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The neuroscience of meditation: classification, phenomenology, correlates, and mechanisms
Abstract
Rising from its contemplative and spiritual traditions, the science of meditation has seen huge growth over the last 30 years. This chapter reviews the classifications, phenomenology, neural correlates, and mechanisms of meditation. Meditation classification types are still varied and largely subjective. Broader models to describe meditation practice along multidimensional parameters may improve classification in the future. Phenomenological studies are few but growing, highlighting the subjective experience and correlations to neurophysiology. Oscillatory EEG studies are not conclusive likely due to the heterogeneous nature of the meditation styles and practitioners being assessed. Neuroimaging studies find common patterns during meditation and in long-term meditators reflecting the basic similarities of meditation in general; however, mostly the patterns differ across unique meditation traditions. Research on the mechanisms of meditation, specifically attention and emotion regulation is also discussed. There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating positive benefits from meditation in some clinical populations especially for stress reduction, anxiety, depression, and pain improvement, although future research would benefit by addressing the remaining methodological and conceptual issues. Meditation research continues to grow allowing us to understand greater nuances of how meditation works and its effects.
... A systematic review by Ospina et al. (2007) classifies the different types of meditation practices to five broad categories: 1) mindfulness meditation (Tang et al., 2015), 2) Yoga (Varambally & Gangadhar, 2016), 3) Tai Chi (Wayne & Kaptchuk, 2008), 4) mantra meditation (Lynch et al., 2018) and 5) Qi Gong (Feng et al., 2020) . Two further commonly used meditation techniques are loving kindness (Hofmann et al., 2011) and compassion meditation, and non-dual meditation (Dahl et al., 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019). In a secular world, meditation offers multiple possibilities to improve symptoms, reduce pain and develop better disease coping and management strategies ranging from psychiatric disorders (Wielgosz et al., 2019) to chronic pain Hilton et al. (2016); Zeidan and Vago (2016) and even eye diseases, such as glaucoma (Dada et al., 2019). ...
... The exact mechanisms underlying the practice of meditation is still elusive, with different meditation types having different psychophysiological effects on the practitioner (Brandmeyer et al., 2019). It has been suggested that contemplative practices might improve well-being by modulating maladaptive self-referential thought patterns (Dahl et al., 2015). ...
... For sham meditation techniques type, see Table 3 and 4, and for definitions, see Supplementary Materials Table 2 "transcendental" and "loving kindness". These meditation keywords were chosen based on the five broad categories of meditation defined by Ospina et al. (2007), and the various meditation techniques listed by Brandmeyer et al. (2019). Supplementary Materials Table 1 describes the search process and the search results for each appropriate database. ...
Background:
Low intensity transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) and meditation are two promising, yet variable, non-pharmacological interventions. Growing research is investigating combined effects of both techniques on one's cognitive, emotional, and physical health.
Objective:
This article reviews the current research that combines tES and meditation interventions in healthy and diseased participants. The review considers the intervention parameters and their effects in a well-organized manner.
Method:
A systematic search for clinical and experimental published studies was conducted in the PubMed, Cochrane, and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) databases using common keywords for tES and for meditation techniques well defined by previous studies. Unpublished ongoing studies were identified with the ClinicalTrials.gov and DRKS.de clinical trial websites.
Results:
20 published studies and 13 ongoing studies were included for qualitative analysis. 13 published articles studied patients with chronic pain, psychological disorders, cognitive impairment, and movement disorders. Anodal tDCS was the only tES technique while mindfulness meditation was the most common meditation type. Eight studies had a main group effect, with outcome improvement in the active combined intervention. However, most published studies showed improvements after at least one combined intervention with variable effects.
Conclusion:
Pairing anodal tDCS with meditation shows promising improvements of the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of daily life. Further studies are required to confirm the relevance of this combination in the clinic.
... In general terms, the meditative state has been described in subjective first-person reports as a shift in consciousness from the mundane waking state to a more "profound" mental state, e.g., an enhanced sense of well-being, focus, calm, detachment, insight, affect, bliss, emptiness, etc.; and many research studies have demonstrated distinctive neurophysiological correlates of the meditative state (e.g., Travis and Pearson, 2000;Newberg and d' Aquili, 2001;Vaitl et al., 2005;Cahn and Polich, 2006;Lutz et al., 2007;Baerentsen et al., 2009;Dahl et al., 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Raffone et al., 2019;Travis, 2020). The meditative state may manifest as a fleeting, momentary state (as typically reported by novice practitioners), or may be sustained for considerable periods of time (as typically reported by advanced/highly experienced meditators). ...
... Regarding silent mantra vs. vocal chanting, Brandmeyer et al. (2019) stated that "accumulating research suggests that silent mantra meditation may produce unique neural correlates as a result of subvocalization and/or the effect of imagining a word or phrase (see Lazar et al., 2000;Fox et al., 2014;Tomasino et al., 2014)." ...
... That paper cited research from the broader fields of cognitive and affective neuroscience, as well as from the field of CoNS, which supported the notion that these enhanced cognitive, affective, and null states demonstrated distinctly different and measurable neurophysiological correlates (e.g., Lehmann et al., 2001;Dalgleish, 2004;Carter et al., 2005;Cahn and Polich, 2006;Hankey, 2006;Holzel et al., 2007Holzel et al., , 2008Lutz et al., 2007Lutz et al., , 2008Davidson, 2010;Travis and Shear, 2010;Josipovic et al., 2011;Leung et al., 2013). 8 Since then, our original thesis has been supported by more recent research as well (e.g., Dahl et al., 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Josipovic, 2019;Raffone et al., 2019;Afonso et al., 2020;Yordanova et al., 2020Yordanova et al., , 2021. Lee et al. (2012, p.7) concluded that "different forms of meditation have meditation-specific effects on neural activity, rather than a common neural mechanism"; "different forms of meditation practice create domain-specific plastic changes in neural activity"; and "each form of meditation is associated with a dissociable pattern of neural activity." In a review of meditation research findings to date, Travis concurs: "the assumption that a common brain marker would emerge by combining different meditation practices together in one analysis is flawed. ...
This paper revisits the proposal for the classification of meditation methods which we introduced in our initial 2013 publication, “Toward a Universal Taxonomy and Definition of Meditation”. At that time, we advanced the thesis that meditation methods could be effectively segregated into three orthogonal categories by integrating the taxonomic principle of functional essentialism and the paradigm of Affect and Cognition; and we presented relevant research findings which supported that assertion. This iteration expands upon those theoretical and methodological elements by articulating a more comprehensive Three Tier Classification System which accounts for the full range of meditation methods; and demonstrates how recent neuroscience research continues to validate and support our thesis. This paper also introduces a novel criterion-based protocol for formulating classification systems of meditation methods, and demonstrates how this model can be used to compare and evaluate various other taxonomy proposals that have been published over the past 15 years.
... Different meditation practices exist, with similarities: a quiet location with few distractions, a specific and comfortable posture (sitting or lying down), a focus on attention, and an open attitude of letting thoughts come and go without judgment (Ospina et al., 2008). Phenomenological characteristics of meditation vary according to the type of practice, but alteration of sense of time, space and body representation, along with modifications of emotions and physical sensations are commonly reported (Brandmeyer et al., 2019). The neurophysiological correlates of mediation also depend on the type of meditation and thus are not yet clear (De Benedittis, 2015;Lomas, 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019). ...
... Phenomenological characteristics of meditation vary according to the type of practice, but alteration of sense of time, space and body representation, along with modifications of emotions and physical sensations are commonly reported (Brandmeyer et al., 2019). The neurophysiological correlates of mediation also depend on the type of meditation and thus are not yet clear (De Benedittis, 2015;Lomas, 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019). However, a systematic review showed that mindfulness-based meditation is associated with increased alpha and theta power, while no consistent patterns were observed in beta, delta, and gamma bandwidths. ...
... However, a systematic review showed that mindfulness-based meditation is associated with increased alpha and theta power, while no consistent patterns were observed in beta, delta, and gamma bandwidths. This configuration is indicative of a state of relaxed alertness favoring mental health (Lomas, 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019). Meditation has also been shown to positively influence emotional distress, pain, fatigue, and sleep difficulties in patients with cancer (Kim et al., 2013;Carlson et al., 2017;Arring et al., 2019;Ngamkham et al., 2019;Suh et al., 2021). ...
Introduction
A symptom cluster is very common among oncological patients: cancer-related fatigue (CRF), emotional distress, sleep difficulties, pain, and cognitive difficulties. Clinical applications of interventions based on non-ordinary states of consciousness, mostly hypnosis and meditation, are starting to be investigated in oncology settings. They revealed encouraging results in terms of improvements of these symptoms. However, these studies often focused on breast cancer patients, with methodological limitations (e.g., small sample size, no control group, and no follow-up). Another non-ordinary state of consciousness may also have therapeutic applications in oncology: self-induced cognitive trance (SICT). It seems to differ from hypnosis and meditation, as it involves the body more directly. Thus, investigating its clinical applications, along with hypnosis and meditation interventions, could improve available therapeutic options in oncology. This article details the study protocol of a preference-based longitudinal controlled superiority trial aiming to assess the effectiveness of 3 group interventions (hypnosis, meditation, and SICT) to improve oncological patients’ quality of life, and more specifically CRF, emotional distress, sleep, pain, and cognitive difficulties (primary outcomes).
Methods and analysis
A power analysis required a total sample of 160 patients. Main inclusion criteria are: cancer diagnosis, active treatments completed for less than a year, no practice of hypnosis, meditation, or SICT, and presence of at least one of these four symptoms: fatigue, sleep difficulties, depression, or anxiety. Each participant will choose the intervention in which they want to participate (hypnosis, mindful self-compassion meditation, SICT, or no intervention—control group). To test the effectiveness of the interventions, data will be collected by questionnaires and neurobiological measures and directly from the medical record at four time points: before inclusion in the study (baseline); immediately after the intervention; and at 3- and 12-month follow-up. The longitudinal data in each group will then be measured.
