Efeitos de intervenções baseadas em mindfulness sobre a assimetria alfa frontal do cérebro: uma revisão sistemática

Abstract

There is evidence of positive effects of mindfulness based interventions for improvement of psychological symptoms such as stress, depression and anxiety. One of the ways of measuring emotional states is through frontal brain alpha waves asymmetry. In order to verify if frontal alpha asymmetry can be a good predictor of mindfulness based intervention results, the present review sought to survey results of studies that used EEG measures to assess mindfulness interventions impacts. This review evaluates studies that used any mindfulness intervention without a specific public until October of 2020. Studies were selected from Google Academic database based on PRISMA recommendations and 9 articles were found. Of this total it was verified that 4 of the articles found that the mindfulness group had significantly more alpha power on the right side, 4 articles found no alpha asymmetry difference between mindfulness and control groups, and 1 article found that the mindfulness group had more alpha power on the left side. The main limitations of this review were the small number of consulted databases, the small amount of studies that approach this subject, the lack of meta-analysis and the small number of sources used. Therefore, it is concluded that it is still uncertain if mindfulness based interventions can alter frontal alpha asymmetry enhancing alpha power on the right side. The registration number of this review on PROSPERO platform is CRD42021227796.