Spiritual components of mindfulness. Research projects pertaining to mindfulness routinely fail to leave out the spiritual qualities that are elicited by mindfulness practice. Kabat-Zinn (2005) noted that as one engages in meditation, one might come to experience spiritual-like activities. For instance, they may come to realize more of the interconnectedness that exists in relation to people in that they may realize that things do not occur in isolation and that events are also connected to one another. Mindfulness also allows one to realize that experience and interactions occur in an ephemeral nature which places an emphasis on the present moment’s importance. Furthermore, in Buddhist philosophy Karmic reactions are thought to be based on the notion that events are connected to preceding events and every event that occurs thus has a preceding causal factor. Thus, it is thought that new karmas can be formulated only within the context of the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). Kabat-Zinn also speculated that mindfulness is something that can free individuals from their thought processes.
Neuropsychological benefits of mindfulness. There have been a multitude of neuropsychological benefits that have been affiliated with mindfulness practice. Particularly, Davidson et al. (2003) described that mindfulness increases ability to use the prefrontal cortex to turn off stress responses stemming from the limbic system and fight or flight mechanisms (as cited in Gehart & McCollum, 2008). Davidson et al. further noted that mindfulness as a practice heightens both an individual’s ability to engage in mood regulation and positive affect (as cited in Gehart & McCollum, 2008). Hanson (2013) described that individuals who partake in mindfulness meditation exhibit increased gray matter, which means that they have a thicker cortex in these regions: the prefrontal areas that are behind the forehead that are responsible for attentional control, the insula which is used to focus attention on oneself or another, and the hippocampal region. Hanson also advocated that there is a process that occurs in one’s brain which is referred to as experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Hanson stated that this process entails experience delving into the genes of atoms that are in the DNA in the nuclei of neurons and in turn alters how these operate. For example, if one engages in relaxation on a regular basis, this leads to an increase in activity, which in turn assists in calming down reaction to stress and makes individuals more resilient to stress when they are exposed to it (Hanson, 2013). Hanson additionally asserted that individuals can reshape their tendency to experience anxiety or depression through using mindfulness compassion to focus on activities they have completed or feelings and physical sensations that are based in pleasure.
Another study undertaken by Chiesa and Serretti (2009) involved a literature search to determine if there was evidence of neurobiological changes after mindfulness meditation practice in subjects afflicted with psychiatric disorders, physical illness, and healthy individuals. The results of this study indicated with electroencephalographic studies that an increase in alpha and theta activity occurs during meditation. Chiesa and Serretti further determined that mindfulness meditation practice facilitated activation of the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. Additionally, long-term practice in meditation was affiliated with enhanced cerebral areas in relation to attention (Chiesa & Serretti, 2009). Chiesa and Serretti found that MBCT is primarily effective at reducing relapse in depression in patients who had experienced three or more episodes of depression.
Farb et al. (2010) also examined the utility of mindfulness training by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on individuals in order to compare the neural reactivity in individuals exposed to sadness after completing the 8-week mindfulness training program versus control individuals on a waitlist. The mindfulness- training group demonstrated equal sadness on a self-report basis but simultaneously exhibited greater recruitment on the right lateral side in addition to somatosensory and visceral areas affiliated with bodily sensation. Strong somatic recruitment in the mindfulness training group was also affiliated with decreased scores in relation to depression. Hence, Farb et al.’s study advocated that mindfulness may reduce proclivity to dysphoric reactivity through the restoration of neural networks in the brain that are sensory and affective based. A potential limitation of this study is that sadness was determined through self-report, which is highly subjective and variable between participants. As opposed to using this subjective method, it would be ideal to utilize empirically validated psychometric tests in subsequent studies.
Another study was conducted by Engstrom and Soderfeldt (2010) on a Tibetan Buddhist named B.L. who had engaged in many years of practice of compassion meditation. When examined with fMRI he was requested to engage in a compassion meditation where he was asked to formulate feelings of love and compassion while simultaneously reciting a mantra. With the aim of understanding the neuropsychology of an individual who had been immersed in meditation for a lengthy period, they found that activation occurred in the left medial prefrontal cortex and extended along to the region of the anterior cingulate gyrus. The left midbrain was also activated near the hypothalamic region. Overall, Engstrom and Soderfeldt deduced that compassion meditation helps to activate brain regions affiliated with empathy and happiness including the anterior cingulate gyrus and the left medial prefrontal cortex. A limitation of this study is that there was only one participant included, which limits generalizability.
Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, and Goolkasian (2010) conducted a study to determine the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training in relation to sustainability in attentive processes. After four sessions of training in meditation or listening to a book that had been recorded, individuals with no previous meditation training were assessed in relation to mood, fluency of a verbal quality, visual coding, and working memory. These interventions were shown to both be effective at augmenting mood, but only brief meditation training was able to reduce fatigue and anxiety and to augment levels of mindfulness in the individual. Brief mindfulness training also was shown to increase visuo-spatial processing, executive functioning processes, and working memory. As well, brief meditative practice was shown to help individuals sustain attention, which is a phenomenon that had previously been observed only in individuals who engaged in longer forms of meditation (Zeidan et al., 2010).
Moore, Gruber, Derose, and Malinowski (2012) examined the hypothesis that practicing brief mindfulness training on a regular basis can contribute to improvements in regulation of attentive processes in addition to facilitating change in brain activity relating to attention control. In their study, a randomized control group study was used on a longitudinal basis for EEG in which 40 individuals with no previous meditation experience were placed on a wait list or in a meditation group. The meditation group received three hours of training in mindfulness. Twenty-eight individuals were included in the final analysis portion. Moore and his colleagues found that subjects who practiced meditation improved in their ability to focus attentive resources in the left and right posterior sites. As well, meditation practice reduced the recruiting of resources during the process of object recognition. Overall, the results of this study indicate that mindfulness meditation allows for greater efficiency in allocation of cognitive resources during practice, which in turn leads to improvement in relation to self-regulatory processes of attentive quality (Moore et al., 2012). A limitation of this study was subject attrition, as only 28 of the 40 participants completed the training.
Lazar et al. (2000) described meditation as a mental process that creates a physiological change in the body that is called the relaxation response. In this study, Lazar and his colleagues used fMRI to determine the brain regions that were active during simplistic forms of meditation. Increases in the brain regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in addition to the parietal cortex, hippocampal and parahippocampal region, temporal lobe, striatum, and pre- and post-central gyri were activated during the course of meditation. Overall, the results of this study indicated that practicing meditation activates structures of a neural basis that are involved in attentive and control processes within the autonomic nervous system (Lazar et al., 2000).
An additional benefit of mindfulness is the ability to foster neuroplasticity in the brain. Flowers (2009) maintained that research by Dr. Richard Davidson and his colleagues (2003) showed that the brain grows and changes throughout one’s life. Moreover, Flowers noted that the Davidson et al. study also demonstrated that individuals continue to grow neurons and that emotions also powerfully influence the process of neuronal growth and modification in the brain. Flowers further noted that the results of the study by the Davidson team indicated that parts of the brain affiliated with positive emotions and moods were more active in individuals who had practiced mindfulness meditation for a long time. Davidson and his team also found that some individuals have more of a tendency to experiencing joy, but they also noted the brain is plastic in being able to mold this process (Flowers, 2009). Davidson et al. (2003) noted that attentional training also can change and mold the brain so that individuals experience more positivity (as cited in Flowers, 2009).
To further understand the biological processes affiliated with changes in physical or mental health in accordance with meditation, Davidson et al. (2003) conducted a second randomized controlled study to investigate the effects of meditation on brain and immune system functioning. The participants were healthy employees within a work environment. There were 25 subjects in the meditation group and 16 control group participants on a wait list who were tested at the same time as the individuals engaging in meditation. Brain electrical activity was measured before, immediately after, and 4 months after the 8-week mindfulness meditation program. They observed that significant increases to left-sided anterior activation were present in the individuals who engaged in meditation as opposed to those who did not. This activation pattern is one that is affiliated with positive affect. There also was an increase in antibody concentration to the influenza vaccine administered amongst individuals in the meditation group as compared to those in the control group. The amount of increase in the left-side activation of the brain also was affiliated with the amount of concentration of antibody increase in affiliation with the vaccine. Thus, the overall findings of the study were said to show that engaging in mindfulness meditation in an 8-week program had positive effects on the brain and immune functioning (Davidson et al., 2013). A limitation of this study was the relatively small sample size of the study, which may limit its generalizability. Additionally, the individuals in this study were healthy individuals from a work environment, but generally, in other studies of mindfulness-based interventions, the participants have been individuals with psychopathologies such as anxiety or depression. Hence, the result of the study by the Davidson team may not be generalizable to individuals with psychopathologies.
