Investigación de mindfulness en neurociencia cognitiva
*Correspondencia: Dra. Nazareth Castellanos. Cátedra extraordinaria de Mindfulness y ciencias cognitivas. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Campus de Somosaguas, E-28223 Somosaguas, Madrid.
E-mail: nazareth@nirakara.org
Mindfulness is a term that has become part of our society's vocabulary and its practice has become firmly established in educational, therapeutic and clinical contexts and as a tool for fostering well-being and personal growth. In this article we review the most relevant research conducted on mindfulness in cognitive neuroscience, classifying it in three broad areas: a) differential changes in default network activity due to the practice of mindfulness; b) functional or structural changes in the attentional network, and c) functional or structural changes in the frontal limbic network and the amygdala, related to emotion regulation. There is enough evidence in the literature to affirm the effect of mindfulness practice on the brain, but we still need to produce better experimental designs that allow us to find the mechanisms of action underlying specific practices.
