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Mindfulness meditation has been reported to produce positive effects on psychological well-being that extend beyond the time the individual is formally meditating. Over the last several decades mindfulness meditation practices have been increasingly incorporated into counseling, medical, and psychotherapeutic programs to take advantage of these benefits. A large body of research has established the efficacy of these mindfulness-based interventions in reducing symptoms of a number of disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and chronic pain, as well as improving well-being and quality of life. Mindfulness meditation involves the development of awareness of present-moment experience with an observational, non-judgmental stance. It has been suggested that this process is associated with a perceptual shift, in which one’s thoughts and feelings are recognized as events occurring in the broader field of awareness.
Neuroimaging studies have begun to explore the neural mechanisms underlying mindfulness meditation practice with techniques such as EEG and functional MRI. Recently, several cross-sectional anatomical MRI studies have demonstrated that experienced meditators exhibit a different gray matter morphometry in multiple brain regions when compared to non-meditating individuals. While most of the brain regions identified have been reported in only one of these studies, the divergent results are likely due to differences in participant characteristics, type of meditation, and data analysis methods. Group differences in the hippocampus and the right anterior insula, however, have each been identified in at least two of the studies. Furthermore, activation in both regions has been reported during meditative states. The hippocampus is known to be critically involved in learning and memory processes, and in the modulation of emotional control, while the insula has been postulated to play a key role in the process of awareness, functions which have been shown to be important in the process and outcomes of mindfulness training.
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Mindfulness Meditation Produces Positive Well-Being