The objective of present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a primary prevention program—“Mindfulness Education” (ME)—a classroom-based program designed to foster children’s mindful awareness, psychological well-being, and social-emotional competencies. This study will provide an examination of multiple areas of functioning—cognitive, affective, behavioural, interpersonal and physiological through the collection of data from multiple-informants (self-reports, peer …
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Fellow Spotlight: Norm Farb
In this month’s Fellow Spotlight we are pleased to share the work of Norman Farb, Associate Professor of Psychology and Principal Investigator of the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Norm studies the social neuroscience of the self and human emotion, with a focus on how biases in self-representation shape emotions to determine …
Varieties of Contemplative Experience
The Contemplative Development Mapping Project (CDMP) is a group of scholars, scientists, and practitioners who are personally and professionally committed to enriching our understanding of contemplative practices and experiences. This interdisciplinary “think tank” is comprised of researchers from a range of disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience and religious studies. By integrating first-person, second-person, …
Mindfulness-based interventions for depression: Possible neurophysiological mechanisms
Previous studies have indicated that mindfulness and other forms of meditation training are associated with improvements in sleep quality. However, none of these studies used objective polysomnographic sleep recordings. The aim of this study was to examine whether mindfulness meditation was associated with improvements in objectively measured sleep, according to polysomnography (PSG), and to relate …
Mindfulness meditation for social anxiety disorder: Examining the neural and psychological mechanisms of therapeutic change
There is a growing interest in the application of mindfulness techniques for modulating one’s relationship to ongoing mental experience. However, there is need for detailed empirical investigations using experimental paradigms to address (a) whether mindfulness training works, (b) how it affects emotional reactivity and regulation, (c) what neural systems are modulated by training in mindfulness …
Cultivating Emotional Balance Classroom Project
Daily teachers are confronted with challenging child behaviors that provoke their emotional reactivity and result in stress that may affect the classroom climate and the pupils’ learning (Emmer, 1994; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). Although teachers’ emotionally-related behavior may have powerful effects on the social and emotional development of their pupils (Hamre & Pianta, 2001), few …
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Effects of mindfulness meditation training on attentional control in neutral and emotional contexts
Mindfulness has been defined as a quality of “enhanced attention to and awareness of current experience or present reality” (p. 822, Brown & Ryan, 2003). Studies of mindfulness-based interventions have shown beneficial effects on well-being–both physical and psychological. However, few studies have addressed the mechanisms underlying these effects—using an experimental approach with conditions that control …
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, well-being and immune changes among rheumatoid arthritis patients
Within a randomized, waitlist-controlled study of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) among rheumatoid arthritis patients, we evaluated treatment effect on immune parameters c-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin(IL)-6, IL-10 and transforming growth factor-beta-1 (TGF), the relation between depressive symptoms and well-being and immune parameters, and relation to meditation practice. 63 patients were randomized to 8-week MBSR or control. …
Mindfulness meditation for reduction of smoking craving: An fMRI investigation
For quitting smokers, there are myriad threats to abstinence. Mindfulness may either diminish perceived craving or increase tolerance of craving. Each of these scenarios may be reflected in the activation of different neural systems (the former by decreased activation of areas in the mesolimbic reward system associated with craving, and the latter by increased activation …
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Healing Through Gratitude: Buddhist Theories of Mind and Self-Transformation in the Japanese Contemplative Practice of Naikan
Naikan is a Japanese contemplative practice that was derived and secularized from a Buddhist self-cultivation method. Naikan means “inner-looking” or “introspection.” The practice focuses on recalling the kindness that one has received from others, what one has given in return, and the trouble one has caused others. Unlike some other approaches, such as mainstream psychotherapies, …
