Neural correlates of interoception and mindful attention on stressful events

Many studies have explored the neural correlates and benefits of mindfulness, but have rarely focused on its components. This neuroimaging study investigates two components of a short mindfulness training, namely interoception and mindful attention, compared to immersion as an active control condition. Healthy participants were trained in three conditions: (1) interoception, (2) mindful attention of bodily sensations, and (3) immersion. In the scanner, participants read and imagined stressful self-relevant events while adopting one of these three strategies and rated subjective arousal. Participants felt the least aroused in the mindful attention condition compared to both immersion and interoception. Compared to immersion, interoception decreased activation in regions of the Default Mode Network (DMN), including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)/medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), precuneus, angular gyrus, and hippocampus, while mindful attention increased activation in regions related to the sensation of bodily states, such as the bilateral insula. Although the results broadly align with prior research, we argue that inconsistent past findings concerning the amygdala and insula activation might be due to a differential focus on mindfulness components. We discuss other explanations for our results, including differences in prior mindfulness experience.