My Varela award supported a pilot study based on two case studies of medical students in a Compassion Cultivation Training elective course at Stanford University School of Medicine. Current literature shows that burnout in physicians is prevalent, and is associated with poor health outcomes for both physicians and patients. Burnout is associated with lower levels …
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Difficulties with emotion regulation could be a core mechanism of mood and anxiety disorders. Various meditation-based interventions are found to ameliorate a wide range of psychological problems however, it is crucial to understand how different types of meditation improve emotional abilities to develop structured treatment and preventative protocols for emotional disorders. Based on a commonly …
This Think Tank will convene a team of teaching and mindfulness experts to explore the science, the benefits, and potential risks of using mindfulness as an anti-oppressive pedagogy—an approach that helps students recognize the ways that most people are variously privileged and oppressed, understanding how both relations perpetuate suffering for others and for oneself. The …
Contemplative teachings highlight the benefit of mindfulness practice to the practitioner and to those with whom they interact, yet very few studies on meditation to date have explored whether meditation training improves social interactions and relationships. Examining effects on emotion regulation in social contexts may be key to understanding meditation’s social consequences, for at least …
The proposed research aims to derive individual neural characteristics from data-driven analysis of resting state fMRI to predict the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training on fear extinction and stress reduction. This project aims to capture the individual variability in the amplitudes of spontaneous brain activity and neural network properties, and relate such variability …
Elevated stress can exacerbate cancer symptom severity, and after completion of primary cancer treatments, many individuals continue to have significant distress. Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery (MBCR) is an 8-week group psychosocial intervention consisting of training in mindfulness meditation and yoga designed to mitigate stress, pain, and chronic illness. Efficacy research shows face-to-face (F2F) MBCR programs have …
Continue reading “The eCALM Study: eTherapy for Cancer AppLying Mindfulness”
Chronic pain and depression are common diseases and result in intense suffering and form a huge burden for society. They are difficult to treat, especially when occurring together. We studied the effectiveness of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) to alleviate pain and depressions in patients suffering from both chronic pain and active depression. Furthermore, we …
Skill and competency in emotion regulation are crucial to well-being and mental health. Research has shown that contemplative practices like meditation may help people decrease stress and increase well-being. However, few studies have examined the impact of such practices on the ability to regulate emotion. Moreover, certain practices may be more suited for some people …
It is well-established that the practice of mindfulness meditation leads to improved emotion regulation as well as to changes in brain structure, but relatively little is known about the relationship between these changes. Brain regions found to be impacted by mindfulness training include the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala. Interestingly, there is …
Emotional reactivity, the negative response to stress, is a rare predictor of relapse risk following recovery from MDD. ‘Trait’ mindfulness, the tendency to non-judgmentally engage with experience, has been linked to lower levels of emotional reactivity in a community sample, and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has shown initial promise in reducing the risk of depressive …
Continue reading “How mindfulness impacts selective attention during emotional challenge”
