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Neural correlates of dispositional mindfulness during affect labeling (2007)
| Venue: | Psychosomatic Medicine |
| Citations: | 62 - 5 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Creswell07neuralcorrelates,
author = {J. David Creswell and Baldwin M. Way and Naomi I. Eisenberger and Matthew and D. Lieberman},
title = {Neural correlates of dispositional mindfulness during affect labeling},
journal = {Psychosomatic Medicine},
year = {2007}
}
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Abstract
Objective: Mindfulness is a process whereby one is aware and receptive to present moment experiences. Although mindfulnessenhancing interventions reduce pathological mental and physical health symptoms across a wide variety of conditions and diseases, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unknown. Converging evidence from the mindfulness and neuroscience literature suggests that labeling affect may be one mechanism for these effects. Methods: Participants (n � 27) indicated trait levels of mindfulness and then completed an affect labeling task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The labeling task consisted of matching facial expressions to appropriate affect words (affect labeling) or to gender-appropriate names (gender labeling control task). Results: After controlling for multiple individual difference measures, dispositional mindfulness was associated with greater widespread prefrontal cortical activation, and reduced bilateral amygdala activity during affect labeling, compared with the gender labeling control task. Further, strong negative associations were found between areas of prefrontal cortex and right amygdala responses in participants high in mindfulness but not in participants low in mindfulness. Conclusions: The present findings with a dispositional measure of mindfulness suggest one potential neurocognitive mechanism for understanding how mindfulness meditation interventions reduce negative affect and improve health outcomes, showing that mindfulness is associated with enhanced prefrontal cortical regulation of affect through labeling of negative affective stimuli. Key words: fMRI, mindfulness, emotion regulation, neuroscience, meditation, negative affect. fMRI � functional magnetic resonance imaging; PFC � prefrontal cortex; VLPFC � ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; VMPFC � ventromedial
Keyphrases
affect labeling dispositional mindfulness neural correlate control task negative affect neuroscience literature potential neurocognitive mechanism present finding pathological mental present moment experience affect word key word functional magnetic resonance imaging enhanced prefrontal cortical regulation gender-appropriate name dispositional measure vlpfc ventrolateral prefrontal cortex facial expression affect labeling task mindfulness meditation intervention multiple individual difference measure physical health symptom trait level negative affective stimulus widespread prefrontal cortical activation pfc prefrontal cortex right amygdala response reduced bilateral amygdala activity prefrontal cortex health outcome vmpfc ventromedial fmri functional magnetic resonance imaging wide variety strong negative association emotion regulation