Barnhofer et al. (2009) sought to replicate the Davidson et al. (2003) study. Barnhofer et al. included 22 patients who had experienced a depressive episode previously as well as suicidal ideation (as cited in Segal et al., 2013). The participants in this study were currently symptomatic in relation to their depressive episodes at the time of the study. The patients were randomly assigned to one of two conditions and received either MBCT combined with their regular treatment or their normal treatment solely (Segal et al., 2013). The results of their EEGs indicated that both of these groups demonstrated equivalent amounts of left and right sided frontal activation before treatment (Segal et al., 2013). However, over the program of 8 weeks, the normal care group demonstrated a decline in relation to the activation levels and some MBCT patients maintained their pretreatment activation levels (Segal et al., 2013). Self-reported depressive symptoms also decreased from severe to mild levels in the MBCT group, but no significant change was observed for those in the treatment as usual group (Barnhofer et al., 2009). The number of patients who met full criteria in relation to depression also decreased significantly for the MBCT participants but not those in the treatment as usual group (Barnhofer et al., 2009). The results of Barnhofer et al.’s study indicated that mental training changed the brain and also contributed to the regulation of emotion (Segal et al., 2013). A limitation of this study was the small sample size, which may create issues of generalizability.
Lazar et al. (2005) conducted a study using fMRI in order to determine cortical thickness in relation to 20 participants with extensive experience with insight meditation. They found that regions in the brain that were responsible for attentive processes, interoception, and processing of a sensory nature were thicker in participants who engaged in meditation as opposed to the control group. Specifically, they found that the prefrontal cortex, in addition to the right anterior insula, was thicker in these individuals. The prefrontal cortex thickness also was noted to be the most pronounced in individuals who were of an older age group, which is suggestive of the notion that meditation can offset cortical thinning that occurs with age. The thickness affiliated with these brain regions also was correlated with experience in meditation. This study thus demonstrates a cortical plasticity that is experience dependent in affiliation with meditation practice (Lazar et al., 2005). A potential limitation of this study is the sample size.
Holzel et al. (2011) tested individuals who had no experience with meditation prior to and after an 8-week MBSR program in comparison to a control group that was on a wait-list basis (as cited in Segal et al., 2013). Holzel et al. found that even though the study was conducted over this short time period, there was cortical thickening that occurred within the left hippocampal region, posterior cingulate, and temporoparietal junction (as cited in Segal et al., 2013). These brain regions are responsible for processing of a self-related nature, emotional learning, and memory (Segal et al., 2013).
Farb et al.’s (2007) study utilized a fMRI which measures the brain activity that an individual experiences while engaged in tasks of a mental nature (as cited in Segal et al., 2013). The participants were asked queries that pertained to self-descriptive adjectives when they were exposed to the fMRI (Segal et al., 2013). The questions were designed to reflect either a narrative and analytic mode or an experiential or concrete mode (Segal et al., 2013). The results demonstrated that individuals trained in mindfulness exhibited significant reductions in relation to the medial prefrontal cortex in addition to an increase in the right lateralized network that comprised the lateral prefrontal cortex and viscerosomatic areas, such as the insula, the secondary somatosensory cortex, and additionally the inferior parietal lobule (Segal et al., 2013). Furthermore, it was ascertained that for those who underwent the mindfulness program there was an uncoupling of the right insula and the medial prefrontal cortex (Segal et al., 2013). The coupling of these two brain regions suggests that when individuals commence mindfulness they are likely to focus on thoughts about the self, whereas after exposure to mindfulness training they are likely to focus their attention on bodily experience without an activation of stories about the self occurring (Segal et al., 2013). This research was fundamental in demonstrating that an uncoupling of narrative and experiential self-awareness modes can occur through mindfulness training (Segal et al., 2013). Reductions in reactivity can occur as a result of this cognizant awareness of this decoupling (Segal et al., 2013).