Discussion
In addition to standard cancer therapies, there is a growing interest from patients in complementary approaches, such as hypnosis, meditation, and SICT. The results of this study will be useful to increase knowledge about short- and long-term effectiveness of 3 group interventions for CRF, emotional distress, sleep, pain, and cognitive difficulties in patients with different cancers.
Clinical Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov/ (NCT04873661). Retrospectively registered on the 29th of April 2021. url: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04873661
... Using the domain and taxonomic key system of classification, HEM can be categorized on the basis of its method as a Null Domain Meditation (NDM) resulting in a state of emptiness, with no phenomenological content [25]. It is a guided meditation with the specific cognitive strategy of directing the awareness to various body parts in easy succession. ...
... It points to the efficacy of HEM as a restorative meditation practice. Comparative analyses of the neurobiology of various kinds of meditation reveal that the techniques are marked by unique characteristics that affect practitioners in different ways [25,31,32]. FAM "show activations in brain areas for cognitive control that require monitoring performance, voluntary regulation of attention and behavior, consistent with largely effortful, sustained attention with a range of regulation demands and deactivations in mind-wandering, episodic memory retrieval, simulation of future events, and conceptual semantic processing," while OMM "has activations in brain areas for voluntary regulation of thought and action, interoceptive processing (insula), cognitive control (coordinating, monitoring attention to both internal and external channels of information) and deactivations in sensory gating (right thalamus) and no blocking of sensory information" [25]. ...
... Comparative analyses of the neurobiology of various kinds of meditation reveal that the techniques are marked by unique characteristics that affect practitioners in different ways [25,31,32]. FAM "show activations in brain areas for cognitive control that require monitoring performance, voluntary regulation of attention and behavior, consistent with largely effortful, sustained attention with a range of regulation demands and deactivations in mind-wandering, episodic memory retrieval, simulation of future events, and conceptual semantic processing," while OMM "has activations in brain areas for voluntary regulation of thought and action, interoceptive processing (insula), cognitive control (coordinating, monitoring attention to both internal and external channels of information) and deactivations in sensory gating (right thalamus) and no blocking of sensory information" [25]. Since these two types of meditation coalesce in the practice of HEM, and particularly because the global PSQI decreases with practice of HEM, a more intensive study of the HEM technique of meditation is merited. ...
Purpose
Disturbed sleep and other sleep-related problems have a negative impact on the human mind and body. Meditation practices are reported to improve physiological functions and might also have a positive impact on regulating sleep. This research investigates the efficacy of an advanced mind–body medicine intervention, called Hollow and Empty Meditation (HEM), on improving sleep quality.
Methods
The study was a single-arm open-trial pilot study which assessed 413 adults who underwent a 4-day meditation retreat offered by the Art of Living, called the Advanced Meditation Program (AMP), and experienced a novel meditation—HEM. Results were measured using a self-report questionnaire, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which was administered to the participants thrice: on the first day of the program (pre-intervention), immediately after program (post-intervention/Day 4), and on Day 40 (D40) after the program.
Results
There was a significant difference in pre–post and pre–D40 scores in the population. Both sleep quality and sleep duration showed an improvement immediately after the AMP (post), and the residual impact was still experienced at D40, especially with the group with age > 36 years.
Conclusions
The use of HEM resulted in improvement in sleep quality not just immediately after the program, but had longer-term effects that extended over several weeks, helping remediate sleep problems among younger adults as well as older ones. It resulted in improvement in sleep quality as well as reduction in sleep-related daytime impairment, which have substantial constructive implications for well-being, everyday functioning and quality of life.
... Он не несет в себе адаптивной функции и не способствует эмпатичной реакции со стороны социального окружения. В основе практики осознанности лежит регуляция осознанных эмоций путем усиления префронтальных механизмов когнитивного контроля и, таким образом, подавление активности в областях, имеющих отношение к обработке аффекта [11]. ...
... Также в группе с опытом 5-10 лет участники чаще ошибаются по сравнению с группой с опытом 3-5 лет в тесте на эпизодическую зрительную память на высоком уровне сложности, когда требуется запомнить расположение 8 объектов. Это можно объяснить тем, что практика осознанности обычно представляет собой сосредоточение на одном объекте [11], таким образом, функции многозадачности и быстрой обработки большого объема информации могут подавляться. ...
The article presents a study of the mindfulness practice effect on the cognitive and psycho-emotional profile of two groups of people who have been in social isolation for 6 months. There are few interventions that affect significantly the reduction of the adverse impact of social isolation. Mindfulness practices that train skills for monitoring the present moment experiences have shown promising results. The study was conducted on a sample of 19 participants with 3–5 and 5–10 years of mindfulness practices. The purpose of the study is to investigate whether mindfulness practices can compensate for the negative impact of social isolation on the psycho-emotional and cognitive profile of participants. To test this hypothesis, the following methods were used: the Beck Depression Scale, the Rumination Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory, the five-factor personality model, the Visual Analogue Scale for assessing the emotional state, and computerized cognitive tests. The results showed the potential value of mindfulness practices in reducing symptoms of depression and sleep disturbances.
... Electrophysiological studies of meditation have been conducted for over 50 years, and meditation-research publications have increased dramatically, while review papers on this topic appear almost every year (Singh and Telles, 2015;Kaur and Singh, 2015;Kute and Kulkarni, 2016;Lee et al., 2018;Brandmeyer et al., 2019). Nevertheless, the scientists have no clear consensus about the underlying neurophysiological changes resulting from meditation practices, as EEG oscillatory activity and event-related potentials (ERPs) assessments of meditative practice yield varying results, as summarized in the reviews. ...
... The overarching reason as to why results vary so much is that the term "meditation" carries different meanings and is generally used as an umbrella term for the many different practices in individual cultures. Many studies reveal that the cognitive effects might differ according to the type of meditation done, and various meditation techniques were shown to induce rather specific changes in oscillatory EEG activity (Brandmeyer et al., 2019) and ERPs (Singh and Telles, 2015). This is why the investigation of different meditative practices remains an ongoing process to the present day. ...
Thousand-year-old Buddhist traditions have developed a wide range of methods for the subjective exploration of consciousness through meditation. Combining their subjective research with the possibilities of modern neuroscience can help us better understand the physiological mechanisms of consciousness. Therefore, we have been guided by specifically Buddhist explanations when studying the physiological mechanisms of altered states of consciousness during Buddhist meditations. In Buddhism, meditations are generally divided into two large categories: (1) one-pointed concentration and (2) analytical meditation. Maintaining both one-pointed concentration and analytical meditation on ‘bodhicitta’ (“the thought of awakening”) and ‘emptiness’ is a necessary condition for transitioning into tantric practices. Tantric practices involve sophisticated visualizations of Buddhist deities, the ‘energy structure’ of the human body, and the visualization of the stage-by-stage process of dying accompanied with the dissolution of body elements. According to Buddhism, these meditations are characterized by the gradual withdrawal from “gross levels” of consciousness associated with the five senses. From a psychophysiological perspective, this withdrawal of sensory consciousness can be considered as the decrease of sensory stimuli recognition and attentional disengagement from the external world. We concentrated on how considered meditations affect sensory and cognitive processing of external stimuli. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in the passive oddball paradigm were studied both during meditations and in a controlled state of relaxed wakefulness. It was shown with a group of 115 Buddhist monks that during meditation, mismatch negativity amplitudes, amplitudes of N1 and P2 components of ERPs to deviant stimuli, and the amplitudes of the P3a component to novel stimuli all decrease. These outcomes suggest that the considered Buddhist meditations, compared to the control state of relaxed wakefulness, are accompanied by a decrease in physiological processes responsible for maintaining attention on the outside world and recognizing changes in the stream of sensory stimuli.
... We will now describe the effects on human psychology and physiology that might be expected from the Heartfulness practices, based on current knowledge gained from research in other traditions. For extensive reviews of the effects of various styles of meditation and other contemplative practices please see Travis and Shear (2010), Dahl et al. (2015), Schmalzl et al. (2015), Brandmeyer et al. (2019), and Raffone et al. (2019). Here, we will briefly summarize the most consistent findings and theories that we consider to be relevant for the study of Heartfulness. ...
... Several neurophysiological theories have been developed to explain the mechanisms through which meditation and contemplative practices lead to improvements in well-being, and cognitive and emotion-related processes, regardless of whether the meditation has well-being as a final goal. One prominent theory proposes that meditation is an attention-regulation process that creates meta-awareness, thereby enhancing emotion regulation abilities, concentration, and attentional control (Travis and Shear, 2010;Dahl et al., 2015;Schmalzl et al., 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Raffone et al., 2019). This in turn may occur by reducing cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance, thus giving space to regulate emotions before practitioners become overwhelmed, and so that they can pause before reacting (Lutz et al., 2008;Dahl et al., 2015). ...
Today, as research into the contemplative sciences is being widely referenced, the research community would benefit from an understanding of the Heartfulness method of meditation. Heartfulness offers an in-depth experiential practice focused on the evolution of human consciousness using the ancient technique of Pranahuti (yogic Transmission) during Meditation, in combination with the more active mental practice of “Cleaning.” Both are enabled by initiation into the Heartfulness practices. These unique features distinguish Heartfulness from other paths that have been described in the scientific literature thus far. In this introductory paper, we present the Heartfulness practices, the philosophy upon which the practices are based, and we reflect on the putative mechanisms through which Heartfulness could exert its effects on the human body and mind in the light of scientific research that has been done in other meditation systems. We conclude with suggestions for future research on the Heartfulness way of meditation.
... Other forms of meditation techniques (Box 2) appear to be permutations and combinations of these three prototypes, with known differences and commonalities in their methodology and benefits (Brandmeyer 2019). ...
... The use of randomised longitudinal study designs with active control groups would allow for control of the potentially confounding effects of non-meditation-specific qualities of the lifestyle associated with contemplative practices (Brandmeyer 2019). It is especially important to remain cautious regarding the degree to which research findings are translational and generalisable to clinical practice (Van Dam 2018). ...
