Neural correlates of dispositional mindfulness during affect labeling.
OBJECTIVE
Mindfulness is a process whereby one is aware and receptive to present moment experiences. Although mindfulness-enhancing 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.
Creswell
J David
JD
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563, USA. creswell@ucla.edu
Way
Baldwin M
BM
Eisenberger
Naomi I
NI
Lieberman
Matthew D
MD
D000339:Affect; D001364:Awareness; D001524:Behavioral Medicine; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways; D010551:Personality; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception