Measuring the neural correlates of mindfulness with functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Although a good deal of research has explored clinical intervention studies to evaluate the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions, little is known about how mindfulness manifests itself in the mind and body of practitioners. In particular, real-time, objective measurements of state mindfulness would be a valuable tool for researchers to learn more about the mechanisms of mindfulness. In this chapter, we describe prior theoretical definitions of mindfulness, and we demonstrate the utility of the non-invasive, lightweight, and highly practical functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device for measuring the neural correlates of state mindfulness in the brain in ecologically valid environments.