Meditation, a component of ashtanga yoga, is an act of inward contemplation in which the mind fluctuates between a state of attention to a stimulus and complete absorption in it. Some forms of meditation have been found to be useful for people with psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, depression and substance use disorder. Evidence for usefulness of meditation for people with psychotic disorders is mixed, with reported improvements in negative symptoms but the emergence/precipitation of psychotic symptoms. This article narrates the benefits of meditation in psychiatric disorders, understanding meditation from the yoga perspective, biological aspects of meditation and practical tips for the practice of meditation. We also explain possible ways of modifying meditative practices to make them safe and useful for the patient population and useful overall as a society-level intervention.
... Keywords: meditation, depression, anxiety, biomarkers, Isha, Samyama, triglycerides, mindfulness BACKGROUND Meditation is gaining credibility as a simple and effective tool to impact health and well-being. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have begun to investigate meditationrelated cognitive, psychological, and physiological changes (Brandmeyer et al., 2019). As meditation-related research has grown exponentially since the 1990's, there are now over 5,000 peer-reviewed publications from the National Library of Medicine (pubmed.com). ...
... For practitioners, meditation is typically a spiritual practice aiming for selfactualization, enlightenment, or transcendence. From a scientific perspective, meditation is a method for distinct attentional training to improve insight into one's own mental activity (Brandmeyer et al., 2019). Meditation, as defined from a Western perspective for studies, may broadly include mantra meditation, mindfulness training, yoga, transcendental meditation, qigong, tai chi, and guided imagery (Chen et al., 2012). ...
Background: Meditation is gaining recognition as a tool to impact health and well-being. Samyama is an 8-day intensive residential meditation experience conducted by Isha Foundation requiring several months of extensive preparation and vegan diet. The health effects of Samyama have not been previously studied. The objective was to assess physical and emotional well-being before and after Samyama participation by evaluating psychological surveys and objective health biomarkers.
Methods: This was an observational study of 632 adults before and after the Isha Samyama retreat. All participants were invited to complete surveys. Controls included household significant others. Surveys were completed at baseline (T1), just before Samyama (T2), immediately after Samyama (T3), and 3 months later (T4) to assess anxiety, depression, mindfulness, joy, vitality, and resilience through validated psychometric scales. Voluntary blood sampling for biomarker analysis was done to assess hemoglobin (Hb), HbA1c, lipid profile, and C-reactive protein (CRP). Primary outcomes were changes in psychometric scores, body weight, and blood biomarkers.
Results: Depression and anxiety scores decreased from T1 to T3, with the effect most pronounced in participants with baseline depression or anxiety. Scores at T4 remained below baseline for those with pre-existing depression or anxiety. Vitality, resilience, joy, and mindfulness increased from T1 to T3 (sustained at T4). Body weight decreased by 3% from T1 to T3. Triglycerides (TG) were lower from T2 to T3. Participants had lower HbA1c and HDL at T2, and lower CRP at all timepoints compared with controls.
Conclusions: Participation in the Isha Samyama program led to multiple benefits. The 2-month preparation reduced anxiety, and participants maintained lower anxiety levels at 3 months post-retreat. Physical health improved over the course of the program as evidenced by weight loss and improved HbA1C and lipid profile. Practices associated with the Samyama preparation phase and the retreat may serve as an effective way to improve physical and mental health. Future studies may examine their use as an alternative therapy in patients with depression and/or anxiety.
Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov , Identifier: 1801728792. Registered retrospectively on 4/17/2020.
... Such activities include "contemplative practices," referring to a wide range of volitional activities associated with first-person reflection on bodily and mental states, such as meditation or mindfulness-based practices. Contemplative practices involve attentional, perceptual and metacognitive processes, grounding of sensorial experience in the present moment, openness toward others and, in general, promoting psychophysiological wellbeing (Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Farb et al., 2015). One of the mechanisms through which contemplative practices are thought to foster wellbeing is through modulation of interoceptive system activity (Weng et al., 2021). ...
Interoception is a perceptual process of gathering information on the physiological and functional state of the body. It is thought to underlie different affective and social processes such as emotional regulation, self-other distinction, understanding of others' emotions and, more generally, to support psychophysiological wellbeing. Recent studies have suggested that interoception plays an important role in the embodiment of abstract concepts as well, thus providing a link between perception of bodily signals and conceptual representations. Considering that contemplative practices such as meditation and mindfulness-based practices usually engage the practitioner in a focus on bodily sensations, contemplative practices are thought to foster enhanced bodily awareness and empathic behaviors through modulation of interoceptive functions, leading practitioners to have a more embodied experience of the world. In the current study, we compared a group of practitioners (N = 66) with a matched control group of non-practitioners, adopting self-report questionnaires examining interoceptive sensibility, empathy, and perceptual components of conceptual representations. Differences between the two groups were found, with practitioners showing greater interoceptive sensibility, greater empathy and overall greater perceptual experiences for both abstract and concrete concepts. However, a mediation analysis showed that interoceptive sensibility was observed to affect empathy through mediation of interoceptive components of conceptual representations only in the non-practitioners group. Considering that practitioners are trained to “ground” their experience in bodily sensations, this study suggests that embodying experiences in interoceptive sensations may be a crucial gateway to reach higher states of consciousness characterized by greater bodily sensibility and enhanced empathy.
... Of note, the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus gray matter have been shown to change with yoga/meditation. [22][23][24][25] Interestingly, hypertonicity of the CB [12,[26][27][28][29] and increased size and weight of the CB [30][31][32][33][34][35] are common findings in HT. However, inconsistent evidence has revealed a decrease in systemic blood pressure (BP) through CB deactivation in response to hyperoxia in hypertensive subjects, [36][37][38] suggesting that hyperactivity of the CB may be mechanistically associated with sympathetic dysregulation. ...
Adjunctive therapy for hypertension is in high demand for clinical research. Therefore, several meta-analyses have provided sufficient evidence for meditation as an adjunct therapy, without being anchored on reliable physiological grounds. Meditation modulates the autonomic nervous system. Herein, we propose a hierarchical-dependent effect for the carotid body (CB) in attenuating blood pressure (BP) and ventilatory variability (VV) fine-tuning due to known nerve connections between the CB, prefrontal brain, hypothalamus, and solitary tract nucleus. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate the role of CB in the possible decrease in BP and changes in VV that could occur in response to meditation. This was a prospective, single-center, parallel-group, randomized, controlled clinical trial with concealed allocation. Eligible adult subjects of both sexes with stage 1 hypertension will be randomized into 1 of 2 groups: transcendental meditation or a control group. Subjects will be invited to 3 visits after randomization and 2 additional visits after completing 8 weeks of meditation or waiting-list control. Thus, subjects will undergo BP measurements in normoxia and hyperoxia, VV measurements using the Poincaré method at rest and during exercise, and CB activity measurement in the laboratory. The primary outcome of this study was the detection of changes in BP and CB activity after 8 weeks. Our secondary outcome was the detection of changes in the VV at rest and during exercise. We predict that interactions between hyperoxic deactivation of CB and meditation; Will reduce BP beyond stand-alone intervention or alternatively; Meditation will significantly attenuate the effects of hyperoxia as a stand-alone intervention. In addition, VV can be changed, partially mediated by a reduction in CB activity. Trial registration number: ReBEC registry (RBR-55n74zm). Stage: pre-results.
... Meditation is a self-regulatory practice of the body and mind that can be performed in various ways and is a nonpharmaceutical low-cost tool that can be integrated into a healthy lifestyle [5]. A host of literature has examined the effects of meditation on a range of psychological factors and brain outcomes, with multiple systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in this field [6][7][8][9]. ...
Background
Mindfulness and meditation have a rich historical tradition, and a growing scientific base of evidence supports their use in creating positive psychological and neuroplastic changes for practitioners. Although meditation can be taught in various ways, the scientific community has yet to systematically study the impact of different types of meditation on neuropsychological outcomes, especially as it pertains to digital implementation. Therefore, it is critical that the instruction of mindfulness be evidence based because meditation is being used in both scientific and clinical settings.
Objective
This study investigated the use of teacher cueing and the integration of neuroscience education into a meditation program. Compassion cueing was chosen as the element of experimental manipulation because traditional lineages of Buddhist meditation teach compassion for self and others as one of the primary outcomes of meditation. We hypothesized that participants receiving compassion cueing would have enhanced neuropsychological outcomes compared with those receiving functional cueing and that gains in neuroscience knowledge would relate to positive neuropsychological outcomes.
Methods
Participants (n=89) were randomized to receive either functional cueing (control group) or compassion cueing (experimental group) and engaged with five 10-minute meditation sessions a week for 4 weeks. All intervention sessions were administered through digital presentation. All participants completed ecological momentary assessments before and after the daily intervention, as well as pre- and postintervention questionnaires.
Results
Participants demonstrated significant benefits over time, including increased mindfulness and self-compassion, decreased depression, and gains in neuroscience content (all P<.001); however, no significant between-group differences were found. Daily scores from each day of the intervention showed a statistically significant shift from active toward settled. Importantly, long-term increases in mindfulness were positively correlated to changes in compassion (r=0.326; P=.009) and self-compassion (r=0.424; P<.001) and negatively correlated to changes in anxiety (r=–0.266; P=.03) and depression (r=–0.271; P=.03). Finally, the acute effects of meditation were significantly correlated to the longitudinal outcomes (with a small-to-medium effect size), especially those relevant to mindfulness.
Conclusions
We developed a novel neuroscience-based education–meditation program that enhanced self-regulation as evidenced by improved mindfulness, self-compassion, and mood state. Our findings demonstrate the behavioral importance of engaging with mindfulness meditation and reinforce the idea that the benefits of meditation are independent of teacher cueing behavior. Future studies will need to investigate the brain-based changes underlying these meditation-induced outcomes.
