Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder

By Philippe R. Goldin, James J. Gross. Emotion, 2010

1,248 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an established program shown to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. MBSR is believed to alter emotional responding by modifying cognitive–affective processes. Given that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by emotional and attentional biases as well as distorted negative self-beliefs, we examined MBSR-related changes in the brain-behavior indices of emotional reactivity and regulation of negative self-beliefs in patients with SAD. Sixteen patients underwent functional MRI while reacting to negative self-beliefs and while regulating negative emotions using 2 types of attention deployment emotion regulation—breath-focused attention and distraction-focused attention. Post-MBSR, 14 patients completed neuroimaging assessments. Compared with baseline, MBSR completers showed improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms and self-esteem. During the breath-focused attention task (but not the distraction-focused attention task), they also showed (a) decreased negative emotion experience, (b) reduced amygdala activity, and (c) increased activity in brain regions implicated in attentional deployment. MBSR training in patients with SAD may reduce emotional reactivity while enhancing emotion regulation. These changes might facilitate reduction in SAD-related avoidance behaviors, clinical symptoms, and automatic emotional reactivity to negative self-beliefs in adults with SAD.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a00e2f31b476bbfff0dddabcb1850d21b549115a

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Citations in the corpus

Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density (2010, background): “Further inclusion criteria were as follows: no meditation classes in the past 6 months, no more than four classes in the past 5 years, or 10 classes in their lifetime; 25 to 55 years old; no contraindications for MRI scanning (i.e., metallic implants, claustrophobia); commitment to attend all eight ”
Affective Disturbance and Psychopathology: An Emotion Regulation Perspective (2013, positive): “More recently, mindfulness-based interventions have been linked with improvements in emotion regulation skills (e.g., Arch & Craske, 2006; Blackledge & Hayes, 2001; Goldin & Gross, 2010; Robins, Keng, Ekblad, & Brantley, 2012; Roemer, Erisman, & Orsillo, 2009).”
Impact of mindfulness on the neural responses to emotional pictures in experienced and beginner meditators (2011, background): “Goldin and Gross (2010) interpreted these results as indicating that mindfulness meditation helps to reduce avoidance-related behavior to threatening stimuli in SAD patients by enhancing the recruitment of brain regions involved in attentional control.”
A randomized controlled trial of compassion cultivation training: Effects on mindfulness, affect, and emotion regulation (2013, neutral): “This study found an increase in mindfulness; other studies have found that mindfulness meditation training may enhance higher order cognitive capacities such as emotion regulation (e.g., Garland et al. 2009; Goldin and Gross 2010).”
Mindfulness-based stress reduction effects on moral reasoning and decision making (2012, background): “…(2010)’s fMRI study found MBSR training to be associated with a reduction in brain responses to anxiety inducing stimuli in brain regions implicated in self-reflection and increased responses in parietal and occipital brain regions associated with attentional engagement (Goldin & Gross, 2010).”
The positive effects of mindfulness on self-esteem (2013, background): “Goldin and Gross (2010) and Goldin, Ramel, and Gross (2009) reported on the effects of a MBSR program for social anxiety disorder.”
Integrating Mindfulness into Positive Psychology: a Randomised Controlled Trial of an Online Positive Mindfulness Program (2016, background): “The practice of mindfulness has been correlated with reduced attentional biases in response to negative stimuli (Goldin and Gross 2010).”
Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity (2011, background): “These outcomes have been associated with changes in basic psychological processes, such as improved attentional focus (20, 21), improved cognitive flexibility (22), reduced affective reactivity (23, 24), and modification or shifts away from a distorted or exaggerated view of oneself (18, 25).”
Contemplating Mindfulness at Work (2016, background): “Mindfulness training has also produced a shorter time to peak arousal in a sample of patients with social anxiety (Goldin & Gross, 2010).”
Mind the Gap in Mindfulness Research: A Comparative Account of the Leading Schools of Thought (2013, background): “Some of the study samples were small (Davis, Fleming, Bonus, & Baker, 2007; Astin, 1997; Cohen-Katz et al., 2005; Goldin & Gross, 2010; Rosenzweig et al., 2007), some did not have an appropriately matched control group or no-treatment group (Tacón et al., 2003; Carlson & Garland, 2005; Beddoe &…”
Contemplative Education: A Systematic, Evidence-Based Review of the effect of Meditation Interventions in Schools (2015, background): “Increased activity in this region may account for the emotional regulation commonly reported as a product of meditation (Fredrickson et al. 2008; Goldin and Gross 2010).”
MINDFULNESS AT WORK (2011, background): “…has suggested that individuals who participated in mindfulness programs reported less ruminative thinking in response to life events (Ramel, Goldin, Carmona, & McQuaid, 2004), even when the events were similar to those experienced by others who had no mindfulness training (Goldin & Gross, 2010).”