Dispositional mindfulness and depressive symptomatology: Correlations with limbic and self-referential neural activity during rest.

• DOI: 10.1037/a0018312
• Publication Date: 2010-02-08T22:54:52Z
• Authors: Baldwin M. Way; J. David Creswell; Naomi I. Eisenberger; Matthew D. Lieberman
• Keywords: Reactivity; Depression

To better understand the relationship between mindfulness and depression, we studied normal young adults (n = 27) who completed measures of dispositional depressive symptomatology, which were then correlated with (a) rest: resting neural activity during passive viewing a fixation cross, relative to simple goal-directed task (shape-matching); (b) reactivity: reactivity negative emotional faces, same shape-matching task. Dispositional was negatively in self-referential processing areas, whereas symptomatology positively similar areas. In addition, amygdala, bilaterally, right amygdala. Similarly, when amygdala mindfulness, an effect that largely attributable differences activity. These findings indicate is associated intrinsic changes could be potential mechanism by mindfulness-based depression treatments elicit therapeutic improvement.