... Additionally, both cognitively and neurobiologically, the state of flow shares overlap with other altered states of consciousness, including meditative and psychedelic states, states of traumatic stress, and socalled peak or optimal experiences (Carhart- Harris et al., 2012Harris et al., , 2014Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Wheeler and Dyer, 2020). While scientists have explored some of the neurobiological changes beneath the aforementioned altered states (Brewer et al., 2011;Nash et al., 2018;Yanes and Loprinzi, 2018), the precise neural mechanisms underpinning the onset of flow and the state itself remain unclear, both empirically and theoretically. ...
Flow is a cognitive state that manifests when there is complete attentional absorption while performing a task. Flow occurs when certain internal as well as external conditions are present, including intense concentration, a sense of control, feedback, and a balance between the challenge of the task and the relevant skillset. Phenomenologically, flow is accompanied by a loss of self-consciousness, seamless integration of action and awareness, and acute changes in time perception. Research has begun to uncover some of the neurophysiological correlates of flow, as well as some of the state’s neuromodulatory processes. We comprehensively review this work and consider the neurodynamics of the onset of the state, considering large-scale brain networks, as well as dopaminergic, noradrenergic, and endocannabinoid systems. To accomplish this, we outline an evidence-based hypothetical situation, and consider the flow state in a broader context including other profound alterations in consciousness, such as the psychedelic state and the state of traumatic stress that can induce PTSD. We present a broad theoretical framework which may motivate future testable hypotheses.
... Cognitive Relevance Years of neuroscience research have shown several advantages to meditation practice (Brandmeyer et al., 2019). A recent article offered a possible course of action with a unified framework (Dahl et al., 2020). ...
Research into the similarities and differences between various forms of meditation practice is still in its early stages. Here, utilizing functional connectivity and graph measures, we present our work examining three meditation traditions: Himalayan Yoga (HT), Isha Shoonya (SNY), and Vipassana (VIP). EEG activity of the meditative block is used to build functional brain connections to exploit the resulting networks between various meditation traditions and a control group. Support vector machine is employed for binary classification, and models are built with features generated via graph theory measures. We obtain maximum accuracy of 84.76% with gamma1, 90% with alpha, and 84.76% with theta in HT, SNY, and VIP, respectively. Our key findings involve (a) higher delta connectivity in Vipassana meditators, (b) synchronization of theta networks in the left hemisphere inspected to be stronger in the anterior frontal area across meditators, (c) greater involvement of gamma2 processing observed among Himalayan and Vipassana meditators, (d) increased left frontal activity contribution for all meditators in theta and gamma bands, and (e) modularity engaged extensively in gamma processing across all meditation traditions. Furthermore, we discuss the implication of this research for neurotechnology products to enable guided meditation among naive practitioners.
... Relief from a negative emotional state can also improve the individual's ability to regulate emotions to a certain extent. In addition, the individual is in a state of physical and mental relaxation during the intervention period, which is conducive to helping the individual effectively cope with and deal with related negative emotions [13][14][15]. ...
Objective:
This study aims to explore the application effect of meditation relaxation training and the Rosenthal effect in patients with adenoidectomy.
Methods:
This study included 94 children who underwent adenoidectomy in our hospital from April 2020 to May 2022 and were divided into a study group and a control group. The control group was given routine care, and the study group was given meditation relaxation training and the Rosenthal effect on the basis of the control group. The negative emotions, treatment compliance, complication rates, and nursing satisfaction of children's family members before and after the intervention were compared between the two groups.
Results:
The results of this study showed that after the intervention, the CDI and SCARED scores of the children in the study group were significantly lower than those in the control group. The treatment compliance in the study group was significantly higher than that in the control group, and the incidence of complications was significantly lower than that in the control group.
Conclusion:
The intervention of meditation relaxation training and the Rosenthal effect on children with adenoidectomy can relieve their negative emotions, improve treatment compliance, reduce the incidence of complications, and the children's family members are more satisfied.
... Meditation is a mental practice aiming to improve the psychological capacity of self-regulation regarding attention, awareness, and emotion [59]. Studies have found evidence of the positive effects of meditation on health and well-being, but the difficulty of learning and engaging in meditation practice has been identified as a major barrier [60]. ...
Background:
The application of virtual reality (VR) in clinical settings is growing rapidly, with encouraging results. As VR has been introduced into complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a systematic review must be undertaken to understand its current status.
Aim:
This review aims to evaluate and summarize the current applications of VR in CAM, as well as to explore potential directions for future research and development.
Methods:
After a brief description of VR technology, we discuss the past 20 years of clinical VR applications in the medical field. Then, we discuss the theoretical basis of the combination of VR technology and CAM, the research thus far, and practical factors regarding usability, etc., from the following three main aspects: clinical application, teaching, and scientific research. Finally, we summarize and propose hypotheses on the application of VR in CAM and its limitations.
Results:
Our review of the theoretical underpinnings and research findings to date leads to the prediction that VR and CAM will have a significant impact on future research and practice.
Conclusion:
Although there is still much research needed to advance the science in this area, we strongly believe that VR applications will become indispensable tools in the toolbox of CAM researchers and practitioners and will only grow in relevance and popularity in the era of digital health.
... While the term "mindfulness" is defined differently in Buddhist and modern research-community contexts (Dahl et al., 2015;Brandmeyer et al., 2019), in the research community, it "often refers to a self-regulated attentional stance oriented toward the present-moment experience that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance" (Dahl et al., 2015, p. 516), which includes "a non-evaluative awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, and other experiences in the moment" (Lebois et al., 2015, p. 506). Thus, mindfulness involves an accepting, non-evaluative-often also termed a "non-judging" (e.g., Kabat-Zinn, 2003, p. 150)-stance toward one's current mental life or one's current life in general. ...
Background: Cognition that is not dominated by thinking in terms of opposites (opposite diminishing) or by making judgments (non-judging) can be found both in Buddhist/mindfulness contexts and in mental states that are fostered by dissociative psychedelics ( N -methyl-D-aspartate antagonists) such as ketamine. Especially for the Buddhist/mindfulness case, both opposite diminishing and non-judging have been proposed to relate to mental well-being. Whether ketamine-occasioned opposite diminishing and/or non-judging relate to increased mental well-being in the form of antidepressant response is unknown, and was investigated in the present study.
Methods: In this open-label outpatient study, the dose level and frequency for the ketamine infusions were adjusted individually in close consultation with the patients suffering from depression with the overall goal to maximize antidepressant benefits—a novel dose regimen that we term personalized antidepressant dosing . In general, treatment started with an initial series of ketamine infusions with a dosage of 0.5 mg/kg body weight and was then adjusted (usually increased). A possible relationship between ketamine-induced antidepressant benefits and retrospectively reported peri-infusion experiences of opposite diminishing and non-judging was assessed based on a total of 45 ketamine-infusion treatment sessions from 11 different patients suffering from depression. Opposite diminishing and non-judging were measured with the two items from the Altered States of Consciousness Inventory (ASCI) that measure these concepts. Depression was measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II).
Results: Peri-infusion experiences of both opposite diminishing and non-judging were associated with antidepressant responses confirming our hypothesis. Furthermore, opposite diminishing and non-judging were closely related to one another while relating to antidepressant response in distinguishable ways.
Conclusion: Future controlled randomized trials with dissociative and other psychedelics and with a larger number of participants are needed to establish the possible link of psychedelically induced opposite diminishing and non-judging with an antidepressant response more firmly.
... Meditation encompasses several ancient self-regulation practices, and can greatly improve stress-related outcomes (Goyal et al., 2014;Delorme, 2016, 2020b;Brandmeyer, Delorme and Wahbeh, 2019). A popular form of meditation practice is the focus of attention onto an object (e.g., mantra, beads counting, breath focus) and the monitoring of mind-wandering thoughts (i.e., distractor), to then reallocate attention to the object. ...
Over the last 30 years we have observed dramatic declines in mental health worldwide, with nearly 450 million people currently suffering from a mental or behavioral disorder. Globally, there is less than 1 mental health professional for every 10,000 people, with 76-85% of the population in low and middle-income countries without access to treatment. The overarching aim of this thesis is the identification of novel and cost-effective methods for measuring, detecting, and assessing well-being. In the first study of this research project, we validated the ability of a quick global scale to capture multidimensional well-being on 1,615 participants that participated in an online survey, identified some predictors of well-being, and observed improvements from online interventions. Mental health and individual well-being also influences the structure and function of our brains across the lifespan, which in turn, mediate well-being levels. While progress has been made regarding our understanding of the interacting relationships between well-being and brain function, much is still unknown. Recent technological advances have led to the development of affordable, light-weight, wearable, and wireless electroencephalography (EEG) technologies that offer fast preparation time, high mobility, and that facilitate the collection of EEG data over large and diversified populations by increasing access to populations that were previously difficult to study with conventional systems. The analysis of large datasets with robust statistical methods or advanced machine-learning algorithms can ease the identification of trends, the mediator role of covariables, and the classification of mental states. While low-cost, low-density EEG systems have presented significant challenges for conducting EEG research, here we validated a wearable system for recording spectral measures relevant to the study of well-being, by comparison with a state-of-the-art system (study 2). In study 3, we used the tools validated in studies 1 and 2 to examine the relation between EEG and multidimensional well-being in a large sample (N = 353). We found a potential EEG marker of well-being, consistent with some literature on anxiety and depression, with age as a mediator. We discuss interpretations and limitations related to the studies and the broader field, as well as future directions (e.g., real-world EEG monitoring, dyadic or multimodal applications, brain-computer interfaces, neurofeedback training) and ethical implications for the field. The broader applications of this line of research will hopefully help to reduce the prevalence of mental health disparities worldwide (e.g., chronic stress, anxiety disorder, depression, psychiatric conditions), and will also help to predict and prevent mental illness in the broader population.
