Abstract
Objectives
Behavioral evidence suggests that parenting-focused mindfulness interventions can improve parenting practices and enhance family wellbeing, potentially operating through altered emotional processing in parents. However, the mechanisms through which parent mindfulness interventions achieve their positive benefits have not yet been empirically tested, a knowledge which is key to refine and maximize intervention effects. Thus, as part of a randomized controlled trial, the present study examined the affective mechanisms of an 8-week parenting-focused mindfulness intervention, the Parenting Mindfully (PM) intervention, versus a minimal-intervention Parent Education control.
Methods
Twenty highly stressed mothers of adolescents completed pre- and post-intervention behavioral and fMRI sessions, in which mothers completed a parent-adolescent conflict interaction, fMRI emotion task, and fMRI resting state scan. Mothers reported on their mindful parenting, and maternal emotional reactivity to the parent-adolescent conflict task was assessed via observed emotion expression, self-reported negative emotion, and salivary cortisol reactivity.
Results
Results indicated that the PM intervention increased brain responsivity in the left posterior insula in response to negative affective stimuli and altered resting state functional connectivity in regions involved in self-reference, behavioral regulation, and social-emotional processing. Changes in mothers’ brain function and connectivity were associated with increased mindful parenting and decreased emotional reactivity to the parent-adolescent conflict task.
Conclusion
Findings suggest that mindfulness-based changes in maternal emotional awareness at the neurobiological level are associated with decreased emotional reactivity in parenting interactions, illuminating potential neurobiological targets for future parent-focused intervention.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abraham, E., Hendler, T., Zagoory-Sharon, O., & Feldman, R. (2016). Network integrity of the parental brain in infancy supports the development of children’s social competencies. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11, 1707–1718.
Allen, M., Dietz, M., Blair, K. S., van Beek, M., Rees, G., Vestergaard-Poulsen, P., et al. (2012). Cognitive-affective neural plasticity following active-controlled mindfulness intervention. Journal of Neuroscience, 32, 15601–15610.
Atzil, S., Hendler, T., & Feldman, R. (2011). Specifying the neurobiological basis of human attachment: brain, hormones, and behavior in synchronous and intrusive mothers. Neuropsychopharmacology, 36, 2603–2615.
Bariola, E., Gullone, E., & Hughes, E. K. (2011). Child and adolescent emotion regulation: the role of parental emotion regulation and expression. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 14, 198–212.
Behzadi, Y., Restom, K., Liau, J., & Liu, T. T. (2007). A component based noise correction method (CompCor) for BOLD and perfusion based fMRI. Neuroimage, 37, 90–101.
Benn, R., Akiva, T., Arel, S., & Roeser, R. W. (2012). Mindfulness training effects for parents and educators of children with special needs. Developmental Psychology, 48, 1476–1487.
Bögels, S. M., Hellemans, J., van Deursen, S., Römer, M., & van der Meulen, R. (2014). Mindful parenting in mental health care: effects on parental and child psychopathology, parental stress, parenting, coparenting, and marital functioning. Mindfulness, 5, 536–551.
Braden, B. B., Pipe, T. B., Smith, R., Glaspy, T. K., Deatherage, B. R., & Baxter, L. C. (2016). Brain and behavior changes associated with an abbreviated 4-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course in back pain patients. Brain and Behavior, 6, 1–13.
Buss, K. A., Hill Goldsmith, H., & Davidson, R. J. (2005). Cardiac reactivity is associated with changes in negative emotion in 24-month-olds. Developmental Psychobiology, 46, 118–132.
Cauda, F., D’agata, F., Sacco, K., Duca, S., Geminiani, G., & Vercelli, A. (2011). Functional connectivity of the insula in the resting brain. Neuroimage, 55, 8–23.
Chambers, R., Gullone, E., & Allen, N. B. (2009). Mindful emotion regulation: an integrative review. Clinical Psychology Review, 29, 560–572.
Chaplin, T. M., Sinha, R., Simmons, J. A., Healy, S. M., Mayes, L. C., Hommer, R. E., & Crowley, M. J. (2012). Parent–adolescent conflict interactions and adolescent alcohol use. Addictive Behaviors, 37, 605–612.
Chaplin, T. M., Hansen, A., Simmons, J., Mayes, L. C., Hommer, R. E., & Crowley, M. J. (2014). Parental–adolescent drug use discussions: physiological responses and associated outcomes. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55, 730–735.
Chaplin, T. M., Turpyn, C. C., Fischer, S., Martelli, A. M., Ross, C. E., Leichtweis, R. N., et al. (2018). Parenting-focused mindfulness intervention reduces stress and improves parenting in highly stressed mothers of adolescents. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-1026-9.
