Brief Digital Mindfulness and Compassion Training in Healthcare Professionals Drives Behavioral Change & Neural Plasticity
- Purpura, Suzanna Rose
- Advisor(s): Mishra, Jyoti;
- Macagno, Eduardo
Abstract
High-stress levels have become a large part of physicians' lives in today's medical workforce, increasing only more so since the COVID-19 pandemic. Few efforts have been made to decrease these high-stress levels, leading to not only negative impacts on physicians' physical and mental well-being but also on their ability to care for patients. Prior research has shown that self-compassion and mindfulness are powerful tools in preventing burnout, but there are few resources available that incorporate these ideals effectively and are time-efficient. Through an online application, participants in our study used a digital mindfulness meditation application to train compassion and practice mindfulness. Participants also took part in an interoceptive breath monitoring task recorded pre- and post-mindfulness training. Through this breathing task, we investigated neural activity in core brain networks through electrophysiological source imaging. We discovered that mindfulness practices can increase personality attributes of self-compassion and state-mindfulness with improvements in self-compassion sustained at follow-up, overall leading to better self-management of stressors. Additionally, longer mindfulness training duration was found to be positively correlated with a greater magnitude of improvement in self-compassion across subjects. Neural results indicated plasticity specific to the default mode network (DMN) region with network suppression in the experimental group at post-intervention. Neurobehavioral correlations revealed the extent of DMN suppression related to self-compassion improvements during post- versus pre-intervention. These findings implicate that brief digital mindfulness practices may improve stress management in physicians.