Improving emotion regulation is a common therapeutic goal. We often see improvements in attention and emotion regulation in adults after mindfulness training, but are the changes the same for adolescents? What difference might mindfulness training make for the adolescent brain?
A neuroimaging study explored this question by comparing adult women and girls from the UK who were randomly assigned to Learning to BREATHE or a closely matched relaxation training program. Using neuroimaging measures, the researchers found that both adult women and adolescent girls were better able to reorient or shift attention, a top-down cognitive control skill, after the mindfulness training compared to those in the relaxation group. Interestingly, only the adolescents’ performance improved during a memory task which involved resisting emotional interference when images of emotional faces appeared on the computer screen while participants were working on the memory task . Adolescents’ brains showed decreased activation in the amygdala in response to these distracting emotional cues, a finding that suggested less interference of emotions on cognitive processing.