... Transcendental experience may be an engine that fuels human development and creates potential for the evolution of higher forms of human "intelligence, " to be understood here in terms of mental capability. Insights from the neuroscience of meditation and its effects on human wellbeing and the development of higher forms of consciousness (Muehsam et al., 2017;Mahone et al., 2018;Vieten et al., 2018;Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Vivot et al., 2020) points toward states of enhanced consciousness in deep meditation as a crucial driver of human psychological development . Deep meditation also has proven therapeutic effects, as in chronic pain management (Hilton et al., 2017) in individuals where consciousness is often reduced to little else than overwhelming sensations of pain, limiting the full, health expression of conscious capability in their everyday lives. ...
In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply to any of the field theories, or any other neural theory, of consciousness, their explanatory power is limited. As discussed in detail herein, the matter is complicated further by the facts than any scientifically operational definition of consciousness is inevitably partial, and that the phenomenon has no spatial dimensionality. Under the light of insights from research on meditation and expanded consciousness, chronic pain syndrome, healthy aging, and eudaimonic well-being, we may conceive consciousness as a source of potential energy that has no clearly defined spatial dimensionality, but can produce significant changes in others and in the world, observable in terms of changes in time. It is argued that consciousness may have evolved to enable the human species to generate such changes in order to cope with unprecedented and/or unpredictable adversity. Such coping could, ultimately, include the conscious planning of our own extinction when
survival on the planet is no longer an acceptable option.
Keywords: field theory, physics, consciousness, evolution, deep meditation, aging and wellbeing people, eudaimonia
... The counter view, perhaps more vociferous within scientific literature, argues that such experiences are largely cultural and contextual elaborations of ordinary human experiences (Proudfoot, 1985;Sharf, 2000), which may have a strong emotional accompaniment (in phenomenological terms overvalued ideas). Neurosurgeons have identified brain systems involved in transcendental experiences (Urgesi et al., 2010), and electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies of faithbased rituals and meditation have discovered neurological and brain function correlates of contemplative states (Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Newberg, 2014;Wahbeh et al., 2018). Studies of meditation have consistently shown brain activation in specific regions including the insula, premotor cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and frontoparietal cortex (Fox et al., 2016;Fox et al., 2014). ...
Mystical and spiritual experiences have been reported throughout human history. Causal explanations for these range from psychopathology of mental illness, drugs such as hallucinogens, neurological disorders including temporal lobe epilepsy, and genuine mystical or spiritual awakening. There is a common core of phenomena in such experiences, as described both in historical accounts and recent research, but also evidence of cultural specificity. This article is a personal account of such an experience, which occurred in a postanesthetic state. A striking feature of the experience was noesis: a sense of revelation and complete understanding. I argue that while there must be a neural basis to these phenomena, it is difficult to reduce the subjective meaning of the experience purely to a brain dysfunction. Reconciling mechanism and meaning of such experiences remains a challenge for both neuroscience and philosophy.
... However, it remains challenging to ensure any such study on Vedic meditation. In view of the heterogeneous nature of the meditation styles and practitioners, oscillatory EEG studies could not provide conclusive findings (Brandmeyer, Delorme, & Wahbeh, 2019). ...
Interpersonal emotion regulation relates to the state of well-being of the people by augmenting work engagement, performance, and limiting the experience of negative emotions in relationships. Vedic tradition considers emotional maturity as the capacity to endure the emotional upheavals in life. But the common belief is that Vedic contemplative practices are for intrapersonal emotional regulation only. Contemporary research needs further conceptual and methodological innovations to facilitate interpersonal emotion regulation through diverse contemplative practices. To this end, the current work has sought to analyze the role and mechanisms of Vedic contemplative practices in improving interpersonal emotion regulation. Also, it illustrates several contemplative activities, used as stand-alone or adjunct, to ameliorate difficulties in relationships. It further illuminates significant neurological mechanisms and theoretical and methodological challenges in research on the promotion of interpersonal emotion regulation through Vedic contemplative techniques.
... [20][21][22] Similar to the Interprofessional Model of SC, 23 our conception of SC is intended to apply to all healthcare professionals, from nurses to medical clinicians, and is not restricted to the professional interventions of chaplains. 24 Beyond the difficulty of having narrow definitions, spirituality and SC have been shown to be beneficial to health outcomes during the past few decades of research across several disciplines and fields, from epidemiology, 25,26 to neuroscience 27 and mental health. 28 The World Health Organisation (WHO) includes the evaluation of and care for the spiritual needs of the patients with life-threatening illness. ...
Background:
Spirituality is beneficial to health. Evidence around the benefits of Spiritual care (SC) is advancing, and training is becoming part of healthcare professional development. As the COVID-19 crisis showed, during major health disasters (MHDs), the demand for SC grows exponentially, while the burden of care and focus on preserving life often hamper its provision. Nonetheless, existing health emergency strategic frameworks lack preparedness for the provision of SC.
Aim:
The aim of this study was to identify the components for a National Strategy (NS) for the provision of SC during MHDs.
Methods:
Descriptive, cross-sectional, qualitative phenomenological design based on individual, semi-structured e-interviews with nursing managers and National Health Service/volunteer chaplains based in England. Thematic analysis of 25 e-interview data was performed based on a dialogic collaborative process.
Results and discussion:
Eleven themes were identified as components of the proposed NS. From these components, specific recommendations for practical actions are provided. An integrated framework approach and smart investments in resources, staff training and technologies should be led by the paradigm of culturally competent and compassionate care.
Conclusion:
The need to have strategic frameworks, both national and local, that better equip a country healthcare sector to prevent, face, and recover from MHDs is paramount. Catering for the spiritual needs of the affected population should be a key aspect of any health emergency strategy to ensure the preservation of quality care.
... Meditation is a mental practice aiming to improve the psychological capacity of selfregulation regarding attention, awareness, and emotion [1]. Its implementation has been described not only in religious and cultural beliefs but also in health promotion as itself or as a component of mind-body practices such as yoga, qigong, tai chi, and mindfulnessbased interventions (MBIs) [2]. ...
Background:
Meditation has been increasingly adapted for healthy populations and participants with diseases. Its beneficial effects are still challenging to determine due to the heterogeneity and methodological obstacles regarding medical applications. This study aimed to integrate the features of therapeutic meditation in randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
Methods:
We conducted a systematic review of RCTs with meditation for populations with diseases using the PubMed database through June 2021. We analyzed the characteristics of the diseases/disorders, participants, measurements, and their overall benefits.
Results:
Among a total of 4855 references, 104 RCTs were determined and mainly applied mindfulness-based (51 RCTs), yoga-based (32 RCTs), and transcendental meditation (14 RCTs) to 10,139 patient-participants. These RCTs were conducted for participants with a total of 45 kinds of disorders; the most frequent being cancer, followed by musculoskeletal and connective tissue diseases and affective mood disorder. Seven symptoms or signs were frequently assessed: depressive mood, feeling anxious, quality of life, stress, sleep, pain, and fatigue. The RCTs showed a higher ratio of positive outcomes for sleep (73.9%) and fatigue (68.4%).
Conclusions:
This systematic review produced the comprehensive features of RCTs for therapeutic meditation. These results will help physicians and researchers further study clinical adaptations in the future as reference data.
... According to Husserl's and Varela's philosophy, the first-person phenomenology of consciousness requires a disciplined methodology, such as the epoché or phenomenological reduction. One of the ideas behind this, was that accurately observing and reporting on internal experiences would require training, in particular of one's attention (Brandmeyer, Delorme, and Wahbeh 2019). The idea that meditators may be able to report on their experiences with greater accuracy than non-meditators (Fox et al. 2012), together with the canon of literature describing the experiences within meditation, made meditation as a task a logical starting point for this study. ...
A recurring problem for the study of the neural correlates of conscious experience states is the lack of continuous measures for first-person reports. In this thesis, I introduce Temporal Experience Tracing as a method for capturing continuous subjective experiences. This method requires participants to retrospectively graph the intensity of an experience along several phenomenological dimensions over time. I present the results from two groups practising three styles of mindfulness meditation in either a 3-day Retreat setting, or over several months in their own homes. The traces revealed common experience states with transition dynamics shared between the participant groups. We found both meditation style-specific experience states, as well as a cluster of difficulties experienced with the practice. From low-density portable EEG recordings, 98 neural features were computed, including spectral features, connectivity measures and information theoretic measures. These features enabled classification of the data-driven experience clusters in unseen meditation sessions from known participants in both meditation groups, while the meditation style could only be classified in the more experienced participant group, the Home meditation group. Finally, using univariate classifications, the neural features enabling correct binary classifications of experience states are studied. Supporting the idea of inter-individual phenomenological similarity, neural markers associated with high classification accuracies strongly overlapped between the two groups. Furthermore, we did not find an effect of mindfulness training on the classification accuracy of subjective experience states, suggesting that this method can capture aspects of the true underlying experiences even in untrained participants. This study is the first of its kind, combining a quantitative analysis of phenomenological structures in time with a data-driven approach to the study of neural correlates of mental states. Future applications of temporal experience tracing are discussed, including the study of temporal dynamics of continuous states of consciousness and the integration of the experience dynamics with neural dynamics.
... This system plays an important role in the executive control of attention, mediating internally and externally oriented cognition, and is responsible for top-down regulation of mental states (Corbetta et al., 2008;Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014;Spreng et al., 2013). The regular practice of MM has been shown to affect all the abovementioned neural networks, to improve different cognitive and affective processes, such as attention and emotion regulation, and to be beneficial for some clinical populations affected by chronic pain, stress, anxiety and depression (for reviews on the effects and mechanisms of meditation, see Brandmeyer et al., 2019 andTang et al., 2015). For what concerns the specific influence of MM on MW, there is much less evidence available and, despite the central role of MW during the practice of MM, the relationship between the two remains an open matter. ...
