More than 5 million deaths a year are attributable to tobacco smoking, but attempts to help people either quit or reduce their smoking often fail, perhaps in part because the intention to quit activates brain networks related to craving. We recruited participants interested in general stress reduction and randomly assigned them to meditation training or a relaxation training control. Among smokers, 2 wk of meditation training (5 h in total) produced a significant reduction in smoking of 60%; no reduction was found in the relaxation control. Resting-state brain scans showed increased activity for the meditation group in the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex, brain areas related to self-control. These results suggest that brief meditation training improves self-control capacity and reduces smoking.addiction | anterior cingulate cortex | brain state | integrative body-mind training | mindfulness S moking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and compromising smokers' health (1). Despite the negative consequences, many smokers have difficulty quitting or even reducing tobacco use (2). In addition, many teenagers are added to the smoking roll each year and may be at risk for abuse of other substances (2). Because tobacco use is often thought of as a gateway to other drug use, reducing smoking might reduce the vulnerability of youths to cocaine and other drugs (3). Although public health campaigns may have decreased the number of smokers, current methods for aiding those who persist in smoking have had limited success (4, 5). These failures may be a result of the inability to relieve withdrawal symptoms, stress, and cue-induced cravings, which often leads to drug seeking and taking (6-10). This urgent need calls for a short-term, effective intervention for reducing smoking behavior and cravings (2).One reason for addiction to tobacco may involve a deficit in selfcontrol. Self-control is important because the level of childhood self-control predicts long-term outcomes, including mental health, substance abuse, financial independence, and criminal behavior (11). Individuals at risk for substance abuse typically have deficits in self-control (12-16). Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including dorsolateral PFC, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and medial orbitofrontal cortex, play a key role in addiction (12,17,18). In cigarette smokers, regional cerebral blood flow was reduced in the left dorsal ACC, and this correlated with a decrease in craving after smoking the first cigarette of the day (19). These reports raise the question of whether impaired self-control could be ameliorated and strengthened with intervention, and thus potentially change smoking behavior.There is emerging evidence that mindfulness meditation has the potential to ameliorate negative outcomes resulting from deficits in self-control (20-25). Although preliminary findings suggest mindfulness training shows some proof of efficacy in substance abuse, these studies are replete with limitations, including a lack of ...

These results indicate that promoting emotion regulation and improving ACC/mPFC brain activity can help for addiction prevention and treatment.

BackgroundOne form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement.MethodsForty Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to short-term IBMT group or a relaxation training (RT) control group. Mood and creativity performance were assessed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) questionnaire respectively.ResultsAs predicted, the results indicated that short-term (30 min per day for 7 days) IBMT improved creativity performance on the divergent thinking task, and yielded better emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group).ConclusionsOur results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation.

We describe an ambitious ongoing study that has been strongly influenced and inspired by Don Stuss's career-long efforts to identify key cognitive processes that characterize executive control, investigate potential unifying dimensions that define prefrontal function, and carefully attend to individual differences. The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control project tests a theoretical framework positing two key control dimensions: proactive and reactive. The framework's central tenets are that proactive and reactive control modes reflect domain-general dimensions of individual variation, with distinctive neural signatures, involving the lateral pFC as a central node within associated brain networks (e.g., fronto-parietal, cingulo-opercular). In the Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control project, each participant is scanned while performing theoretically targeted variants of multiple well-established cognitive control tasks (Stroop, cued task-switching, AX-CPT, Sternberg working memory) in three separate imaging sessions, that each encourages utilization of different control modes plus also completes an extensive out-of-scanner individual differences battery. Additional key features of the project include a high spatio-temporal resolution (multiband) acquisition protocol and a sample that includes a substantial subset of monozygotic twin pairs and participants recruited from the Human Connectome Project. Although data collection is still continuing (target n = 200), we provide an overview of the study design and protocol, along with initial results (n = 80) revealing evidence of a domain-general neural signature of cognitive control and its modulation under reactive conditions. Aligned with Don Stuss's legacy of scientific community building, a partial data set has been publicly released, with the full data set released at project completion, so it can serve as a valuable resource.

Asymmetry in frontal electrical activity has been reported to be associated with positive mood. One form of mindfulness meditation, integrative body-mind training (IBMT) improves positive mood and neuroplasticity. The purpose of this study is to determine whether short-term IBMT improves mood and induces frontal asymmetry. This study showed that 5-days (30-min per day) IBMT significantly enhanced cerebral blood flow (CBF) in subgenual/adjacent ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex and insula. The results showed that both IBMT and relaxation training increased left laterality of CBF, but only IBMT improved CBF in left ACC and insula, critical brain areas in self-regulation.