

So, spiral up your mood with walking meditation.

 

“The Buddha stressed developing mindfulness in the four main postures of the body:  standing, sitting, lying down and walking.  He exhorted us to be mindful in all these postures, to create a clear awareness and recollection of what we are doing when we are in any particular posture.” – Buddhist Society of Western Australia

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Gotink, R. A., Hermans, K. S. F. M., Geschwind, N., De Nooij, R., De Groot, W. T., & Speckens, A. E. M. (2016). Mindfulness and mood stimulate each other in an upward spiral: a mindful walking intervention using experience sampling. Mindfulness, 7(5), 1114–1122. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0550-8

 

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of mindful walking in nature as a possible means to maintain mindfulness skills after a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) or mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course. Mindful walking alongside the river Rhine took place for 1, 3, 6, or 10 days, with a control period of a similar number of days, 1 week before the mindful walking period. In 29 mindfulness participants, experience sampling method (ESM) was performed during the control and mindful walking period. Smartphones offered items on positive and negative affect and state mindfulness at random times during the day. Furthermore, self-report questionnaires were administered before and after the control and mindful walking period, assessing depression, anxiety, stress, brooding, and mindfulness skills. ESM data showed that walking resulted in a significant improvement of both mindfulness and positive affect, and that state mindfulness and positive affect prospectively enhanced each other in an upward spiral. The opposite pattern was observed with state mindfulness and negative affect, where increased state mindfulness predicted less negative affect. Exploratory questionnaire data indicated corresponding results, though non-significant due to the small sample size. This is the first time that ESM was used to assess interactions between state mindfulness and momentary affect during a mindfulness intervention of several consecutive days, showing an upward spiral effect. Mindful walking in nature may be an effective way to maintain mindfulness practice and further improve psychological functioning.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5010615/

Improve Brain Processing of Emotions in the Elderly with Meditation

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Yet until recently little was known about how a few hours of quiet reflection each week could lead to such an intriguing range of mental and physical effects. Now, as the popularity of mindfulness grows, brain imaging techniques are revealing that this ancient practice can profoundly change the way different regions of the brain communicate with each other – and therefore how we think – permanently.” –  Tom Ireland

 

Meditation training has been shown to alter the nervous system, increasing the size and connectivity of structures associated with present moment awareness, higher level thinking, and regulation of emotions, while decreasing the size and connectivity of structures associated with mind wandering and self-referential thinking, known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). The brain is capable of changing and adapting in a process called neuroplasticity. As a result, the neural changes produced by meditation training become relatively permanent.

 

Meditation training has also been shown to produce improvements in emotion regulation. Most of the research to date on the neural systems altered by meditation training has focused on higher level cortical centers. But, emotions involve lower centers such as those located in the Pons in primitive brain stem. In today’s Research News article “Pons to Posterior Cingulate Functional Projections Predict Affective Processing Changes in the Elderly Following Eight Weeks of Meditation Training.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1349231245100798/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5006446/

Shao and colleagues investigate the changes in connectivity between the Pons sites involved in emotions and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex and the Precuneus area which are important in the Default Mode Network (DMN). They recruited elderly (>60 years of age) participants with no experience with meditation or relaxation training through newspaper ads. They were randomly assigned to receive 8-weeks of either meditation training or relaxation training. Training occurred with 1.5-hour training sessions occurring 3 time per week. All participants received functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) brain scans and were tested with an emotion processing task both before and after training.

 

They found that after meditation training the elderly participants had moderated emotional responses that converged toward the middle, such that positive emotions were not as positive and arousing while negative emotions were not as negative and arousing as prior to training. This effect did not occur in the relaxation trained participants. They also found increased functional connectivity between the Pons emotion centers and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex and the Precuneus area components of the Default Mode Network (DMN). The increased connectivity was primarily in the Pons to DMN direction. In addition, the greater the change in the connectivity the greater the reduction in negative emotional responses by the participants. Again, these effect did not occur in the relaxation trained participants.

 

These are interesting results that extend the previous findings on improved emotion regulation after meditation training as the training was found to moderate emotional reactivity, making both positive and negative emotions less extreme. They further showed that this moderation of emotions is associated with increased connectivity between the areas of primitive emotion in the Pontine brain stem and the higher level Default Mode Network (DMN) procession in the Cerebral Cortex. These effects were shown to be due to the meditation training as relaxation training did not produce them.

 

One of the ways that emotions can get out of hand is by ruminating about past emotional responses and worrying about future emotional responses. This can increase the magnitude of emotional responses. Rumination and worry is the role of the DMN. The present research suggests that the improve emotion regulation seen after meditation training may be due to the increased influence of lower emotion centers on reducing the activation of the brain areas responsible for rumination and worry. In that way emotions can be experienced and analyzed as real time experiences and not amplified beyond their actual magnitude. This is a tremendous benefit of meditation training, allowing for more realistic appraisal of emotions.

 

So, improve brain processing of emotions in the elderly with meditation.

 

“One way to do this is mindfulness meditation, in which you observe your thoughts and feelings with the objectivity of a disinterested, nonjudgmental witness. This form of mental training gives you “the wherewithal to pause, observe how easily the mind can exaggerate the severity of a setback, note that it as an interesting mental process, and resist getting drawn into the abyss,” – Richie Davidson

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Robin Shao, Kati Keuper, Xiujuan Geng, Tatia M.C. Lee. Pons to Posterior Cingulate Functional Projections Predict Affective Processing Changes in the Elderly Following Eight Weeks of Meditation Training. EBioMedicine. 2016 Aug; 10: 236–248. Published online 2016 Jun 15. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.06.018

 

Abstract

Evidence indicates meditation facilitates affective regulation and reduces negative affect. It also influences resting-state functional connectivity between affective networks and the posterior cingulate (PCC)/precuneus, regions critically implicated in self-referential processing. However, no longitudinal study employing active control group has examined the effect of meditation training on affective processing, PCC/precuneus connectivity, and their association. Here, we report that eight-week meditation, but not relaxation, training ‘neutralized’ affective processing of positive and negative stimuli in healthy elderly participants. Additionally, meditation versus relaxation training increased the positive connectivity between the PCC/precuneus and the pons, the direction of which was largely directed from the pons to the PCC/precuneus, as revealed by dynamic causal modeling. Further, changes in connectivity between the PCC/precuneus and pons predicted changes in affective processing after meditation training. These findings indicate meditation promotes self-referential affective regulation based on increased regulatory influence of the pons on PCC/precuneus, which new affective-processing strategy is employed across both resting state and when evaluating affective stimuli. Such insights have clinical implications on interventions on elderly individuals with affective disorders.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5006446/

 

Improve the Brain’s Emotional Responses with Mindfulness

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Meditation gives you the wherewithal to pause, observe how easily the mind can exaggerate the severity of a setback, and resist getting drawn back into the abyss.”— Richie Davidson

 

We’re very emotional creatures. Without emotion, life is flat and uninteresting. Emotions provide the spice of life. We are constantly having or reacting to emotions. We often go to great lengths in an attempt to create or keep positive emotions and conversely to avoid, mitigate, or get rid of negative emotions. They are so important to us that they affect mostly everything that we do and say and can even be determinants of life or death. Anger, fear, and hate can lead to murderous consequences. Anxiety and depression can lead to suicide. At the same time love, joy, and happiness can make life worth living. Our emotions also affect us physically with positive emotions associated with health, well-being, and longevity and negative emotions associated with stress, disease, and shorter life spans. The importance of emotions is only surpassed by our ignorance of them.

 

Emotions occur automatically and reflexively to particularly stimuli in the environment. For example, the sight of a snake almost universally evokes a fear response, or conversely the sight of a baby smiling almost universally evokes loving feelings. Psychologists have demonstrated that these reflexive emotional reactions can be transferred to other stimuli. This occurs in a process first described by Pavlov called classical conditioning. For example, seeing a snake in a flower pot can later produce fear responses to the flower pot itself. This is called emotional learning.

 

One of the most important effects of mindfulness training is improving emotion regulation. Research has demonstrated that people either spontaneously high in mindfulness or trained in mindfulness are better able to be completely in touch with their emotions and feel them completely, while being able to respond to them more appropriately and adaptively. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions. The influence of mindfulness training on emotional learning has not, however, been extensively studied.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Fear Conditioning, and The Uncinate Fasciculus: A Pilot Study.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1312616582095598/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4908122/

Hölzel and colleagues randomly assigned adult participants to either receive an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or be placed on a wait-list. Prior to and after the 8-week training period, both groups were assessed for mindfulness, perceived stress, and emotion regulation ability. They were also tested with a 2-day fear conditioning emotional learning, extinction and retention of extinction procedure which occurred while the participants laid in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. The conditioning occurred to red and blue lights paired with a mild electric shock. Then only one light and not the other was paired with shock so that the fear response to one would decline in strength (extinguish).

