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Does Mindfulness Training Change the Processing of Social Threat?

NCT00992875 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 28

Last updated 2012-05-07

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Training in mindfulness, the non-judgmental observation of experiences as they arise in the present moment, has been increasingly and successfully applied to the treatment of normative stress conditions and mental disorders. Yet, the neurological mechanisms that underlie the reported improvements are still largely unknown. This longitudinal study will investigate the influence of mindfulness training on a key underpinning of mental health, namely emotion regulation, and its associated brain activity. Healthy participants will be randomly assigned to either a validated eight week Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program or to a control condition. In a pre-post investigation, participants' subjective reactions to aversive emotional stimuli (affective facial expressions) will be assessed, as will the associated brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The investigators hypothesize that after the training the MBSR participants will rate the pictures as less aversive compared to control participants. Furthermore, the MBSR participants will show a patter of brain activation indicative of improved emotion regulation, relative to control participants. Finally, the effect of MBSR on the gray matter structure of the brain will be investigated.

Conditions

  • Healthy
  • Stress

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Behavioral intervention, mindfulness meditation in form of yoga, sitting meditation, body scan and mindfulness to routine activities

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Mind and Life Institute, Hadley, Massachusetts

    collaborator OTHER

  • European Commission

    collaborator OTHER

  • Massachusetts General Hospital

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Sara W Lazar, PhD · Massachusetts General Hospital

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
22 Years
Max Age
60 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2009-01-31
Primary Completion
2011-02-28
Completion
2011-02-28

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00992875 on ClinicalTrials.gov