Abstract: Mindfulness is a set of practice derived from the eastern Buddhism meditation which emphasizes the intentional, non-judgmental and moment-to-moment attention to the present. It is also regarded as a state of consciousness or a series of psychological processes. Early studies usually focused on clinical efficacies of mindfulness. Recently, more attention has being paid to psychological and neural mechanisms of it. According to the recent findings, mindfulness is associated with the change of sensation and perception, and the improvement of attention, memory and emotion. The clinical effects of mindfulness are also underlied by a series of neural mechanisms. The more experienced the participant is, the stronger frontal θ and occipital γ change will be. MRI studies suggest that mindfulness will lead to brain activity change and brain structure alteration. To reveal the mechanisms of mindfulness further, more work still need to be done in the future, with the resolvement of methodological problems.

Key words: mindfulness, psychological mechanisms, neural mechanisms, EEG, MRI