Recent studies indicate that mindfulness meditation training interventions reduce stress and improve stress-related health outcomes, but the neural pathways for these effects are unknown. The present research evaluates whether mindfulness meditation training alters resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the amygdala, a region known to coordinate stress processing and physiological stress responses. We show in an initial discovery study that higher perceived stress over the past month is associated with greater bilateral amygdala-subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) rsFC in a sample of community adults (n = 130). A follow-up, single-blind randomized controlled trial shows that a 3-day intensive mindfulness meditation training intervention (relative to a well-matched 3-day relaxation training intervention without a mindfulness component) reduced right amygdala-sgACC rsFC in a sample of stressed unemployed community adults (n = 35). Although stress may increase amygdala-sgACC rsFC, brief training in mindfulness meditation could reverse these effects. This work provides an initial indication that mindfulness meditation training promotes functional neuroplastic changes, suggesting an amygdala-sgACC pathway for stress reduction effects.

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Category Change in the Absence of Cognitive ConflictLearning that adds new knowledge to the learner's memory with little or no change in prior knowledge is monotonic. The learner's knowledge base grows steadily. If the learner has little prior knowledge of the relevant subject matter, this view serves as a first approximation. But when the learner already has some knowledge of the relevant subject matter and, moreover, new information contradicts that prior knowledge, then learning might involve complicated interactions between the two (Chinn & Brewer, 1993). If the learner must override or reject his or her prior knowledge, his or her knowledge base shrinks as well as grows, so learning is nonmonotonic (Ohlsson, 2011). Cognitive change of this latter sort is variously referred to as attitude change, belief revision, conceptual change, restructuring, theory change, and deep learning (Ohlsson, 2011). In this article, we adhere to the usage that has become common in the learning sciences and call it conceptual change.There are multiple theories of the cognitive processes involved in conceptual change. Özdemir and Clark (2007) distinguish between knowledge-as-theory perspectives and knowledge-as-elements perspectives. Theories in the former category conceptualize intuitive and informal knowledge as theory-like in character, and the process of change consequently shares structural features with theory change in science (

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