Amygdala activation Investigation of amygdala activation revealed a highly significant pre–post intervention decrease in activation in a cluster in the right amygdala for the collapsed GAD sample in response to neutral facial expressions (p = 0.0003, size mm 3 :784, MNI coordinates x,y,z:30,− 5,− 19; Z = − 3.77).
Post hoc tests on the extracted signal averaged over the cluster showed that in the right pars opercularis, there was no significant difference between the treatment group pre-interventions ( t (24) = 1.37, p = .184), a greater activation in the MBSR than the SME group at post-intervention ( t (16.95) = − 2.65, p = .017), and a marginally significant increase in the MBSR group ( t (14) = − 2.05, p = .060).