Dispositional mindfulness and the attenuation of neural responses to emotional stimuli

Abstract

Considerable research has disclosed how cognitive reappraisals and the modulation of emotional responses promote successful emotion regulation. Less research has examined how the early processing of emotion-relevant stimuli may create divergent emotional response consequences. Mindfulness--a receptive, non-evaluative form of attention--is theorized to foster emotion regulation, and the present study examined whether individual differences in mindfulness would modulate neural responses associated with the early processing of affective stimuli. Focus was on the late positive potential (LPP) of the event-related brain potential to visual stimuli varying in emotional valence and arousal. This study first found, replicating past research, that high arousal images, particularly of an unpleasant type, elicited larger LPP responses. Second, the study found that more mindful individuals showed lower LPP responses to high arousal unpleasant images, even after controlling for trait attentional control. Conversely, two traits contrasting with mindfulness--neuroticism and negative affectivity--were associated with higher LPP responses to high arousal unpleasant images. Finally, mindfulness was also associated with lower LPP responses to motivationally salient pleasant images (erotica). These findings suggest that mindfulness modulates neural responses in an early phase of affective processing, and contribute to understanding how this quality of attention may promote healthy emotional functioning.

Fig. 1

ERP waveforms at electrode site CPz associated with high and low arousal pleasant and unpleasant images and neutral images across a −100 ms (pre-stimulus) to 1000 ms (post-stimulus) recording period.

Fig. 2

Left panel: LPP waveforms at electrode site CPz associated with (A) high arousal unpleasant images and (C) high arousal pleasant images, shown separately for high and low MAAS mindfulness groups, created by median split. In the right panel, scatterplots depict the correlation of MAAS dispositional mindfulness (using centered scores) with the LPP amplitudes elicited by (B) high arousal unpleasant images (r = −0.52, P = 0.002) and (D) high arousal pleasant images (r = −0.25, P = 0.16) at electrode site CPz.