Brain regions involved in dispositional mindfulness during resting state and their relation with well-being

Mindfulness can be viewed as an important dispositional characteristic that reflects the tendency to be mindful in daily life, which is beneficial for improving individuals' both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. However, no study to date has examined the brain regions involved in individual differences in dispositional mindfulness during the resting state and its relation with hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. To investigate this issue, the present study employed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) to evaluate the regional homogeneity (ReHo) that measures the local synchronization of spontaneous brain activity in a large sample. We found that dispositional mindfulness was positively associated with the ReHo in the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), left parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), and right insula implicated in emotion processing, body awareness, and self-referential processing, and negatively associated with the ReHo in right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) implicated in response inhibition and attentional control. Furthermore, we found different neural associations with hedonic (i.e., positive and negative affect) and eudaimonic well-being (i.e., the meaningful and purposeful life). Specifically, the ReHo in the IFG predicted eudaimonic well-being whereas the OFC predicted positive affect, both of which were mediated by dispositional mindfulness. Taken together, our study provides the first evidence for linking individual differences in dispositional mindfulness to spontaneous brain activity and demonstrates that dispositional mindfulness engages multiple brain mechanisms that differentially influence hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.