Through the practice of Mindfulness Meditation (MM), meditators become familiar with the observation of ongoing spontaneous thoughts, while maintaining an attitude of openness and equanimity. The aim of this systematic review is to present a synthesis of available findings of the short and long-term effects of MM on mind wandering (MW). We included studies that considered both first-person and behavioral/physiological measures of MW. The search resulted in 2035 papers, 24 of which were eligible. Reviewed studies revealed a high heterogeneity in designs, outcome measures and interventions. Most of the pre-post intervention studies showed that a protracted practice of MM (at least 2 weeks) reduced MW, limiting its negative effects on different cognitive tasks. Cross-sectional studies highlighted differences between expert meditators and naïve individuals: meditators self-reported less MW and showed decreased Default Mode Network activity, during meditation and resting-state. Further studies are needed to replicate available findings and to more deeply explore how MW is influenced by meditation, also considering its qualitative characteristics that remain largely unexplored.
... In these realms, spirituality has been shown to be beneficial to health due to the promotion of beneficial health behaviours, positive psychological states, better coping with stressful events, and the strengthening of social networks and support (Oman and Thoresen, 2005). Since the 1980s, the positive relation between religion/spirituality and health outcomes has been an active area of research across several disciplines and fields, from epidemiology (Levin and Schiller, 1987;Levin and Vanderpool, 1989), to neuroscience (Brandmeyer et al., 2019) and mental health (AbdAleati et al., 2016). Palliative care/EoL is arguably the field of study and practice where the care for the spiritual needs is of chief relevance (Amoah, 2011). ...
Abstract
Background
Spirituality is an integral part of being human, and should therefore be part of all fields of healthcare such as prevention, treatment, coping, recovery or death. During Major Health Disasters (MHDs), the demand for Spiritual Care and Support (SCS) grows exponentially, while the emergency burden of care and focus on preserving life often hamper its provision. The COVID-19 pandemic was an extreme global crisis, during which SCS drastically diminished, suggesting that healthcare providers and governments were unprepared in terms of a national strategy for the provision of SCS in health emergencies.
Aim
The aim of this study is to identify the components for a national strategy for the provision of SCS to patients, their families and staff during MHDs and emergencies.
Methods
A descriptive, cross-sectional, qualitative phenomenological design based on individual, semi-structured e-interviews with nursing managers and NHS/volunteer chaplains based in England was adopted. Thematic analysis of 25 e-interviews was performed based on a dialogic collaborative process. The documents shared by interviewees were analysed using a standardised form.
Results and Discussion
Results are divided into two parts. In Part I, five themes encapsulate the experiences of SCS narrated by participants, such as unpreparedness and the sense of being overwhelmed. Part II contains 11 themes which are translated into the 11 components of the proposed national strategy. The themes/components, accompanied by practical recommendations for action, are: Awareness of the past, Terminology, Community, Collaborations, Communication, Care and Spiritual Support, Training, Technology, Trust, Equality / Diversity / Inclusion, and Resources. An integrated framework approach illustrates who is responsible for: the planning and preparation of each component; the delivery and implementation of the action/resources needed; and the evaluation of the actions.
Conclusion
The need to have strategic frameworks, both national and local, that better equip a country to prevent, face, and recover from MHDs is paramount. Catering for the spiritual needs of the affected population should be a key aspect of any emergency strategy, given the centrality of SCS in healthcare, which becomes both exceptionally important and challenging in circumstances of mass fear and death.
Keywords: Spiritual care and support, major health disasters, COVID-19, England, NHS, senior nurses, chaplains, national strategy, preparedness, culturally competent and compassionate care.
Available also from: https://cultureandcompassion.com/Spirituality-2/#page=1
... [20] and this may direct to utilize the state of the art deep learning techniques [18]. With three decades of contemplative research, meditation has been an effective tool to increase attentional engagement, well-being, and states of flow [6]. ...
Recent developments in neurotechnology effectively utilize the decades of neuroscientific findings of multiple meditation techniques. Meditation is linked to higher-order cognitive processes, which may function as a scaffold for cognitive control. In line with these developments, we analyze oscillatory brain activities of expert and non-expert meditators from the Himalayan Yoga tradition. We exploit four dimensions (Temporal, Spectral, Spatial and Pattern) of EEG data and present an analysis pipeline employing machine learning techniques. We discuss the significance of different frequency bands in relation with distinct primary 5 scalp brain regions. Functional connectivity networks (PLV) are utilized to generate features for classification between expert and non-expert meditators. We find (a) higher frequency β and γ oscillations generate maximum discrimination over the parietal region whereas lower frequency θ and α oscillations dominant over the frontal region; (b) maximum accuracy of over 90% utilizing features from all regions; (c) Quadratic Discriminant Analysis surpasses other classifiers by learning distribution for classification. Overall, this paper contributes a pipeline to analyze EEG data utilizing various properties and suggests potential neural markers for an expert meditative state. We discuss the implications of our research for the advancement of personalized headset design that rely on feedback on depth of meditation by learning from expert meditators.
... Its roots derive from Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist and other contemplative traditions. Recently, researchers in the field have categorized meditation practices into attentional, constructive and deconstructive families (Dahl, Lutz, & Davidson, 2015) or to focused attention/concentration, open monitoring/mindfulness, loving-kindness/heartfulness, mantra repetition, and others (Brandmeyer, Delorme, & Wahbeh, 2019). While recent studies are attributing putative benefits to specific types of meditation (Singer & Engert, 2018), it is clear that regardless of the type, meditation is associated with many benefits. ...
Despite numerous benefits of practicing meditation, a growing body of evidence posits possible detrimental effects on one’s mental health and well-being. As meditation’s popularity is steadily increasing in the general population, it is critical to assess, discuss and educate the public of any possible risks associated with available practices. Here, we review existing literature on the adverse effects (AEs) of meditation in non-clinical samples. Relevant original research articles were found through various academic search engines. The bibliographies of the selected studies were reviewed to identify additional articles of interest. A total of 39 studies were retained. These articles were divided into one of three categories: Observational (n = 19), Experimental (n = 9), or Case Studies (n = 11). AEs varied substantially across the studies, yet trends were identified. Common AEs included affective difficulties, distorted senses of self, derealization, hallucinations, delusions, interpersonal challenges, and susceptibility to false memory. Other AEs that were less commonly reported are also summarized. Meditation-related AEs in non-clinical samples are apparent in the literature. We discuss how the perceived valence of a meditative experience can vary, particularly if the experience is considered beyond the secular framework. We conclude that the general public should be aware of any potential effects derived from meditation in order to assert the meditation community’s safety and well-being.
... Nowadays, religion/spirituality in health is still an active area of research across several disciplines and fields. Neurosciences have been interested, for example, in the neurophysiologic effects of meditation onto the brain structure, and how this connects with health improvement in some clinical populations, due to enhanced stress-reduction, emotion regulation, self-awareness, and healthier mind (Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Tang et al., 2015). Mental health/care is indeed another important field where the role of spirituality/religion has been increasingly investigated. ...
Spirituality is a broad concept, revolving around the notions of connection, meaning, transcendence and values. Spirituality can encompass religion, or not, yet both appear to increase human wellbeing and health. For this, Spiritual Support is key to holistic, compassionate care (Papadopoulos, 2018), and its benefits for patients have been demonstrated. This paper discusses the radical changes in the provision of spiritual support to hospitalized patients, and their relatives, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion stems from a scoping review of online sources (mass and social media, and websites of NHS and organizations concerned with spirituality) in relation to spiritual support to hospitalized patients in England during the initial pandemic peak, between March and May 2020. In the current outbreak, spiritual support has drastically diminished, due to the emergency burden of care of frontline healthcare workers, and the infection control precautions hampering the services of pastoral and spiritual care units in hospitals. However, spiritual support has also been transforming in quality, and, from religious collective rituals to non-religious spiritual practices, three fundamental changes have occurred: elimination of body language and contact during in-person spiritual support, including rituals; spiritual support and self-spiritual support, via symbolic and creative actions, often domestic, to establish closeness-in-distance; and the
virtualization of spiritual support using digital technologies, both in real time (e.g., live streamed masses and video calls) and deferred (e.g., recorded guided meditations and uploaded prayers). All these modifications are critically tackled in this paper, against the backdrop of the importance of spiritual support in end-of-life, pivoting around the inter-personal encounter between the sick and the spiritual support provider. Dying alone is usually constructed as a form of ‘bad death’ (Seale, 1998), to the point that cultures and societies have established collective rituals to ensure the smooth passage from the world of the living to that of the dead (Gennep, 2019). The use of digital technology may ultimately innovate our sense of ‘being there’, including with our avatar bodies, in spiritual support. However, a reflection is needed around the effectiveness of rituals, which traditionally entail the physical presence of a collective (Durkheim, 2008), and of the ‘new normal’ forms of spiritual support brought about by what is also an existential pandemic.
... VAM is a type of open monitoring meditation [19,20]. Open monitoring meditation requires a broad scope of attention while focusing on a particular object. ...
Background
Medical science is increasingly recognizing the role of gut health in achieving optimal wellbeing. A healthy gut improves digestion. Additionally, it has a positive impact on multiple physiological networks such as immune system, central nervous system and hepato-endocrine system, thus contributing to the overall quality of life. Functional gastrointestinal disorders: also known as disorders of gut-brain interaction, such as irritable bowel syndrome are increasing worldwide. Conditions like stress, anxiety and mental disorders are correlated with these disorders. Mind-body interventions have been shown to ameliorate stress, anxiety and related conditions that may aggravate functional gastrointestinal disorders.
Objective
The present study aims to investigate the benefits of a novel meditation technique called the Vaishvanara Agni meditation (VAM) on the gastrointestinal quality of life.
Materials and Methods
54 subjects participated in the study and practiced VAM for 50 days. During the Vaishvanara Agni meditation (VAM), attention is directed to the navel region and the digestive system. The effect of the meditation was evaluated using the gastrointestinal quality of life (GI-QoL) questionnaire, which was administered to subjects at three different time points i.e. day 0, day 24 and day 50.
Results
GI-QoL was significantly improved with the practice of VAM. Additionally, significant improvements were noticed in all sub domains especially core symptoms, physical strength and the psychological domain.