Coatsworth, J. D., Duncan, L. G., Greenberg, M. T., & Nix, R. L. (2010). Changing parent’s mindfulness, child management skills and relationship quality with their youth: results from a randomized pilot intervention trial. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19, 203–217.
Coatsworth, J. D., Duncan, L. G., Nix, R. L., Greenberg, M. T., Gayles, J. G., Bamberger, K. T., . . . Demi, M. A. (2015). Integrating mindfulness with parent training: effects of the mindfulness-enhanced strengthening families program. Developmental Psychology, 51, 26–35.
Cole, P. M., Barrett, K. C., & Zahn-Waxler, C. (1992). Emotion displays in two-year-olds during mishaps. Child Development, 63, 314–324.
Crandall, A., Deater-Deckard, K., & Riley, A. W. (2015). Maternal emotion and cognitive control capacities and parenting: a conceptual framework. Developmental Review, 36, 105–126.
Deater-Deckard, K. (1998). Parenting stress and child adjustment: some old hypotheses and new questions. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 5, 314–332.
Deen, B., Koldewyn, K., Kanwisher, N., & Saxe, R. (2015). Functional organization of social perception and cognition in the superior temporal sulcus. Cerebral Cortex, 25, 4596–4609.
Dekeyser, M., Raes, F., Leijssen, M., Leysen, S., & Dewulf, D. (2008). Mindfulness skills and interpersonal behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1235–1245.
Desbordes, G., Negi, L. T., Pace, T. W., Wallace, B. A., Raison, C. L., & Schwartz, E. L. (2012). Effects of mindful-attention and compassion meditation training on amygdala response to emotional stimuli in an ordinary, non-meditative state. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 1–15.
Doll, A., Hölzel, B. K., Boucard, C. C., Wohlschläger, A. M., & Sorg, C. (2015). Mindfulness is associated with intrinsic functional connectivity between default mode and salience networks. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 1–11.
Duncan, L. G. (2007). Assessment of mindful parenting among parents of early adolescents: development and validation of the interpersonal mindfulness in parenting scale. Unpublished dissertation.
Duncan, L. G., Coatsworth, J. D., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). Pilot study to gauge acceptability of a mindfulness-based, family-focused preventive intervention. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 30, 605–618.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1978). Facial action coding system: a technique for the measurement of facial movement. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Elmadih, A., Wan, M. W., Downey, D., Elliott, R., Swain, J. E., & Abel, K. M. (2016). Natural variation in maternal sensitivity is reflected in maternal brain responses to infant stimuli. Behavioral Neuroscience, 130, 500–510.
Etkin, A., Egner, T., & Kalisch, R. (2011). Emotional processing in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 85–93.
Fan, Y., Duncan, N. W., de Greck, M., & Northoff, G. (2011). Is there a core neural network in empathy? An fMRI based quantitative meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35, 903–911.
Farb, N. A., Segal, Z. V., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., Fatima, Z., & Anderson, A. K. (2007). Attending to the present: mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2, 313–322.
Farb, N. A., Anderson, A. K., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., & Segal, Z. V. (2010). Minding one’s emotions: mindfulness training alters the neural expression of sadness. Emotion, 10, 25–33.
Farb, N. A., Segal, Z. V., & Anderson, A. K. (2012). Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 15–26.
Felver, J. C., Tipsord, J. M., Morris, M. J., Racer, K. H., & Dishion, T. J. (2017). The effects of mindfulness-based intervention on children’s attention regulation. Journal of Attention Disorders, 21, 872–881.
Gillham, J. E., Reivich, K. J., Freres, D. R., Chaplin, T. M., Shatté, A. J., Samuels, B., ... & Seligman, M. E. (2007). School-based prevention of depressive symptoms: a randomized controlled study of the effectiveness and specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75, 9–19.
Goldin, P. R., & Gross, J. J. (2010). Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on emotion regulation in social anxiety disorder. Emotion, 10, 83–91.
Gupta, S. K. (2011). Intention-to-treat concept: a review. Perspectives in Clinical Research, 2, 109.
Haase, L., May, A. C., Falahpour, M., Isakovic, S., Simmons, A. N., Hickman, S. D., ... & Paulus, M. P. (2015). A pilot study investigating changes in neural processing after mindfulness training in elite athletes. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 229.
Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 537–559.
Hölzel, B. K., Hoge, E. A., Greve, D. N., Gard, T., Creswell, J. D., Brown, K. W., ... & Lazar, S. W. (2013). Neural mechanisms of symptom improvements in generalized anxiety disorder following mindfulness training. NeuroImage: Clinical, 2, 448–458.
Izard, C. E. (1972). Patterns of emotions: a new analysis of anxiety and depression. New York: Academic Press.
Izard, C. E. (1979). The maximally discriminative facial movement coding system (MAX). Newark, DE: University of Delaware, Instructional Resource Center.
