Does Meditation Alter Brain Responses to Negative Stimuli? A Systematic Review.

Background: Despite several attempts to review and explain how meditation alters the brain and facilitates emotion regulation, the extent to which meditation and emotion regulation strategies share the same neural mechanisms remains unclear. Objective: We aim to understand the influence of meditation on the neural processing of negative emotional stimuli in participants who underwent meditation interventions (naive meditators) and long-term meditators. Methodology: A systematic review was conducted using standardized search operators that included the presence of terms related to emotion, meditation and neuro-imaging techniques in PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. Results: Searches identified 882 papers, of which 11 were eligible for inclusion. Results showed a predominance of greater prefrontal/frontal activity related to meditation, which might indicate the increased recruitment of cognitive/attentional control resources in naïve and long-term meditators. This increased frontal activity was also observed when participants were asked to simply react to negative stimuli. Findings from emotion-related areas were scarce but suggested increased insular activity in meditators, potentially indicating that meditation might be associated with greater bodily awareness. Conclusions: Meditation practice prompts regulatory mechanisms when participants face aversive stimuli, even without an explicit request. Moreover, some studies reported increased insular activity in meditators, consistent with the hypothesis that meditation helps foster an interoceptive awareness of bodily and emotional states.

Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity Levels in Women Crack Users.

OBJECTIVE: investigate impulsivity levels and inhibitory control in women crack users and explore the relationships between impulsivity and inhibitory control. METHOD AND DESIGN: 52 healthy women (M = 32.83 years; SD = 9.54) and 46 crack cocaine users (M = 31.02 years; SD = 7.73), in abstinence, performed the assessment protocol included a Sociodemographic Data Questionnaire, Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), a GO/No-Go Task and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11). It was a quantitative research with cross-sectional design and control group. RESULTS: crack group showed higher levels of impulsivity in all domains when compared to the control group (crack group M = 76.39, SD = 11.39, control group M = 58.53, SD = 10.76, p <.01). Participants from the crack group presented a significantly higher total reaction time in the Go-NoGo task (F(1,93) = 9.93, p =.002; effect size =.09, observed power =.87) and significantly more commission (F(1,93) = 7.20, p =.009; effect size =.07, observed power =.75) and omission errors (F(1,93) = 6.04, p =.01; effect size =.06, observed power =.68), in Go/NoGo Task. Groups did also significantly differ on total standard deviations suggesting that variability in total reaction time was significantly greater in the crack group. Results showed that only in the crack group there were significant correlations between Go-NoGo parameters and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings are consistent that impulsivity and inhibitory control are closely linked to crack use in women. Future studies should consider to evaluate crack users in different withdrawal times, controlling the impact of abstinence time in the variables studied.

YOGA AND THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN ATTENTIONAL LOAD AND EMOTION INTERFERENCE.

This study compared 45 yoga practitioners (M age = 29.7 yr., SD = 6.4) and 45 matched controls (M age = 29.3 yr., SD = 6.2) on the performance of a behavioral task that assessed negative emotion interference during a high- and a low-attentional demand condition, as well as on state and trait anxiety scores. Outcomes were also compared between beginner and advanced practitioners. For the behavioral task, the final sample comprised 36 yoga and 38 control participants. The yoga group presented lower emotion interference in the high attentional condition, compared to the low attentional condition; rated emotional images as less unpleasant, compared to controls; and reported lower state and trait anxiety scores relative to controls. Also, emotion interference in the low attentional condition was lower among advanced practitioners and state anxiety was lower among practitioners attending more than two weekly yoga classes. The results suggested that yoga may help improve self-regulatory skills and lower anxiety. The psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship between yoga and emotion regulation should be further investigated in longitudinal studies.

Sitting and silent meditation as a strategy to study emotion regulation

Emotion regulation is the capacity to control the way in which people attend, perceive, process and react to emotional information. Practitioners of sitting and silent meditation develop a greater control of their mental processes, culminating in regulatory abilities that lead to well-being and emotional balance. In this paper we reviewed evidence from recent studies on neurophysiology and cognitive psychology on emotion regulation-focusing on negative emotions-and meditation in order to discuss their intertwining. This critical review showed that controlling attention and fostering a relaxation state are the main mechanisms for the interaction between emotion regulation and meditation. Importantly, it is suggested that the effects of meditation on emotion regulation should be conceptualized separately as those taking effect during the practice and those occurring as an outcome of such practice. Finally, it is highlighted that meditation should be conceived as a particular type of emotion regulation strategy, and that further studies comparing these strategies more directly are warranted.

Six weeks of meditation training influences response bias in a discrimination task with emotional distractors

Introduction: Focused attention meditation is the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object in a sustained fashion, whose objective is to develop attentional and emotional regulatory skills./objective: We investigated the effect of a six-week focused attention meditation training on a discrimination task with emotional distractors by comparing participants' discriminability and bias before and after training. Method: College students were randomly assigned to either focused meditation (N=35), progressive relaxation (N=37), or control groups (N=28). 120 neutral and 120 emotional - negative and arousing ­ pictures (9º x 12º), flanked by two peripheral bars (0.3º x 0.3º), equidistant from the centre of the picture (9º), were equally and randomly distributed and displayed among three blocks, one with low attentional (LA) and two with high attentional demand (HA). Participants indicated if bars were parallel or not by pressing one of two buttons. In LA and HA conditions, respectively, bars differed with 90º and 6º in half of the trials. Trials started with a fixation cross (1500ms) followed by the pictures and bars (200ms). Next, a chessboard remained on the screen until a response was given or for 2000ms. Results: Mixed-design ANOVAs showed no discriminability difference across groups (meditation=26; relaxation=24; control=24) pre-post training; only task difficulty affected discriminability [F(1,68) = 739.8, p < .001; LA > HA]. Response bias was affected by difficulty [F(1,68) = 81.2, p < .001; LA < HA], and testing session [F(1,68) = 23.1, p < .001; pre > post]. Additionally, there was a significant difficulty × session × group interaction [F(2,68) = 4.02, p = .02]: meditation (M = .58, SE =.36) and relaxation (M = .65, SE =.36) presented a reduction in response bias relative to control (M = .69, SE =.37), but only after training in the HA condition (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The reduction in response bias suggests that meditation and relaxation can affect decision making in a difficult perceptual discrimination task. Meditation showed the highest bias reduction, consistent with previous results linking meditation to attention and monitoring processes.

Sitting and silent meditation as a strategy to study emotion regulation

Emotion regulation is the capacity to control the way in which people attend, perceive, process and react to emotional information. Practitioners of sitting and silent meditation develop a greater control of their mental processes, culminating in regulatory abilities that lead to well-being and emotional balance. In this paper we reviewed evidence from recent studies on neurophysiology and cognitive psychology on emotion regulation-focusing on negative emotions-and meditation in order to discuss their intertwining. This critical review showed that controlling attention and fostering a relaxation state are the main mechanisms for the interaction between emotion regulation and meditation. Importantly, it is suggested that the effects of meditation on emotion regulation should be conceptualized separately as those taking effect during the practice and those occurring as an outcome of such practice. Finally, it is highlighted that meditation should be conceived as a particular type of emotion regulation strategy, and that further studies comparing these strategies more directly are warranted.(AU)