Mechanisms of mindfulness meditation

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Four components of

Attention regulation is the task of focusing attention on an object, acknowledging any distractions, and then returning your focus back to the object. Some evidence for mechanisms responsible for attention regulation during mindfulness meditation are shown below.

• Mindfulness meditators showed greater activation of rostral
  medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC).^[6] This suggests that meditators have a stronger processing of conflict/distraction and are more engaged in emotional regulation. However, as the meditators become more efficient at focused attention, regulation becomes unnecessary and consequentially decreases activation of ACC in the long term.^[7]
• The cortical thickness in the dorsal ACC was also found to be greater in the
  gray matter of experienced meditators.^[8]
• There is an increased frontal midline theta rhythm, which is related to attention demanding tasks and is believed to be indicative of ACC activation.^[9] High midline theta rhythm has been associated with lowest anxiety score in the Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS), the highest score in the extrovertive scale of the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) and the lowest score in the neurotic scale of MPI.^[10]

The ACC detects conflicting information coming from distractions. When a person is presented with a conflicting stimulus, the brain initially processes the stimulus incorrectly. This is known as

Body awareness refers to focusing on an object/task within the body such as breathing. From a qualitative interview with ten mindfulness meditators, some of the following responses were observed: "When I'm walking, I deliberately notice the sensations of my body moving" and "I notice how foods and drinks affect my thoughts, bodily sensations, and emotions”.^[12] The two possible mechanisms by which a mindfulness meditator can experience body awareness are discussed below.

• Meditators showed a greater cortical thickness
  gray matter concentration in the right anterior insula.^[14]
• On the contrary, subjects who had undergone 8 weeks of mindfulness training showed no significant change in gray matter concentration of the insula, but rather an increase
  temporo-parietal junction.^[15]

Emotions can be regulated cognitively or behaviorally. Cognitive regulation (in terms of mindfulness meditation) means having control over giving attention to a particular stimuli or by changing the response to that stimuli. The cognitive change is achieved through

• Mindfulness meditation regulates emotions via increased activation of the dorso-medial PFC and rostral ACC.^[6]
• Increased activation of the ventrolateral PFC can regulate emotion by decreasing the activity of the amygdala.^[18][19][20] This was also predicted by a study that observed the effect of a person's mood/attitude during mindfulness on brain activation.^[21]

Pain is known to activate the following regions of the brain: the

• Brown and Jones found that mindfulness meditation decreased pain anticipation in the right parietal cortex and mid-cingulate cortex. Mindfulness meditation also increased the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and ventromedial-prefrontal cortex (vm-PFC). Since the vm-PFC is involved in inhibiting emotional responses to stimuli, anticipation to pain was concluded to be reduced by cognitive and emotional control.[25]
• Another study by Grant revealed that meditators showed greater activation of insula, thalamus, and mid-cingulate cortex while a lower activation of the regions responsible for emotion control (medial-PFC, OFC, and amygdala). Meditators were believed to be in a mental state that allowed them to pay close attention to the sensory input from the stimuli and simultaneously inhibit any appraisal or emotional reactivity.^[8]

Brown and Jones found that meditators showed no difference in pain sensitivity but rather the anticipation in pain. However, Grant's research showed that meditators experienced lower sensitivity to pain. These conflicting studies illustrate that the exact mechanism may vary with the expertise level or meditation technique.^[24]

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