Structural, Functional, and Behavioral Effects of Meditation

描述（由申请人提供）：情绪调节是心理健康的重要组成部分。长期以来，行为疗法一直承认改善情绪调节技能对促进恢复力和治疗心理障碍的重要性。冥想是一种心理训练实践，已成功地应用于培养自我调节情绪的技能，因为它采用了无偏见的当下体验意识。一些实证研究表明，冥想的练习与情绪调节，心理健康和幸福感的改善有关。然而，人们对这些改善背后的神经生物学机制知之甚少。这项随机、对照、纵向研究的目的是确定与冥想练习相关的情绪调节改善的神经机制。90名健康但高度紧张的参与者将被随机分配到一个为期8周的正念减压（MBSR）计划或一个主动控制干预，该干预是专门设计来控制与MBSR相关的非特异性干预效果的。在前-后设计中，参与者将在获取功能性MR图像的同时执行情绪调节任务。我们假设，在课程结束后，正念减压疗法的参与者将表现出更大的改善，神经功能的适应性情绪调节的参与者相比，控制干预。此外，我们将测量灰质形态测量学的变化，以确定MBSR后改善情绪调节的其他神经相关性。我们的发现将有助于阐明冥想干预如何在神经生物学水平上发挥其有益健康的作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotion regulation is an essential component of mental health. Behavioral therapies have long acknowledged the importance of improving emotion regulation skills to promote resilience and to treat psychological disorders. Meditation is one mental training practice that has successfully been applied to cultivate skills in self-regulation of emotion, as it employs the un-biased present moment awareness of experiences. Several empirical studies have demonstrated that practice of meditation is associated with improvements in emotion regulation, mental health and well-being. However, little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie these improvements. The goal of this randomized, controlled, longitudinal study is to identify the neural mechanisms that underlie the improvements in emotion regulation associated with meditation practice. Ninety healthy but highly stressed participants will be randomly assigned to either an eight week Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program or to an active control intervention that has been specifically designed to control for non-specific intervention effects associated with MBSR. In a pre-post design, participants will perform an emotion regulation task while functional MR images are acquired. We hypothesize that after the course, MBSR participants will show greater improvements in neural functions indicative of adaptive emotion regulation compared to participants of the control intervention. Furthermore, we will measure changes in gray matter morphometry in order to determine additional neural correlates of improved emotion regulation following MBSR. Our findings will help elucidate how meditation interventions exert their salubrious effects at the neurobiological level.