Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on emotion regulation in social anxiety disorder.

Abstract

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an established program shown to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. MBSR is believed to alter emotional responding by modifying cognitive–affective processes. Given that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by emotional and attentional biases as well as distorted negative self-beliefs, we examined MBSR-related changes in the brain-behavior indices of emotional reactivity and regulation of negative self-beliefs in patients with SAD. Sixteen patients underwent functional MRI while reacting to negative self-beliefs and while regulating negative emotions using 2 types of attention deployment emotion regulation—breath-focused attention and distraction-focused attention. Post-MBSR, 14 patients completed neuroimaging assessments. Compared with baseline, MBSR completers showed improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms and self-esteem. During the breath-focused attention task (but not the distraction-focused attention task), they also showed (a) decreased negative emotion experience, (b) reduced amygdala activity, and (c) increased activity in brain regions implicated in attentional deployment. MBSR training in patients with SAD may reduce emotional reactivity while enhancing emotion regulation. These changes might facilitate reduction in SAD-related avoidance behaviors, clinical symptoms, and automatic emotional reactivity to negative self-beliefs in adults with SAD.

Interpersonal early‐life trauma alters amygdala connectivity and sustained attention performance

“…Their findings showed that healthy participants displayed greater activity of the parahippocampal region compared to individuals with PTSD when contrasting the No‐Go and Go trials. While this suggests that increased activity of the parahippocampal region is beneficial for cognitive performance, other studies have shown that stress may affect the activity of this region and that therapies can help decrease its reactivity (Goldin & Gross, 2010). Thus, the overall activity of this region may fluctuate significantly with the level of stress experienced and the type of task used to probe its behavior.…”

Neural Function Before and After Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in Anxious Adolescents at Risk for Developing Bipolar Disorder

“…To date, one study examined a related mindfulness-based therapy (i.e., mindfulness-based stress reduction [MBSR]) and found that in adults with social phobia (n = 16) -in whom amygdala activation is increased compared with healthy subjects -10 weeks of MBSR was associated with decreased amygdala activation (Goldin and Gross 2010). Finally, a study of adults with bipolar disorder (n = 23), observed that improvements in anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with increased, posttreatment activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex, and found a relationship between activation in the medial prefrontal cortex and increases in mindfulness (Ives-Deliperi et al 2013).…”

Short-Form Mindfulness Training Protects Against Working Memory Degradation over High-Demand Intervals

“…In addition to recent clinical interest in MT, a literature on MT's neural effects has emerged (see Fox et al 2014Fox et al , 2016. Theoretical accounts suggest that the health-related benefits and neural correlates of MT are tied to functional improvements in cognitive processing that result from regular engagement in MT practices (Creswell 2017;Goldin and Gross 2010;Lutz et al 2015).…”