Effects of Mindfulness Training on Emotion Regulation in Patients With Depression: Reduced Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Activation Indexes Early Beneficial Changes.

OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been found to be a promising approach for the treatment of recurrent courses of depression. However, little is known about their neural mechanisms. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study set out to investigate activation changes in corticolimbic regions during implicit emotion regulation. METHODS: Depressed patients with a recurrent lifetime history were randomized to receive a 2-week MBI (n = 16 completers) or psychoeducation and resting (PER; n = 22 completers). Before and after, patients underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while labeling the affect of angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions and completed questionnaires assessing ruminative brooding, the ability to decenter from such thinking, and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Activation decreased in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in response to angry faces after MBI (p < .01, voxel-wise family-wise error rate correction, T > 3.282; 56 mm3; Montreal Neurological Institute peak coordinate: 32, 24, 40), but not after PER. This change was highly correlated with increased decentring (r = -0.52, p = .033), decreased brooding (r = 0.60, p = .010), and decreased symptoms (r = 0.82, p = .005). Amygdala activation in response to happy faces decreased after PER (p < .01, family-wise error rate corrected; 392 mm3; Montreal Neurological Institute peak coordinate: 28, -4, -16), whereas the MBI group showed no significant change. CONCLUSIONS: The dlPFC is involved in emotion regulation, namely, reappraisal or suppression of negative emotions. Decreased right dlPFC activation might indicate that, after the MBI, patients abstained from engaging in elaboration or suppression of negative affective stimuli; a putatively important mechanism for preventing the escalation of negative mood.Trial Registration: The study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02801513; 16/06/2016).

Correction to: Brief training in mindfulness may normalize a blunted error-related negativity in chronically depressed patients.

Maria Fissler and Emilia Winnebeck also are affiliated at Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany.

The Enriching Interplay between Openness and Interest: A Theoretical Elaboration of the OFCI Model and a First Empirical Test.

The Openness-Fluid-Crystallized-Intelligence (OFCI) model posits long-term relations between Openness and cognitive abilities and has been successfully tested with longitudinal data. However, research on the developmental interplay between cognitive abilities and personality exists only sparsely. The current paper focuses on a theoretical development of the OFCI model which suggests micro-level mechanisms underlying the long-term development. Specifically, within-situation relations between Openness, interests, situational perception, cognitive abilities, and emotions are proposed to explain longitudinal relations between Openness and cognitive abilities. Using experience sampling, selected parts of this elaboration were empirically scrutinized in a first test of the proposed ideas. Openness and specific interest both varied substantially across situations and covaried systematically. In interaction with an indicator of fluid intelligence, this covariation was related to an indicator of crystallized intelligence. The paper contributes to theorizing the intertwined development of personality and cognitive abilities, and highlights the importance of within-situation research for explaining long-term development.

Brief training in mindfulness may normalize a blunted error-related negativity in chronically depressed patients.

The error-related negativity (ERN), an evoked-potential that arises in response to the commission of errors, is an important early indicator of self-regulatory capacities. In this study we investigated whether brief mindfulness training can reverse ERN deficits in chronically depressed patients. The ERN was assessed in a sustained attention task. Chronically depressed patients (n = 59) showed significantly blunted expression of the ERN in frontocentral and frontal regions, relative to healthy controls (n = 18). Following two weeks of training, the patients (n = 24) in the mindfulness condition showed a significantly increased ERN magnitude in the frontal region, but there were no significant changes in patients who had received a resting control (n = 22). The findings suggest that brief training in mindfulness may help normalize aberrations in the ERN in chronically depressed patients, providing preliminary evidence for the responsiveness of this parameter to mental training.

Aberrant Long-Range Temporal Correlations in Depression Are Attenuated after Psychological Treatment.

The spontaneous oscillatory activity in the human brain shows long-range temporal correlations (LRTC) that extend over time scales of seconds to minutes. Previous research has demonstrated aberrant LRTC in depressed patients; however, it is unknown whether the neuronal dynamics normalize after psychological treatment. In this study, we recorded EEG during eyes-closed rest in depressed patients (N = 71) and healthy controls (N = 25), and investigated the temporal dynamics in depressed patients at baseline, and after attending either a brief mindfulness training or a stress reduction training. Compared to the healthy controls, depressed patients showed stronger LRTC in theta oscillations (4-7 Hz) at baseline. Following the psychological interventions both groups of patients demonstrated reduced LRTC in the theta band. The reduction of theta LRTC differed marginally between the groups, and explorative analyses of separate groups revealed noteworthy topographic differences. A positive relationship between the changes in LRTC, and changes in depressive symptoms was observed in the mindfulness group. In summary, our data show that aberrant temporal dynamics of ongoing oscillations in depressive patients are attenuated after treatment, and thus may help uncover the mechanisms with which psychotherapeutic interventions affect the brain.