Neurophysiological evidences of the transient effects of mindfulness induction on emotional processing in children: An ERP study

Abstract

Mindfulness has been shown to improve mental health through adaptive responses during emotional processing. Although the benefits of mindfulness and the corresponding neural correlates have been demonstrated in adults, little is known about the impact of mindfulness on pre-adolescent children. The present study examined the influence of mindfulness induction on electrocortical responses during emotional processing in pre-adolescent children. Electroencephalograms were recorded from 35 pre-adolescent children; 18 children (Mage = 10.44 years) were randomly assigned to a mindfulness induction group and 17 children were randomly assigned to a control group (Mage = 9.88 years). Group differences in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) associated with the processing of positive, negative and neutral stimuli were analysed. The P1, N2 and late positive potentials (LPPs) were compared between the mindfulness induction group and the control group. The amplitude of the P1 was smaller in the mindfulness induction group compared to the control group under both the negative and neutral conditions. For both groups, the amplitude of the N2 was larger during the presentation of negative stimuli compared to both positive and neutral stimuli. Additionally, the LPP 600–1000 and LPP 1000–1500 were smaller in the mindfulness induction group than in the control group. The presented findings suggest that the impacts of mindfulness during emotional processing are reflected by both bottom-up (evidenced by the early ERP components) and top-down (evidenced by the later ERP components) processes. These results indicate that mindfulness modulates emotional responses in pre-adolescent children and thus has important implications in training and clinical practices.