Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Yogic Meditative Practitioners
Sustained Modulation of Electrical Brain Potentials
Abstract
Recently, there is a growing interest in meditation as an attentional and emotional regulatory strategy. To examine whether meditative practice is associated with successful emotion regulation, we examined the neurophysiological correlates of cognitive reappraisal in practitioners of a yogic meditative technique and controls. Participants were presented aversive pictures and were asked to cognitively change their appraisal of the affective meaning of the pictures by coming up with an alternative more positive interpretation of each picture. We found reduced magnitude of Event-Related Potentials (P300 and early time intervals of the late positive potential, LPP) following cognitive reappraisal of aversive pictures in both groups. However, in the yogic group, reduced magnitude was sustained during the later intervals of the LPP, while it subsided in the control group. Moreover, reduced amplitude of the late LPP correlated positively with experience of the technique. Results suggest a relation between yogic meditative practice and sustained attenuation of emotional response following emotion regulation. Increased positive affect and familiarity with cognitive emotion regulation in the yogic group may explain this effect. Whether this is a direct causal effect of the practice or can be attributed to characteristics of the participants that preexisted the training needs further examination in a randomized longitudinal study.
References
(2005). Impact of regular meditation practice on EEG activity at rest and during evoked negative emotions. International Journal of Neuroscience, 115, 893–909.
(2008). Emotion regulation and anxiety disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22, 211–221.
(2010). Theta activity and meditative states: Spectral changes during concentrative meditation. Cognitive Processing, 11, 31–38.
(2003). Electrophysiologic evaluation of Sudarshan Kriya: An EEG, BAER, P300 study. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 47, 157–163.
(2007). Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 104, 11483–11488.
(2005a). Sudarshan Kriya yogic breathing in the treatment of stress, anxiety, and depression: Part I – Neurophysiologic model. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 11, 189–201.
(2005b). Sudarshan Kriya Yogic breathing in the treatment of stress, anxiety, and depression. Part II – Clinical applications and guidelines. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 11, 711–717.
(2006). Meditation states and traits: EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 180–211.
(2000). Emotion, plasticity, context, and regulation: Perspectives from affective neuroscience. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 890–909.
(2003). Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65, 564–570.
(2010). Effects of a yoga breath intervention alone and in combination with an exposure therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in survivors of the 2004 South-East Asia tsunami. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 121, 289–300.
(2008). The cognitive consequences of emotion regulation: An ERP investigation. Psychophysiology, 45, 435–444.
(2008). Deconstructing reappraisal: Descriptions preceding arousing pictures modulate the subsequent neural response. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 977–988.
(2009). Neural mechanisms of cognitive reappraisal of negative self-beliefs in social anxiety disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 66, 1091–1099.
(2008). The neural bases of emotion regulation: Reappraisal and suppression of negative emotion. Biological Psychiatry, 63, 577–586.
(1983). A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 55, 468–484.
(2007). The cognitive and neurophysiological basis of emotion dysregulation in bipolar disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 103, 29–42.
(2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39, 281–291.
(2006). Attending to affect: Appraisal strategies modulate the electrocortical response to arousing pictures. Emotion, 6, 517–522.
(2006). Reappraisal modulates the electrocortical response to unpleasant pictures. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6, 291–297.
(2000). Antidepressant efficacy of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) in melancholia: A randomized comparison with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and imipramine. Journal of Affective Disorders, 57, 255–259.
(2007). Wellness through a comprehensive yogic breathing program – A controlled pilot trial. BMC Complementary Alternative Medicine, 7, 43.
(2008). Modulations of the electrophysiological response to pleasant stimuli by cognitive reappraisal. Emotion, 8, 132–137.
(1999). International affective picture system (IAPS): Technical manual and affective ratings. Gainesville, FL: The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.
(1970). Towards a cognitive theory of emotion. In , Feelings and emotions (pp. 207–232). New York, NY: Academic Press.
(2005). Development and validation of the thought control ability questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 997–1008.
(2008). Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: Effects of meditative expertise. PLoS ONE, 3, e1897.
(2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 163–169.
(2009). Anxiety and spatial attention moderate the electrocortical response to aversive pictures. Neuropsychologia, 47, 2975–2980.
(2010). The neural bases of distraction and reappraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 248–262.
(2008). Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event-related brain potentials. Emotion, 8, 693–700.
(2009). Electrophysiological correlates of decreasing and increasing emotional responses to unpleasant pictures. Psychophysiology, 46, 17–27.
(1997). Normalization of P300 amplitude following treatment in dysthymia. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 740–743.
(1998). P300 amplitude and antidepressant response to Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY). Journal of Affective Disorders, 50, 45–48.
(2002). Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 1215–1229.
(2005). The cognitive control of emotion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 242–249.
(2008). Affective picture processing: An integrative review of ERP findings. Biological Psychology, 77, 247–265.
(2006). Emotion and attention: Event-related brain potential studies. In , Progress in brain research: Understanding emotions, Vol. 156, (pp. 31–51). Boston, MA: Elsevier Science.
(2008). Gene expression profiling in practitioners of Sudarshan Kriya. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 64, 213–218.
(2003). Sudarshan Kriya practitioners exhibit better antioxidant status and lower blood lactate levels. Biological Psychology, 63, 281–291.
(2007). Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PLoS Biology, 5, e138.
(2007). Concentrative meditation enhances preattentive processing: A mismatch negativity study. Neuroreport, 18, 1709–1712.
(2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 104, 17152–17156.
(2007). Neural correlates of emotion regulation in psychopathology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 413–418.
(1992). Classificatie van links – en rechtshandige proefpersonen
[Classification of left-handed and right-handed test subjects] . Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychology, 47, 88–92.(2006). Antidepressant efficacy and hormonal effects of Sudarshana Kriya Yoga (SKY) in alcohol dependent individuals. Journal of Affective Disorders, 94, 249–253.
(1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070.
