Bostanov Vladimir, Ohlrogge Lilian, Britz Rita, Hautzinger Martin, Kotchoubey Boris
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Jun 28;12:249. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00249. eCollection 2018.
Mindfulness-based interventions have proved effective in reducing various clinical symptoms and in improving general mental health and well-being. The investigation of the mechanisms of therapeutic change needs methods for assessment of mindfulness. Existing self-report measures have, however, been strongly criticized on various grounds, including distortion of the original concept, response bias, and other. We propose a psychophysiological method for the assessment of the mindfulness learned through time-limited mindfulness-based therapy by people who undergo meditation training for the first time. We use the individual pre-post-therapy changes (dERPi) in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded in a passive meditation task as a measure of increased mindfulness. dERPi is computed through multivariate assessment of individual participant's ERPs. We tested the proposed method in a group of about 70 recurrently depressed participants, randomly assigned in 1.7:1 ratio to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) or cognitive therapy (CT). The therapy outcome was measured by the long-term change (dDS) relative to baseline in the depression symptoms (DS) assessed weekly, for 60 weeks, by an online self-report questionnaire. We found a strong, highly significant, negative correlation ( = -0.55) between dERPi (mean = 0.4) and dDS (mean = -0.7) in the MBCT group. Compared to this result, the relationship between dDS and the other (self-report) measures of mindfulness we used was substantially weaker and not significant. So was also the relationship between dERPi and dDS in the CT group. The interpretation of dERPi as a measure of increased mindfulness was further supported by positive correlations between dERPi and the other measures of mindfulness. In this study, we also replicated a previous result, namely, the increase (dLCNV) of the late contingent negative variation (LCNV) of the ERP in the MBCT group, but not in the control group (in this case, CT). We interpreted dLCNV as a measure of increased meditative concentration. The relationship between dLCNV and dDS was, however, very week, which suggests that concentration might be relatively unimportant for the therapeutic effect of mindfulness. The proposed psychophysiological method could become an important component of a "mindfulness test battery" together with self-report questionnaires and other newly developed instruments.
基于正念的干预措施已被证明在减轻各种临床症状、改善总体心理健康和幸福感方面有效。对治疗变化机制的研究需要评估正念的方法。然而，现有的自我报告测量方法受到了各种批评，包括对原始概念的扭曲、反应偏差等。我们提出一种心理生理学方法，用于评估首次接受冥想训练的人通过限时基于正念的疗法所习得的正念。我们将在被动冥想任务中记录的事件相关脑电位（ERP）的个体治疗前后变化（dERPi）用作正念增加的指标。dERPi通过对个体参与者ERP的多变量评估来计算。我们在一组约70名复发性抑郁症参与者中测试了该方法，这些参与者以1.7:1的比例随机分配到基于正念的认知疗法（MBCT）或认知疗法（CT）组。治疗结果通过在线自我报告问卷每周评估60周的抑郁症症状（DS）相对于基线的长期变化（dDS）来衡量。我们发现MBCT组中dERPi（平均值 = 0.4）与dDS（平均值 = -0.7）之间存在强烈、高度显著的负相关（ = -0.55）。与该结果相比，我们使用的dDS与其他（自我报告）正念测量方法之间的关系要弱得多且不显著。CT组中dERPi与dDS之间的关系也是如此。dERPi与其他正念测量方法之间的正相关进一步支持了将dERPi解释为正念增加的指标。在本研究中，我们还重复了先前的一个结果，即MBCT组中ERP的晚期继时负变化（LCNV）增加（dLCNV），而对照组（在本案例中为CT组）则没有。我们将dLCNV解释为冥想专注力增加的指标。然而，dLCNV与dDS之间的关系非常弱，这表明专注力可能对正念的治疗效果相对不重要。所提出的心理生理学方法可能会与自我报告问卷及其他新开发的工具一起，成为“正念测试组合”的重要组成部分。
