Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA; Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
2 papers in the library · 2 citations · publishing 2025-2026
Attention regulation is a core mechanism of mindfulness meditation. Long-term meditation enhances trait-level improvements in executive attention, sustained attention, orienting, and reduces the attentional blink. Preliminary evidence also shows improvements in response inhibition, alertness, and less mind-wandering. Alertness benefits most from long-term and intensive practice. Attention-based techniques outperform non-attention-based ones, while observe-and-release techniques aid orienting and detection of closely spaced stimuli. These findings suggest that meditation enhances attention according to training specificity, but meditative development is non-linear and multidimensional, requiring balanced cultivation of multiple faculties. Methodological limitations, such as heterogeneous designs and insufficient state-trait differentiation, complicate interpretations.
A meta-analysis of 135 fMRI studies involving 6,391 participants found that youth and adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) show different patterns of brain activation during tasks. Compared to adults with MDD, youth with MDD had distinct activation differences in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). After controlling for illness duration, youth showed less activation than adults with shorter-duration MDD in regions like the sgACC. Among adults, those with longer-duration MDD showed less activation in the dlPFC compared to those with shorter-duration MDD. These results suggest that both age and length of illness matter for understanding brain changes in depression.