Psychophysiology
May 1, 2025
Isaac N Treves, Anna O Tierney, Simon B Goldberg et al.
5 citations
A breath-counting task designed to measure mindfulness in adults was tested in 78 adolescents with high rumination. The task showed fair reliability but did not correlate positively with self-reported mindfulness, either as a trait or in daily life. Unexpectedly, more mindful adolescents performed worse on breath counting, and the task showed negative correlations with observing emotions and body sensations and with nonreactivity. Breath-counting performance was also unrelated to clinical, personality, and executive functioning measures. The findings indicate that, in this population, breath counting may measure only a narrow form of sustained attention and may not capture broader mindfulness qualities or have predictive validity.
Brain imaging and behavior
April 1, 2025
Jovan Jande, Isaac N Treves, Samantha L Ely et al.
4 citations
A systematic narrative review of neuroimaging studies on mindfulness-based interventions in youth (ages 5–18) found that such interventions may alter brain connectivity and activity. Analyzing 13 studies with 467 participants, most used a pre-post design with resting-state fMRI. Consistent patterns included increased functional connectivity within and between the salience, frontoparietal, and default mode networks, enhancements in white matter microstructure, and decreased default mode network activation with heightened salience network reactivity during mindfulness practice. These changes may support self-regulation and cognitive control, but methodological variability and small sample sizes limit generalizability.
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
February 5, 2025
Isaac N Treves, Aaron K Kucyi, Anna O Tierney et al.
1 citation
During a breath-counting task, 72 adolescents showed increased static connectivity within attention-direction and orienting networks and anticorrelations between attention networks and the default mode network compared to rest. Dynamic connectivity analysis revealed four distinct brain states, including one anticorrelated with the default mode network that was proportionally more present during the task. Brain state markers distinguished breathing tasks from rest and momentary on-task from off-task attention, but no brain states reflected between-individual behavioral variability.
Behaviour research and therapy
April 1, 2025
Nur Hani Zainal, Christian A Webb, Lauren S Hallion
A proof-of-concept study with 40 high-worry adults (80% with an anxiety disorder) tested whether features of worry predict which cognitive strategy works best to regulate it. Participants rated their worries on five dimensions and tried mindful acceptance, focused attention meditation, or thought suppression during brain scanning. The preregistered hypotheses were not supported, but exploratory analyses showed that mindfulness-based strategies were more effective than thought suppression for worries rated as more uncontrollable. The authors call for larger studies with more varied perseverative thoughts.