Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty's J David Creswell–whose cut­ting-edge work has shown how mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion re­duces lone­li­ness in old­er adults and al­le­vi­ates stress–and his grad­u­ate stu­dent Emi­ly Lind­say have de­vel­oped a mod­el sug­gest­ing that mind­ful­ness in­flu­ences health via stress re­duc­tion path­ways.

Their work, pub­lished in Cur­rent Di­rec­tions in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, de­scribes the bi­o­log­i­cal path­ways link­ing mind­ful­ness train­ing with re­duced stress and stress-re­lat­ed dis­ease out­comes.

"If mind­ful­ness train­ing is im­prov­ing peo­ple's health, how does it get un­der the skin to af­fect all kinds of out­comes?" asked Creswell, as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy in CMU's Di­et­rich Col­lege of Hu­man­i­ties and So­cial Sci­ences. "We of­fer one of the first ev­i­dence-based bi­o­log­i­cal ac­counts of mind­ful­ness train­ing, stress re­duc­tion and health."

When an in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences stress, ac­tiv­i­ty in the pre­frontal cor­tex–re­spon­si­ble for con­scious think­ing and plan­ning–de­creas­es, while ac­tiv­i­ty in the amyg­dala, hy­po­thal­a­mus and an­te­ri­or cin­gu­late cor­tex–re­gions that quick­ly ac­ti­vate the body's stress re­sponse–in­creas­es.

Stud­ies have sug­gest­ed that mind­ful­ness re­vers­es these pat­terns dur­ing stress; it in­creas­es pre­frontal ac­tiv­i­ty, which can reg­u­late and turn down the bi­o­log­i­cal stress re­sponse.

Ex­ces­sive ac­ti­va­tion of the bi­o­log­i­cal stress re­sponse in­creas­es the risk of dis­eases im­pact­ed by stress (like de­pres­sion, HIV and heart dis­ease). By re­duc­ing in­di­vid­u­als' ex­pe­ri­ences of stress, mind­ful­ness may help reg­u­late the phys­i­cal stress re­sponse and ul­ti­mate­ly re­duce the risk and sever­i­ty of stress-re­lat­ed dis­eases.

Creswell be­lieves by un­der­stand­ing how mind­ful­ness train­ing af­fects dif­fer­ent dis­eases and dis­or­ders, re­searchers will be able to de­vel­op bet­ter in­ter­ven­tions, know when cer­tain treat­ments will work most ef­fec­tive­ly and iden­ti­fy peo­ple like­ly to ben­e­fit from mind­ful­ness train­ing.

As the birth­place of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gy, Carnegie Mel­lon has been a leader in the study of brain and be­hav­iour for more than 50 years. The uni­ver­si­ty has cre­at­ed some of the first cog­ni­tive tu­tors, helped to de­vel­op the Jeop­ardy-win­ning Wat­son, found­ed a ground­break­ing doc­tor­al pro­gramme in neur­al com­pu­ta­tion, and com­plet­ed cut­ting-edge work in un­der­stand­ing the ge­net­ics of autism. (www.sci­encedai­ly.com)

?What is mind­ful­ness train­ing?

Mind­ful­ness Based Stress Re­duc­tion (MB­SR) brings to­geth­er mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion and yo­ga. It is an eight-week in­ten­sive train­ing in mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, based on an­cient heal­ing prac­tices, which meets week­ly.

It cul­ti­vates greater aware­ness of the uni­ty of mind and body, as well as of the ways the un­con­scious thoughts, feel­ings, and be­hav­iours can un­der­mine emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al health. The mind is known to be a fac­tor in stress and stress-re­lat­ed dis­or­ders, and med­i­ta­tion has been shown to pos­i­tive­ly ef­fect a range of au­to­nom­ic phys­i­o­log­i­cal process­es, such as low­er­ing blood pres­sure and re­duc­ing over­all arousal and emo­tion­al re­ac­tiv­i­ty.

The MB­SR pro­gramme start­ed in the Stress Re­duc­tion Clin­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Med­ical Cen­ter in 1979 and is now of­fered in over 200 med­ical cen­ters, hos­pi­tals, and clin­ics around the world, in­clud­ing some of the lead­ing in­te­gra­tive med­ical cen­ters such as the Scripps Cen­ter for In­te­gra­tive Med­i­cine, the Duke Cen­ter for In­te­gra­tive Med­i­cine, and the Jef­fer­son-Myr­na Brind Cen­ter for In­te­gra­tive Med­i­cine.