Jenkinson, M., Beckmann, C. F., Behrens, T. E., Woolrich, M. W., & Smith, S. M. (2012). FSL. Neuroimage, 62, 782–790.
Johnson, D. C., Thom, N. J., Stanley, E. A., Haase, L., Simmons, A. N., Shih, P. A. B., et al. (2014). Modifying resilience mechanisms in at-risk individuals: a controlled study of mindfulness training in marines preparing for deployment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 844–853.
Kabat-Zinn, J., & Hanh, T. N. (1990). Full catastrophe living: using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. New York: Delacourt.
Kim, P., Strathearn, L., & Swain, J. E. (2016). The maternal brain and its plasticity in humans. Hormones and Behavior, 77, 113–123.
Kim, P., Capistrano, C. G., Erhart, A., Gray-Schiff, R., & Xu, N. (2017). Socioeconomic disadvantage, neural responses to infant emotions, and emotional availability among first-time new mothers. Behavioural Brain Research, 325, 188–196.
Kirk, U., Gu, X., Harvey, A. H., Fonagy, P., & Montague, P. R. (2014). Mindfulness training modulates value signals in ventromedial prefrontal cortex through input from insular cortex. Neuroimage, 100, 254–262.
Kirk, U., Gu, X., Sharp, C., Hula, A., Fonagy, P., & Montague, P. R. (2016). Mindfulness training increases cooperative decision making in economic exchanges: evidence from fMRI. NeuroImage, 138, 274–283.
Laneri, D., Krach, S., Paulus, F. M., Kanske, P., Schuster, V., Sommer, J., & Müller-Pinzler, L. (2017). Mindfulness meditation regulates anterior insula activity during empathy for social pain. Human Brain Mapping, 38, 4034–4046.
Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (2008). International affective picture system (IAPS): affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual. Technical Report A-8. Gainesville: University of Florida.
Laurent, H. K., & Ablow, J. C. (2012). The missing link: mothers’ neural response to infant cry related to infant attachment behaviors. Infant Behavior and Development, 35, 761–772.
Laursen, B., Coy, K. C., & Collins, W. A. (1998). Reconsidering changes in parent-child conflict across adolescence: a meta-analysis. Child Development, 69, 817–832.
Lenzi, D., Trentini, C., Pantano, P., Macaluso, E., Iacoboni, M., Lenzi, G. L., & Ammaniti, M. (2009). Neural basis of maternal communication and emotional expression processing during infant preverbal stage. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 1124–1133.
Li, Y., Jakary, A., Gillung, E., Eisendrath, S., Nelson, S. J., Mukherjee, P., & Luks, T. (2016). Evaluating metabolites in patients with major depressive disorder who received mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and healthy controls using short echo MRSI at 7 Tesla. Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 29, 523–533.
Lutz, A., Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise. PLoS One, 3, e1897.
Lutz, J., Herwig, U., Opialla, S., Hittmeyer, A., Jäncke, L., Rufer, M., ... & Brühl, A. B. (2014). Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 776–785.
Maliken, A. C., & Katz, L. F. (2013). Exploring the impact of parental psychopathology and emotion regulation on evidence-based parenting interventions: a transdiagnostic approach to improving treatment effectiveness. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 16, 173–186.
Martorell, G. A., & Bugental, D. B. (2006). Maternal variations in stress reactivity: implications for harsh parenting practices with very young children. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 641.
May, L. M., Reinka, M. A., Tipsord, J. M., Felver, J. C., & Berkman, E. T. (2016). Parenting an early adolescent: a pilot study examining neural and relationship quality changes of a mindfulness intervention. Mindfulness, 7, 1203–1213.
Menon, V. (2015). Salience network. In A. W. Toga (Ed.), Brain mapping: an encyclopedia reference (Vol. 2, pp. 597–611). Cambridge: Academic Press.
Michalska, K. J., Decety, J., Liu, C., Chen, Q., Martz, M. E., Jacob, S., ... Lahey, B. B. (2014). Genetic imaging of the association of oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphisms with positive maternal parenting. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 21.
Musser, E. D., Kaiser-Laurent, H., & Ablow, J. C. (2012). The neural correlates of maternal sensitivity: an fMRI study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 428–436.
National Institute on Drug Abuse (2012). Family checkup: positive parenting prevents drug abuse. Washington, DC.
Neece, C. L. (2014). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for parents of young children with developmental delays: implications for parental mental health and child behavior problems. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 27, 174–186.
Opialla, S., Lutz, J., Scherpiet, S., Hittmeyer, A., Jäncke, L., Rufer, M., ... & Brühl, A. B. (2015). Neural circuits of emotion regulation: a comparison of mindfulness-based and cognitive reappraisal strategies. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 265, 45–55.