 

They found that the MBSR training produced significant improvements in mindfulness, emotion regulation and perceived stress. In addition, the more home practice the participants engaged in the greater the improvement. They found that the MBSR participants retained the fear conditioning from prior to, to after the conditioning while the control group did not. In addition, MBSR was found to produce a significant increase in the fiber density, axonal diameter, and myelination of the Uncinate fasciclus; in other words, it increased the size of this fiber tract that interconnects the limbic system to the frontal lobes. Aslo, the greater the increase in the size of the Uncinate, the stronger the increase in the strength of the fear conditioning.

 

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that mindfulness (MBSR) training increases emotion regulation and decreases stress responses. So, these results in the present study were no surprise. The increased retention of the fear conditioning found after mindfulness training is interesting and suggests that the training did what is was supposed to, increasing attentiveness to environmental stimuli and thus making the individual more responsive to them over longer periods. It is possible that mindfulness training, by improving emotion regulation and stress responding allowed for better appreciation and control of prior emotional conditioning. Hence, mindfulness training appears to make us better at being attentive to and regulating both our primary and secondary (learned) emotions.

 

The improved retention of the fear conditioning may also result from the increased size of the Uncinate fasciculus which connects the limbic system which is known to be involved in emotions to the frontal lobes which are known to be involved in emotion regulation. Hence, the MBSR training appears to have altered the brain to accentuate the processing and regulation of emotional signals. These kind of changes in brain structure, known as neuroplasticity, are commonly found after mindfulness training. In the case of the present study the change in the brain produced by mindfulness training appears to alter the individual’s responsiveness and control of their emotions.

 

So, improve the brain’s emotional responses with mindfulness.

 

“Mindfulness practice isn’t meant to eliminate thinking but aims rather to help us know what we’re thinking when we’re thinking it, just as we want to know what we’re feeling when we’re feeling it. Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we’re heading toward an unhealthy path, and if so, let go and change directions. It allows us to see that who we are is much more than a fearful or envious or angry thought. We can rest in the awareness of the thought, in the compassion we extend to ourselves if the thought makes us uncomfortable, and in the balance and good sense we summon as we decide whether and how to act on the thought.” – Sharon Salzberg

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Hölzel, B. K., Brunsch, V., Gard, T., Greve, D. N., Koch, K., Sorg, C., … Milad, M. R. (2016). Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Fear Conditioning, and The Uncinate Fasciculus: A Pilot Study. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 10, 124. http://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00124

 

Abstract

Mindfulness has been suggested to impact emotional learning, but research on these processes is scarce. The classical fear conditioning/extinction/extinction retention paradigm is a well-known method for assessing emotional learning. The present study tested the impact of mindfulness training on fear conditioning and extinction memory and further investigated whether changes in white matter fiber tracts might support such changes. The uncinate fasciculus (UNC) was of particular interest in the context of emotional learning. In this pilot study, 46 healthy participants were quasi-randomized to a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR,N = 23) or waitlist control (N = 23) group and underwent a two-day fear conditioning, extinction learning, and extinction memory protocol before and after the course or control period. Skin conductance response (SCR) data served to measure the physiological response during conditioning and extinction memory phases. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were analyzed with probabilistic tractography and analyzed for changes of fractional anisotropy in the UNC. During conditioning, participants were able to maintain a differential response to conditioned vs. not conditioned stimuli following the MBSR course (i.e., higher sensitivity to the conditioned stimuli), while controls dropped the response. Extinction memory results were not interpretable due to baseline differences. MBSR participants showed a significant increase in fractional anisotropy in the UNC, while controls did not (group by time interaction missed significance). Pre-post changes in UNC were correlated with changes in the response to the conditioned stimuli. The findings suggest effects of mindfulness practice on the maintenance of sensitivity of emotional responses and suggest underlying neural plasticity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4908122/