Mindfulness, meditation and mental health

Some researchers have advocated the use of mindfulness based techniques to deal with affective disorders, for example there is an RCT that finds it effective against depression for women with fibromyalgia and also evidence of how meditation can help anxiety, stress or agoraphobia.
Closer to home, the Northern Ireland Health Service has brought in a Buddhist monk to provide mindfulness based "happiness classes". I don't know how accurate a description that is but Sammy Wilson MP is not a happy bunny.

Meditation increases heart rate variability by enhancing the control of the anterior cingulate cortex

Just five days of integrative body–mind training (IBMT) can improve attention and self-regulation in comparison with the same amount of relaxation training (See Tang et al., 2008). This new paper in PNAS explores the underlying mechanisms of this finding:

"Differences in heart rate variability(HRV) and EEG power suggested greater involvement of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in the IBMT group during and after training. Imaging data demonstrated stronger subgenual and adjacent ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity in the IBMT group. Frontal midline ACC theta was correlated with highfrequency HRV, suggesting control by the ACC over parasympathetic activity. These results indicate that after 5 days of training, the IBMT group shows better regulation of the ANS by a ventral midfrontal brain system than does the relaxation group.(See Tang et al., 2009)"

Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation

Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body–mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training. The training method comes from traditional Chinese medicine and incorporates aspects of other meditation and mindfulness training. Compared with the control group, the experimental group of 40 undergraduate Chinese students given 5 days of 20-min integrative training showed greater improvement in conflict scores on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and higher vigor on the Profile of Mood States scale, a significant decrease in stress-related cortisol, and an increase in
immunoreactivity. These results provide a convenient method for studying the influence of meditation training by using experimental and control methods similar to those used to test drugs or other interventions.

PNAS October 23rd 2007