Mindfulness training targets neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Brett eFroeliger¹  Matthew eHoward²  Eric eGarland³ 

[1] Medical Univesity of South Carolina;University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;University of Utah;

关键词: Attention;    Stress, Psychological;    Addiction;    emotion;    mindfulness;    substance dependence;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00173

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Prominent neuroscience models suggest that addictive behavior occurs when environmental stressors and drug-relevant cues activate a cycle of cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological mechanisms, including dysregulated interactions between bottom-up and top-down neural processes, that compel the user to seek out and use drugs. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) target pathogenic mechanisms of the risk chain linking stress and addiction. This review describes how MBIs may target neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface. Empirical evidence is presented suggesting that MBIs ameliorate addiction by enhancing cognitive regulation of a number of key processes, including: clarifying cognitive appraisal and modulating negative emotions to reduce perseverative cognition and emotional arousal; enhancing metacognitive awareness to regulate drug-use action schema and decrease addiction attentional bias; promoting extinction learning to uncouple drug-use triggers from conditioned appetitive responses; reducing cue-reactivity and increasing cognitive control over craving; attenuating physiological stress reactivity through parasympathetic activation; and increasing savoring to restore natural reward processing. Treatment and research implications of our neurocognitive framework are presented. We conclude by offering a temporally-sequenced description of neurocognitive processes targeted by MBIs through a hypothetical case study. Our neurocognitive framework has implications for the optimization of addiction treatment with MBIs.

【 授权许可】

Unknown