Mindfulness Emotion Regulation: Exploring the Neurocognitive Mechanisms behind Mindfulness

Description

The purpose of this paper is to review some of the psychological and neural mechanisms behindmindfulness practice in orderto explore the unique factors that account for its positive impact on emotional regulation and health. After reviewing themechanisms of mindfulness and its effects on clinical populations we will consider how the practice of mindfulness contributesto the regulation of emotions.We argue that mindfulness has achieved effective outcomes in the treatment of anxiety, depression,and other psychopathologies through the contribution of mindfulness to emotional regulation.We consider the unique factors thatmindfulness meditation brings to the process of emotion regulation that may account for its effectiveness.We review experimentalevidence that points towards the unique effects of mindfulness specifically operating over and above the regulatory effects ofcognitive reappraisal mechanisms. A neuroanatomical circuit that leads to mindful emotion regulation is also suggested.This paperthereby aims to contribute to proposed models of mindfulness for research and theory building by proposing a specific model forthe unique psychological and neural processes involved in mindful detachment that account for the effects of mindfulness over andabove the effects accounted for by other well-established emotional regulation processes such as cognitive reappraisal.