Be mindful, of the benefits of mindfulness:

Mindfulness has gotten a lot of press coverage over the last few years, and may well represent an extremely beneficial, cost effective, long term, low side effect treatment for a whole range of common stress, motivation, focus and affective related disorders. Here is a compilation of a few articles on the subject:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130604114001.htm

"Although we've known that meditation can reduce anxiety, we hadn't identified the specific brain mechanisms involved in relieving anxiety in healthy individuals,"
For the study, 15 healthy volunteers [TOOO SMALL!!!!! ] with normal levels of everyday anxiety were recruited for the study. These individuals had no previous meditation experience or anxiety disorders. All subjects participated in four 20-minute classes to learn a technique known as mindfulness meditation. In this form of meditation, people are taught to focus on breath and body sensations and to non-judgmentally evaluate distracting thoughts and emotions… Researchers found that meditation reduced anxiety ratings by as much as 39 percent.

The study revealed that meditation-related anxiety relief is associated with activation of the anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain involved with executive-level function. During meditation, there was more activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls worrying. In addition, when activity increased in the anterior cingulate cortex -- the area that governs thinking and emotion -- anxiety decreased.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130619195139.htm

Mindfulness meditation can increase wellbeing and reduce stress in school children

Mindfulness = a mental training that develops sustained attention that can change the ways people think, act and feel

522 pupils, aged between 12 and 16 years, from 12 secondary schools [took] part in the study. 256 pupils at six of the schools were taught the Mindfulness in Schools Project's curriculum, a nine week introduction to mindfulness designed for the classroom." The other 266 pupils at the other six schools did not receive the mindfulness lessons, and acted as a control group.

Our mindfulness curriculum aims to engage even the most cynical of adolescent audience with the basics of mindfulness. We use striking visuals, film clips and activities to bring it to life without losing the expertise and integrity of classic mindfulness teaching."

All the pupils were followed up after a three month period. The follow-up was timed to coincide with the summer exam period -- which is a potential time of high stress for young people. The researchers found that those children who participated in the mindfulness programme reported fewer depressive symptoms, lower stress and greater wellbeing than the young people in the control group. Encouragingly, around 80% of the young people said they continued using practices taught in MiSP's mindfulness curriculum after completing the nine week programme. Teachers and schools also rated the curriculum as worthwhile and very enjoyable to learn and teach.

We found that those young people who took part in the programme had fewer low-grade depressive symptoms, both immediately after completing the programme and at three-month follow-up. This is potentially a very important finding, given that low-grade depressive symptoms can impair a child's performance at school, and are also a risk factor for developing adolescent and adult depression."

"These findings are likely to be of great interest to our overstretched schools who are trying to find simple, cost effective and engaging ways to promote the resilience of their students -- and of their staff too -- at times when adolescence is becoming increasingly challenging, staff under considerable stress, and schools under a good deal of pressure to deliver on all fronts...The next step is to carry out a randomised controlled trial into the MiSP curriculum, involving more schools, pupils and longer follow-ups."

Scan of the Insula Predicts Whether CBT or SSRI's Will Best Lift Depression

Scan Predicts Whether Therapy or Meds Will Best Lift Depression
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130612162358.htm

Currently, determining whether a particular patient with depression would best respond to psychotherapy or medication is based on trial and error. In the absence of any objective guidance that could predict improvement, clinicians typically try a treatment that they, or the patient, prefer for a month or two to see if it works. Consequently, only about 40 percent of patients achieve remission following initial treatment. This is costly in terms of human suffering as well as health care spending.

one specific brain area emerged as a pivotal predictor of outcomes from two standard forms of depression treatment: cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or escitalopram, a serotonin specific reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant. If a patient's pre-treatment resting brain activity was low in the front part of an area called the insula, on the right side of the brain, it signaled a significantly higher likelihood of remission with CBT and a poor response to escitalopram. Conversely, hyperactivity in the insula predicted remission with escitalopram and a poor response to CBT.


What I find most intersting about this, is that one is a hyperreactivity and the other a hyporeactivity, it almost suggests two inverse conditions. One which CBT talk therapy will help, and another where drug treatment with an SSRI and probable increases in seretonin or BDNF will help?! Most of us would predict them to work on similar pathways, not for distinct conditions! Indeed, I was always under the impression that CBT WITH and SSRI would be most efficacious, this suggests otherwise, and that both together would be pointless for most people, with people's treatment choice depending on their insula reactivity.


Among several sites of brain activity related to outcome, activity in the anterior insula best predicted response and non-response to both treatments. The anterior insula is known to be important in regulating emotional states, self-awareness, decision-making and other thinking tasks. Changes in insula activity have been observed in studies of various depression treatments, including medication, mindfulness training, vagal nerve stimulation and deep brain stimulation.

"If these findings are confirmed in follow-up replication studies, scans of anterior insula activity could become clinically useful to guide more effective initial treatment decisions, offering a first step towards personalized medicine measures in the treatment of major depression" said Mayberg.