Classroom-Based Mindfulness Training Reduces Anxiety in Adolescents: Acceptability and Effectiveness of a Cluster-Randomized Pilot Study.

Objective: Many high school students experience a high degree of anxiety and perceived stress. This study examined whether a classroom-based mindfulness program or a wellness program were acceptable and effective as anxiety and stress reduction interventions based on students' self-reports.

Design Setting And Participants: Thirteen health education classes (=285 students, aged 14-16 years) were randomized by classroom to one of three conditions: mindfulness, wellness, or usual health class only (passive control/ waitlist), for 8 weeks.

Dissociative Symptoms In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review.

: Research on dissociative symptomatology in the context of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been gaining traction, with dissociation being studied as a set of complex symptoms following trauma exposure and as a specific subtype of PTSD. The aims of this review are to summarize the literature as it stands, examine the efficacy of existing interventions in treating dissociative symptomatology within the context of PTSD, and offer potential suggestions for future research. : A systematic approach was taken to locate empirical studies on PTSD that included dissociation as an outcome in the PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO databases.

Mind-Body Therapies for Opioid-Treated Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Importance: Mind-body therapies (MBTs) are emerging as potential tools for addressing the opioid crisis. Knowing whether mind-body therapies may benefit patients treated with opioids for acute, procedural, and chronic pain conditions may be useful for prescribers, payers, policy makers, and patients.

Objective: To evaluate the association of MBTs with pain and opioid dose reduction in a diverse adult population with clinical pain.

Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement remediates hedonic dysregulation in opioid users: Neural and affective evidence of target engagement.

Addiction neuroscience models posit that recurrent drug use increases reactivity to drug-related cues and blunts responsiveness to natural rewards, propelling a cycle of hedonic dysregulation that drives addictive behavior. Here, we assessed whether a cognitive intervention for addiction, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), could restructure reward responsiveness from valuation of drug-related reward back to valuation of natural reward. Before and after 8 weeks of MORE or a support group control, prescription opioid users ( = 135) viewed opioid and natural reward cues while an electroencephalogram biomarker of target engagement was assessed.

Mindfulness-oriented recovery enhancement reduces opioid misuse risk via analgesic and positive psychological mechanisms: A randomized controlled trial.

Objective: Despite the heightened urgency of the current prescription opioid crisis, few psychotherapies have been evaluated for chronic pain patients receiving long-term opioid analgesics. Current psychological pain treatments focus primarily on ameliorating negative affective processes, yet basic science suggests that risk for opioid misuse is linked with a dearth of positive affect. Interventions that modulate positive psychological processes may produce therapeutic benefits among patients with opioid-treated chronic pain.

The Impact of Psychological Interventions on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Pain Symptoms: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Objectives: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and pain often co-occur, introducing clinical challenges and economic burden. Psychological treatments are considered effective for each condition, yet it is not known which therapies have the potential to concurrently address PTSD and pain-related symptoms.

Materials And Methods: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis, databases were searched for articles published between January 2007 and December 2017 describing results from clinical trials of interventions addressing PTSD and pain-related symptoms in adults.

Adherence to Practice of Mindfulness in Novice Meditators: Practices Chosen, Amount of Time Practiced, and Long-Term Effects Following a Mindfulness-Based Intervention.

In this study, we objectively tracked the duration, frequency, and the preferred practices chosen by novice mindfulness practitioners following a mindfulness meditation (MM) intervention. A sample of 55 mildly stressed participants, aged 50 to 80 years old, underwent an individual 6-week MM intervention and had their guided meditation home practice electronically recorded during the intervention and the 8-week post-intervention period. Participants' psychological well-being was assessed through self-report measures of mindfulness, quality of life, and symptoms of depression and stress.

Set shifting reaction-time improves following meditation or simple breathcounting in meditators and meditation-naïve participants: Data from naturalistic, ecological momentary-assessment devices.

A comparison is made between the performance of meditators and controls in a letter-number task-switching test. Data were recorded over a five-day period using a previously developed ecological momentary assessment paradigm. Participants consisted of naïve, novice, and experienced meditators, who completed a task-switching reaction time (RT) task before and after 20-min breath-counting sessions.

Hypnosis Intervention Effects on Sleep Outcomes: A Systematic Review.

Study Objectives: Sleep improvement is a promising target for preventing and modifying many health problems. Hypnosis is considered a cost-effective and safe intervention with reported benefits for multiple health conditions. There is a growing body of research assessing the efficacy of hypnosis for various health conditions in which sleep was targeted as a primary or secondary outcome.

EEG Frequency Changes Prior to Making Errors in an Easy Stroop Task.

Mind-wandering is a form of off-task attention that has been associated with negative affect and rumination. The goal of this study was to assess potential electroencephalographic markers of task-unrelated thought, or mind-wandering state, as related to error rates during a specialized cognitive task. We used EEG to record frontal frequency band activity while participants completed a Stroop task that was modified to induce boredom, task-unrelated thought, and therefore mind-wandering.

A cognitive stressor for event-related potential studies: the Portland arithmetic stress task.

In this experiment, we developed and evaluated the Portland Arithmetic Stress Task (PAST) as a cognitive stressor to evaluate acute and sustained stress reactivity for event-related potential (ERP) studies. The PAST is a titrated arithmetic task adapted from the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST), with added experimental control over presentation parameters, improved and synchronized acoustic feedback and generation of timing markers needed for physiological analyzes of real-time brain activity. Thirty-one older adults (M = 60 years) completed the PAST.

Autism and Mind-Body Therapies: A Systematic Review.

Background: Mind-body therapies are often used by people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, there has been little examination into which types of mind-body therapies have been investigated for people with ASD and for what purposes. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the existing evidence for mind-body therapies for people with ASD, particularly to determine the types of mind-body therapies used and the outcomes that are targeted.

Influence of emotional states on inhibitory gating: animals models to clinical neurophysiology.

Integrating research efforts using a cross-domain approach could redefine traditional constructs used in behavioral and clinical neuroscience by demonstrating that behavior and mental processes arise not from functional isolation but from integration. Our research group has been examining the interface between cognitive and emotional processes by studying inhibitory gating. Inhibitory gating can be measured via changes in behavior or neural signal processing.

MEMORY FOR POETRY: MORE THAN MEANING?

The assumption has become that memory for words' sound patterns, or form, is rapidly lost in comparison to content. Memory for form is also assumed to be verbatim rather than schematic. Oral story-telling traditions suggest otherwise.