Visual Attention to Suffering After Compassion Training Is Associated With Decreased Amygdala Responses.

ABSTRACT: Compassion meditation training is hypothesized to increase the motivational salience of cues of suffering, while also enhancing equanimous attention and decreasing emotional reactivity to suffering. However, it is currently unknown how compassion meditation impacts visual attention to suffering, and how this impacts neural activation in regions associated with motivational salience as well as aversive responses, such as the amygdala. Healthy adults were randomized to 2 weeks of compassion or reappraisal training. We measured BOLD fMRI responses before and after training while participants actively engaged in their assigned training to images depicting human suffering or non-suffering. Eye-tracking data were recorded concurrently, and we computed looking time for socially and emotionally ev

SUBMITTER: Weng HY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5972817 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature