Abstract: Individuals can regulate negative emotions and promote positive emotions through mindfulness meditation training, which has proved to have significant effects on the interventions for psychological and physical disorders. The mindfulness-based theoretical models of the reperceiving model, the mindful coping model, the upward spiral of flourishing and the mindful emotion regulation model all underscore the effects of mindfulness meditation on emotion regulation. Cognitive neuroscientific research findings showed that mindfulness meditation may produce increases in left-sided anterior activation, and the brain areas involved mainly include the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). The researchers further found that trait mindfulness achieve the effect of emotion regulation by improving prefrontal cortical regulation of limbic responses. Moreover, the effect of mindfulness meditation training on emotion regulation may also appear in neural dissociation between two distinct forms of self-referential processing that are habitually integrated but can be dissociated through training, thus strengthening the experiential focus of the neural mechanism. In addition, the researchers found that mindfulness meditation training may also change the brain structures associated with emotion processing. Future directions for the empirical study in this field should attach importance to further clarify the relationship between mindfulness meditation training relates to brain lateralization and to develop comparison studies of different types of the subjects.

Key words: mindfulness meditation, emotion, emotion regulation