Abstract
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.
Highlights
Meditation practices have become a popular and widely investigated psychotherapeutic technique and form of general health promotion
For the 49 potentially relevant articles, two reviewers read the whole paper and excluded 38 for the following reasons: did not include emotional stimuli (3); did not assess neural responses during exposure to emotional stimuli (1); did not assess the actual meditation practice (3); did not use visual negative emotional stimuli (10); did not analyze visual negative stimuli (2); used interventions that were complemented by psychotherapeutic techniques (4); assessed compassion meditation (9); did not have a control group (4); comprised data already included (1); and comprised a protocol study (1)
Emotional Reactivity Results All experimental studies used an intervention based on mindfulness, and most used paradigms that assessed reactivity, that is, participants were not instructed to regulate the processing of emotional stimuli but react to them
Summary
Meditation practices have become a popular and widely investigated psychotherapeutic technique and form of general health promotion. From both traditional and scientific perspectives, there is a well-established diversity in meditation practices, which can vary according to the mental procedure they use (e.g., orientation, visualization, recitation, focusing on body movement, generating feelings), the way these procedures are used (e.g., effortlessly, actively, internally, guided), and the phenomena to which the mental activity is directed (e.g., thoughts, images, concepts, part of the body, sensation, deity) (Lutz et al, 2015; Guendelman et al, 2017) In addition to these variances, there has been great debate concerning the cognitive mechanisms underlying these practices. 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
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
