Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation: Insights from Neurobiological, Psychological, and Clinical Studies.

Simón Guendelman,Hagen Rampes,Sebastián Medeiros

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00220

Abstract

There is increasing interest in the beneficial clinical effects of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Research has demonstrated their efficacy in a wide range of psychological conditions characterized by emotion dysregulation. Neuroimaging studies have evidenced functional and structural changes in a myriad of brain regions mainly involved in attention systems, emotion regulation, and self-referential processing. In this article we review studies on psychological and neurobiological correlates across different empirically derived models of research, including dispositional mindfulness, mindfulness induction, MBIs, and expert meditators in relation to emotion regulation. From the perspective of recent findings in the neuroscience of emotion regulation, we discuss the interplay of top-down and bottom-up emotion regulation mechanisms associated with different mindfulness models. From a phenomenological and cognitive perspective, authors have argued that mindfulness elicits a “mindful emotion regulation” strategy; however, from a clinical perspective, this construct has not been properly differentiated from other strategies and interventions within MBIs. In this context we propose the distinction between top-down and bottom-up mindfulness based emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, we propose an embodied emotion regulation framework as a multilevel approach for understanding psychobiological changes due to mindfulness meditation regarding its effect on emotion regulation. Finally, based on clinical neuroscientific evidence on mindfulness, we open perspectives and dialogues regarding commonalities and differences between MBIs and other psychotherapeutic strategies for emotion regulation.

Highlights

A self-narrative focus engaged major activation in the left ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), dMPFC, and PCC, all midline regions that mainly correspond with the default mode network (DMN) (Farb et al, 2007). These studies indicate a different engagement of brain regions during emotion regulation; both groups displayed topdown mechanisms linked to explicit emotion regulation systems, only the mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) groups employed regions related to emotion reactivity (AI, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)), interoception (AI) and somatosensory awareness (SSC, inferior parietal lobule (IPL))
We argue that there is support for the claim that mindfulness practice changes the bottom-up emotion regulation systems, this effect diverges across different empirical models dispositional mindfulness, mindfulness inductions, MBIs and expert meditators (EMs) studies
As we have reviewed in this paper, both emotion systems participate in the generation and expression of emotional states (Ochsner et al, 2009; McRae et al, 2012), at the same time, both are engaged in the regulation of internal homeostatic states and expressive somatic-motor responses (Frank et al, 2014; Kohn et al, 2014; Etkin et al, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

In this article we review studies on psychological and neurobiological correlates across different empirically derived models of research, including dispositional mindfulness, mindfulness induction, MBIs, and expert meditators in relation to emotion regulation. Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Longitudinal Studies on Emotion, Pain, and Anxiety Over the last few years, longitudinal studies using fMRI have used a myriad of experimental tasks investigating emotion regulation changes secondary to MBIs. Farb et al studied the impact of MBSR using fMRI under a sadness induction paradigm.

Results

Conclusion