Prinz, R. J., Foster, S., Kent, R. N., & O’Leary, K. D. (1979). Multivariate assessment of conflict in distressed and nondistressed mother-adolescent dyads. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 12, 691–700.
Rounsaville, B. J., Carroll, K. M., & Onken, L. S. (2001). A stage model of behavioral therapies research: getting started and moving on from stage I. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 8, 133–142.
Rudolph, K. D., Troop-Gordon, W., & Granger, D. A. (2010). Peer victimization and aggression: moderation by individual differences in salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 843–856.
Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., & Teasdale, J. D. (2012). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression. New York: Guilford Press.
Sheeber, L., Hops, H., Alpert, A., Davis, B., & Andrews, J. (1997). Family support and conflict: prospective relations to adolescent depression. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 25, 333–344.
Singh, N. N., Lancioni, G. E., Winton, A. S., Fisher, B. C., Wahler, R. G., Mcaleavey, K., ... & Sabaawi, M. (2006). Mindful parenting decreases aggression, noncompliance, and self-injury in children with autism. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 14, 169–177.
Singh, N. N., Lancioni, G. E., Winton, A. S., Singh, J., Curtis, W. J., Wahler, R. G., & McAleavey, K. M. (2007). Mindful parenting decreases aggression and increases social behavior in children with developmental disabilities. Behavior Modification, 31, 749–771.
Singh, N. N., Singh, A. N., Lancioni, G. E., Singh, J., Winton, A. S., & Adkins, A. D. (2010). Mindfulness training for parents and their children with ADHD increases the children’s compliance. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19, 157–166.
Steinberg, L., & Silk, J. S. (2002). Parenting adolescents. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 1: Children and parenting (pp. 103–133). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
Swain, J. E. (2011). The human parental brain: in vivo neuroimaging. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 35, 1242–1254.
Swain, J. E., Ho, S. S., Rosenblum, K. L., Morelen, D., Dayton, C. J., & Muzik, M. (2017). Parent–child intervention decreases stress and increases maternal brain activity and connectivity during own baby-cry: an exploratory study. Development and Psychopathology, 29, 535–553.
Sze, J. A., Gyurak, A., Yuan, J. W., & Levenson, R. W. (2010). Coherence between emotional experience and physiology: does body awareness training have an impact? Emotion, 10, 803–814.
Tang, Y. Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16, 213.
Taren, A. A., Gianaros, P. J., Greco, C. M., Lindsay, E. K., Fairgrieve, A., Brown, K. W., ... & Creswell, J. D. (2015). Mindfulness meditation training alters stress-related amygdala resting state functional connectivity: a randomized controlled trial. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 1758–1768.
Taylor, V. A., Grant, J., Daneault, V., Scavone, G., Breton, E., Roffe-Vidal, S., ... & Beauregard, M. (2011). Impact of mindfulness on the neural responses to emotional pictures in experienced and beginner meditators. Neuroimage, 57, 1524–1533.
Van der Oord, S., Bögels, S. M., & Peijnenburg, D. (2012). The effectiveness of mindfulness training for children with ADHD and mindful parenting for their parents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21, 139–147.
Wan, M. W., Downey, D., Strachan, H., Elliott, R., Williams, S. R., & Abel, K. M. (2014). The neural basis of maternal bonding. PLoS One, 9, e88436.
Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., & Nieto-Castanon, A. (2012). Conn: a functional connectivity toolbox for correlated and anticorrelated brain networks. Brain Connectivity, 2, 125–141.
Young, K. S., van der Velden, A. M., Craske, M. G., Pallesen, K. J., Fjorback, L., Roepstorff, A., & Parsons, C. E. (2018). The impact of mindfulness-based interventions on brain activity: a systematic review of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 84, 424–433.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the study sponsors, the participating families, and the research staff who contributed significantly to the work—Juliana Jacangelo Corynne Ross and Amysue Hansen. This publication was also made possible by CTSA Grant Number UL1 TR000142 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Funding
Support for this project was provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grants F31-DA-041790 (PI: Turpyn) and R34-DA-034823 (PI: Chaplin).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
CCT: designed the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. TMC: collaborated with the design and execution of the study, and writing of the paper. SF: collaborated with the design and execution of the study, and editing of the final manuscript. JCT: collaborated on data analysis and editing of the final manuscript. JRF, RAB, AMM: collaborated in the writing and editing of the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethics Statement
The present study was approved by George Mason University’s Institutional Review Board and therefore was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained for all individuals included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Turpyn, C.C., Chaplin, T.M., Fischer, S. et al. Affective Neural Mechanisms of a Parenting-Focused Mindfulness Intervention. Mindfulness 12, 392–404 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-019-01118-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-019-01118-6