Conclusion
Meditation practices that focus on improving digestion can be an effective tool for improving gut health.
... Gamma EEG is most often reported during Zen Buddhism and Qigong practice [79]. This is understandable since these practices require focus and control of mental processes. ...
Three broad organizing strategies have been used to study meditation practices: (1) consider meditation practices as using similar processes and so combine neural images across a wide range of practices to identify the common underlying brain patterns of meditation practice, (2) consider meditation practices as unique and so investigate individual practices, or (3) consider meditation practices as fitting into larger categories and explore brain patterns within and between categories. The first organizing strategy combines meditation practices defined as deep concentration, attention to external and internal stimuli, and letting go of thoughts. Brain patterns of different procedures would all contribute to the final averages, which may not be representative of any practice. The second organizing strategy generates a multitude of brain patterns as each practice is studied individually. The rich detail of individual differences within each practice makes it difficult to identify reliable patterns between practices. The third organizing principle has been applied in three ways: (1) grouping meditations by their origin—Indian or Buddhist practices, (2) grouping meditations by the procedures of each practice, or (3) grouping meditations by brain wave frequencies reported during each practice. Grouping meditations by their origin mixes practices whose procedures include concentration, mindfulness, or effortless awareness, again resulting in a confounded pattern. Grouping meditations by their described procedures yields defining neural imaging patterns within each category, and clear differences between categories. Grouping meditations by the EEG frequencies associated with their procedures yields an objective system to group meditations and allows practices to “move” into different categories as subjects’ meditation experiences change over time, which would be associated with different brain patterns. Exploring meditations within theoretically meaningful categories appears to yield the most reliable picture of meditation practices.
... As research grew, it became clear WHAT DO MEDITATORS DO WHEN THEY MEDITATE 4 that reducing meditation to these few styles represented an oversimplification of its inherent diversity. Consequently, new collections and classification systems encompassing a greater variety of meditation techniques have been proposed (Brandmeyer et al., 2019;Dahl et al., 2015;Fox et al., 2016;Lutz et al., 2015;Nash & Newberg, 2013). Nonetheless, these collections and classification systems have still been derived mostly from the top down and they omit several important meditation techniques, especially from the Hindu context (Matko & Sedlmeier, 2019). ...
Meditation is an umbrella term for a vast range of contemplative practices. Former proposals have struggled to do justice to this diversity. To our knowledge, there is to date no comprehensive overview of meditation techniques spanning all major traditions. The present studies aimed at filling this gap. In a qualitative study, we compiled a collection of 309 meditation techniques through a literature search and interviews with 20 expert meditators. Then, we reduced this collection to 50 basic meditation techniques. In a second, quantitative study, 635 experienced meditators from a wide range of meditative backgrounds indicated how much experience they had with each of these 50 meditation techniques. Meditators' responses indicated that our choice of techniques had been adequate and two techniques had to be added. Our additional statistical and cluster analyses illustrated preferences for specific techniques across and within diverse traditions as well as sets of techniques commonly practiced together. Body-centered techniques stood out in being of exceptional importance to all meditators. In conclusion, we found an amazing variety of meditation techniques, which considerably surpasses previous collections. Our selection of basic meditation techniques might be of value for future scientific investigations and we encourage researchers to rely on this set.
... In more experienced practitioners, an emphasis on effortless and increasingly subtle repetition of the mantra, leading into silence of the mind, may have additional effects on outcomes related to well-being. 20 Finally, a spiritual background of meditation could be inherent to appreciating the full value of meditation practice 21 and can lead to stronger effects. 22 The Healthy Lifestyle domain of MBLM mainly physical yoga postures, breath control and selected lifestyle recommendations according to Ayurvedic medicine. ...
Background: Integrative mental health care can be applied to treat depression with a person-centered, lifestyle- modifying, and more salutogenic approach to mental health and human flourishing. In this article, we report on the feasibility and acceptability of a new mind-body program, Meditation Based Lifestyle Modification (MBLM), in outpatients with mild or moderate depression. Methods: This is a single-arm mixed-methods feasibility study of n = 25 outpatients in psychiatric care. Depressive symptoms, scores for mindfulness, aspects of spirituality, and eudaemonic well-being based on yoga philosophy were assessed at baseline and at the end of the intervention. Adherence was monitored and face-to- face interviews were held after the program to explore the acceptability and feasibility of MBLM. Results: Twenty patients (75 %) completed at least six sessions of the course. Adherence was 87.5 % of allocated sessions. In qualitative analysis, more than half of the participants experienced novelty and inspiration through practicing the ethical aspects of yoga (e.g., nonviolence, truthfulness, etc.). Almost all participants experienced a decrease in emotional distress. Virtually all participants reported more self-confidence and self-acceptance. In quantitative analysis, participants reported a clinically important decrease in depressive symptoms of 39.23 % (p = .002), eudaemonic well-being increased significantly in a range of related scales and scores for mindfulness increased (p < .001). Conclusion: MBLM is a highly acceptable and feasible program for outpatients with mild to moderate depression. This comprehensive, lifestyle-modifying approach is highly relevant to preventing and treating mental illness, and treating psychic comorbidities in patients with chronic somatic illness.
1.
... Theta originating in the ACC often increases in power during a variety of cognitive processes that require attention, focus, or emotional processing [21][22][23][24]. Several studies have found a correlation between increased FM Theta and focused attention meditation practices [25,26]. Results showed that the experimental group was not only able to significantly increase FM Theta, but also improved performance on a working memory task [27]. ...
Beginning meditators often complain that they do not know if they are "doing it right" or give up before realizing significant benefits. Advanced meditators often reach a plateau and struggle to reach "the next level" of their practice. Modern researchers and practitioners are finding a possible new solution to these challenges by using EEG biofeedback to increase awareness of subtle states of consciousness and speed the learning process. By tracking brainwave activity in specific regions of the brain, we can tell if someone is focused or relaxed. We can tell if the mind is wandering, if they are engaged in body-based emotions, or if they have entered a space of internal quiet. By monitoring this activity and connecting it directly to the intent of the meditation, it is possible to help meditators learn to quickly enter a desired state of consciousness and maintain this state for increasing periods of time. This chapter will describe the early research conducted in this area along with an original case study conducted by the author. In addition, the author will describe the way this technology is being used as a treatment intervention for ADHD, anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
One of the essential characteristics that differentiate animal and plant species is their ability to move in space. It thus appears that motor skills condition the development of cognition. In this respect, the present thesis begins with a triple observation, that: (1) attention is subordinated to action, (2) there is an intimate relationship between attentional control and sensorimotor control through the exercise of sustained attention, and (3) there is a second (inverse) relationship between attentional control and sensorimotor control through the exercise of stillness. Through work on brain electrophysiology in different attentional conditions - action observation, attention deficit (with or without hyperactivity), and mindfulness meditation - the present thesis aims to contribute to the identification of brain dynamics underlying attentional control and the ways in which the exercise of this control can, in turn, modulate the brain's procedural activities. After a detailed review of the fundamental properties of attention, the general principles of electroencephalogram, and the neural correlates underlying attentional control, we preliminarily focused on the oscillatory dynamics associated with visual attention. From an experimental point of view, the aim was to distinguish the different functional components (visual, attentional, sensorimotor) of the brain rhythms by modifying the visual information (an animation of walking) passively submitted to the subject's attention. On this basis, we next explored brain dynamics in children with attention deficit (with/without hyperactivity, ADHD) during an attention/inhibition task (Cue-GO/NoGO). We showed an alteration of the rhythms linked to the processing of visual information. From a neuroanatomical point of view, our data indicated that this deficit would be based on an imbalance between the two fronto-parietal attention systems, ventral-medial and dorso-lateral, which could make these children more sensitive to the salience of visual information and induce less flexibility in cognitive control. In contrast, we showed that the 'non-reactive' dimension of mindfulness altered the temporal dynamics of large-scale neural networks. This effect appeared to be support by increased cerebellum activity, and to induce less (re)activity of the attentional salience network to distractions. The theoretical and potentially clinical implications of these results are discussed, taking into account the specific scientific context of each study, the analytical tools used (event-related potentials, source location, microstates) and their limitations. In sum, our data suggest that mindfulness meditation may induce a reorganization of the cortico-subcortical loops that govern attentional behavior, and may be useful in the treatment of ADHD.
El mindfulness, una de las terapias denominadas mente-cuerpo, se define como la capacidad de trasladar la atención al momento presente. Dicha terapia fue formalizada por el Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn en 1982 para su aplicación en la práctica clínica y se ha implementado en el manejo de diversas patologías. El objetivo de este artículo es sintetizar los principales mecanismos biológicos a través–– de los cuales el mindfulness actúa, para así comprender sus beneficios en la salud física y mental. Se incluyeron 38 artículos (catorce experimentos clínicos, veintidós revisiones sistemáticas y metanálisis y dos guías de práctica clínica) que identifican los mecanismos neuronales, cardiovasculares, inmunológicos y hormonales del mindfulness. Entre los hallazgos principales se encuentran cambios cerebrales asociados con el procesamiento de información nociceptiva, reducción en cifras de presión arterial, mejoría en la perfusión miocárdica, regulación autonómica cardiovascular, disminución de las citocinas proinflamatorias y disminución del cortisol. Estos mecanismos se correlacionan con los hallazgos de la literatura, según los cuales se han reportado beneficios en el tratamiento de trastornos del afecto, condiciones que producen dolor crónico, entidades asociadas con estados inflamatorios y enfermedades cardiovasculares como la hipertensión arterial. Se considera una alternativa terapéutica segura, dada la baja frecuencia de efectos adversos reportados.
