Brief mindfulness training enhances cognitive control in socioemotional contexts: Behavioral and neural evidence

Adult Male 6.6 Psychological and behavioural Adolescent General Science & Technology Science Biological Psychology Clinical Trials and Supportive Activities Emotions Basic Behavioral and Social Science Young Adult 03 medical and health sciences Cognition 0302 clinical medicine Clinical Research Behavioral and Social Science Psychology Humans Clinical and Health Psychology Research Q Neurosciences R Evaluation of treatments and therapeutic interventions Electroencephalography Middle Aged Facial Expression Mental Health Medicine Mental health Female Self Report Mind and Body Mindfulness Cognitive and Computational Psychology Research Article
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219862 Publication Date: 2019-07-19T17:32:42Z
ABSTRACT
In social contexts, the dynamic nature of others' emotions places unique demands on attention and emotion regulation. Mindfulness, characterized by heightened and receptive moment-to-moment attending, may be well-suited to meet these demands. In particular, mindfulness may support more effective cognitive control in social situations via efficient deployment of top-down attention. To test this, a randomized controlled study examined effects of mindfulness training (MT) on behavioral and neural (event-related potentials [ERPs]) responses during an emotional go/no-go task that tested cognitive control in the context of emotional facial expressions that tend to elicit approach or avoidance behavior. Participants (N = 66) were randomly assigned to four brief (20 min) MT sessions or to structurally equivalent book learning control sessions. Relative to the control group, MT led to improved discrimination of facial expressions, as indexed by d-prime, as well as more efficient cognitive control, as indexed by response time and accuracy, and particularly for those evidencing poorer discrimination and cognitive control at baseline. MT also produced better conflict monitoring of behavioral goal-prepotent response tendencies, as indexed by larger No-Go N200 ERP amplitudes, and particularly so for those with smaller No-Go amplitude at baseline. Overall, findings are consistent with MT's potential to enhance deployment of early top-down attention to better meet the unique cognitive and emotional demands of socioemotional contexts, particularly for those with greater opportunity for change. Findings also suggest that early top-down attention deployment could be a cognitive mechanism correspondent to the present-oriented attention commonly used to explain regulatory benefits of mindfulness more broadly.
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