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The effects of short-term mindfulness and distraction on rumination: an fMRI study

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Natalie M. Nielsen¹ (), Viane Favennec², Ruben van den Bosch^1,2, Guusje Collin¹, Tor D. Wager³, Roshan Cools¹; ¹Radboud University Medical Centre, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, ²Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, ³Dartmouth College

Rumination, the excessive maintenance of negative information in working memory, is a core symptom of anxiety and depression, accompanied by an overactive default mode network (DMN). This study focuses on two emotion-regulation strategies that both act on the DMN: Distraction, which involves externally guided attention, reflected in activation of the frontoparietal network and deactivation of the DMN – and mindful acceptance, which instead requires endogenous attention regulation, a meta-cognitive ability, mainly associated with DMN deactivation. To better understand their effects, we assess whether distraction and/or mindfulness can release rumination by examining functional neuroimaging data in relation to subjective experiences. 34 healthy participants with high rumination (RRS-brooding > 11) tracked their ruminative thoughts at home, before completing a rumination induction task in the MRI scanner. The next day, rumination was induced again on a trial-by-trial basis in the scanner, with each rumination induction followed by high-load distraction, mindful acceptance or control (low-load distraction). Planned representational similarity analyses will enable us to evaluate to which extent the ruminative brain state, isolated on day 1, can be decoded during and after mindful acceptance versus distraction on day 2. We hypothesize that the effect of distraction on the neural representational strength of ruminative thought is acute, whereas mindful acceptance might alleviate rumination more lastingly, reflected in a reduced correlation of the ruminative brain state with the brain state after mindful acceptance versus distraction. Ultimately, examining effects of differential emotion regulation strategies on rumination and their neural correlates may guide the development of novel treatments.

Topic Area: THINKING: Other