Yoga is an ancient Indian technique of healthy living. Numerous studies have corroborated yoga’s beneficial effects, including a favorable influence on autonomic function and negative emotions. Extensive research in the last few decades has revealed the critical role that yoga can play in eradicating stress. This has laid to the foundation for a scientific understanding of pathophysiological changes attributed to stress, particularly at the molecular and genetic levels. This primarily has helped understand the epigenetic and genetic mechanisms at play to induce and alleviate stress, particularly those related to emotional aberrations. As research has indicated, negative emotions are translated into vascular inflammation appropriately accentuated by a sympathetic predominant autonomic function. This cascade is bolstered by multiple factors, including activation of “stressor” genes and elaborating hormones, including steroids with sometimes nocuous consequences, particularly when chronic. Yoga has been categorically found to have inhibited each and every one of these baneful effects of stress. In fact, it also changes the neuronal circuits that potentiate such a plethora of pathological changes. This, in turn, has accentuated yoga’s relevance as a powerful preventive intervention in noncommunicable diseases (NCD). NCDs, including heart disease, stroke, and rheumatological disorders, are essentially inflammatory diseases that perpetuate inflammation in different beds like vascular or joint spaces. The precise mechanism by which yoga induces such beneficial changes is yet to be delineated. However, a cornucopia of pointers indicates that neural, endocrine, immunological, cellular, genetic, and epigenetic mechanisms are at play. This chapter attempts to cobble together newfangled research to delineate a medical model for this 5000-year-old practice from India. This is imperative, as a mechanistic model of this ancient-but-complex system would enable a more comprehensive understanding of its mechanism and reveal its yet-undiscovered positive health effects.
Mindfulness-based mental training interventions have become a popular means to alleviate stress and stress-associated health risks. Previous scientific investigations emphasize the importance of exploring the effects of such interventions in naturalistic settings to evaluate their implementation into daily life. Therefore, the current study examined the effects of three distinct mental training modules on a range of measures of daily life experience in the scope of the ReSource Project, a 9-month longitudinal mental training study comparing modules targeting attention and interoception (Presence), socio-affective (Affect) or socio-cognitive abilities (Perspective). We used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to repeatedly probe levels of stress and stress-coping efficacy combined with stress-reactive cortisol levels, and further explored arousal, affective states, and thought patterns in the daily lives of 289 healthy adults (172 women; 20–55 years). We found increased presence-focused thought and heightened arousal after a training duration of 3-6 months, independent of the type of prior training. Increased coping efficacy emerged specifically after socio-cognitive Perspective training, following 6-9 months of training duration. No training effects were found for subjective stress, stress-reactive cortisol levels, or daily life affect. Our findings corroborate and add ecological validity to previous ReSource findings by showing that they replicate in participants’ everyday environment. Regarding endocrine and subjective stress markers, our results suggest caution in generalizing acute laboratory findings to individuals’ everyday routines. Overall, the current study provides substantiated insights into how cultivating one’s mind through contemplative mental training translates to daily life experience, enhances stress-coping, and may ultimately aide in maintaining health.
Introduction
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a major disruptor of routine life, resulting in increased stress and predisposing people to negative outcomes, such as insomnia, anxiety and hopelessness. Mind-body interventions have improved concentration, emotional balance, and positive emotions, with an enhanced sense of productivity, and self-confidence. We therefore hypothesized that exposure to an online mind-body intervention, “Inner Engineering Completion Online (IECO),” would reduce stress and promote well-being.
Methods
This prospective cohort study enrolled participants registered for the IECO courses, which for the first time were delivered remotely, online. Participants learned a 21-min meditation practice called Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya during the course, which incorporates controlled breathing and mediation techniques. Each enrolled participant was asked to complete self-reported electronic surveys at three key time points: at the time of consent, immediately after completing IECO, and 6 weeks after IECO completion. Effects of IECO practice were assessed using four well-validated neuropsychological scales: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Positive Emotion/Relationship/Engagement Scale (PERMA) Profiler, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). A Signed Rank test was used to analyze the survey data and P -values of < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.
Results
Of the 375 participants interested in participation, 164 participants were eligible. Sixty-eight participants completed surveys at all time points and were identified as compliant participants. The baseline median score for PSS in compliant participants ( n = 95) was 13.5 (IQR 9, 18); immediate post-IECO median PSS score was 12 (IQR 8, 16) demonstrating a 1.5 unit decrease in PSS scores ( p -value = 0.0023). Similarly, comparing PSS scores in compliant participants ( n = 68) for immediate Post IECO [11.5 (IQR 8, 15.5)] to PSS scores at six weeks [8 (IQR 4.5, 12.5)] showed a statistically significant 3.5-unit decrease, indicating a reduction in stress upon routine practice of the intervention ( p < 0.0001).
Conclusion
Incorporating the remotely delivered mind-body intervention Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya into daily life via the IECO program over as few as 6 weeks produced a significant stress reduction, improvement in sleep quality and mindfulness.
Clinical Trial Registration
[ ClinicalTrials.gov ], identifier [NCT04189146].
Meditation practices are considered to be a mental training, and have increasingly received attention from scientific community due to their potential benefits to mental and physical health. We compared the EEG data recorded from long-term Rajayoga practitioners during different meditative and non-meditative periods. Minimum variance modified fuzzy entropy (MVMFE) is computed for each EEG band for each channel of a given lobe and the means across all the channel entropy values are obtained. All the meditators showed higher frontal entropy in the lower gamma band (25-45 Hz) during the meditative states. The results are significant only for the gamma band in the frontal lobe. No significant changes are observed in other frequency bands and in other lobes. Independent component analysis was applied to ensure that muscle or eye artifacts did not contribute to the gamma activity. Our results extend previous findings on the changes in entropy observed in long-term meditators during Rajayoga practice. Clinical relevance-Gamma band in EEG is implicated in cognitive processes requiring high level processing such as attention , learning, memory control and retrieval. Gamma activity is also suggested as a potential biomarker for therapeutic progress in patients with clinical depression. Based on our findings, there is a good possibility to utilize the practice of meditation as a training tool to strengthen the neural circuits, where age related degeneration is making its pathological impact.
Several Convolutional Deep Learning models have been proposed to classify the cognitive states utilizing several neuro-imaging domains. These models have achieved significant results, but they are heavily designed with millions of parameters, which increases train and test time, making the model complex and less suitable for real-time analysis. This paper proposes a simple, lightweight CNN model to classify cognitive states from Electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings. We develop a novel pipeline to learn distinct cognitive representation consisting of two stages. The first stage is to generate the 2D spectral images from neural time series signals in a particular frequency band. Images are generated to preserve the relationship between the neighboring electrodes and the spectral property of the cognitive events. The second is to develop a time-efficient, computationally less loaded, and high-performing model. We design a network containing 4 blocks and major components include standard and depth-wise convolution for increasing the performance and followed by separable convolution to decrease the number of parameters which maintains the tradeoff between time and performance. We experiment on open access EEG meditation dataset comprising expert, nonexpert meditative, and control states. We compare performance with six commonly used machine learning classifiers and four state of the art deep learning models. We attain comparable performance utilizing less than 4% of the parameters of other models. This model can be employed in a real-time computation environment such as neurofeedback.
Understanding the brain state with their classification for brain-computer interfacing (BCI) and motor imaginary studies have recently been witnessed as significant research activity. Brain state has a direct correlation with the mental state as well as the involved cognitive task. This paper presents a novel three-fold framework to classify the EEG signal for binary classification problems. The threefold includes feature extraction, feature selection, and feature classification. First, in the feature extraction step, a new sparse parametric feature matrix is obtained from the brain coherence connectivity measure known as partial directed coherence (PDC) from a sparse multi-variate auto-regressive (MVAR) model. The sparsity has been introduced to the MVAR model using the group least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (gLASSO) algorithm. The PDC has been estimated from the sparse MVAR model’s coefficient which is named as sparse PDC (sPDC). Secondly, the features: energy, relative energy, entropy, and conditional entropy are extracted from sPDC, and the relevancy of features are checked by mutual information (MI) algorithm as the most relevant features. In the third step, to identify different brain states involved in specific cognitive activities, the sPDC extracted features are used for the classification of brain states for two groups of control and meditation. The classification has been performed by a polynomial kernel-based support vector machine (k-SVM). The proposed framework provides exciting results indicate reasonable robustness and consistency in the distinction between two groups in almost all participants.
Although psychiatric drug withdrawal syndromes have been recognized since the 1950s – recent studies confirm antidepressant withdrawal syndrome incidence upwards of 40% – medical information about how to safely go off the drugs has been lacking. To fill this gap, over the last 25 years, patients have developed a robust Internet-based subculture of peer support for tapering off psychiatric drugs and recovering from withdrawal syndrome. This account from the founder of such an online community covers lessons learned from thousands of patients regarding common experiences with medical providers, identification of adverse drug reactions, risk factors for withdrawal, tapering techniques, withdrawal symptoms, protracted withdrawal syndrome, and strategies to cope with symptoms, in the context of the existing scientific literature.
The flow state is defined by intense involvement in an activity with high degrees of concentration and focused attention accompanied by a sense of pleasure. Video games are effective tools for inducing flow, and keeping players in this state is considered to be one of the central goals of game design. Many studies have focused on the underlying physiological and neural mechanisms of flow. Results are inconsistent when describing a unified mechanism underlying this mental state. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the physiological and neural correlates of flow and explains the relationship between the reported physiological and neural markers of the flow experience. Despite the heterogeneous results, it seems possible to establish associations between reported markers and the cognitive and experiential aspects of flow, particularly regarding arousal, attention control, reward processing, automaticity, and self-referential processing.
Contemporary psychiatry has become increasingly focused on biological treatments. Many critics claim that the current paradigm of psychiatry has failed to address the escalating mental health-care needs of our communities and may even be contributing to psychopathology and the burden of mental illness. This article describes the foundations of Integral Theory and proposes that this model offers a framework for developing integral psychiatry and a more effective and compassionate mental health-care system. An integral model of psychiatry extends biopsychosocial approaches and provides the scaffolding for more effective approaches to integrative mental health care. Furthermore, rather than focusing on psychopathology, the Integral theory model describes the emergence of human consciousness and supports a mental health-care system that addresses mental illness but also promotes human flourishing.
EEG oscillatory correlates of expert meditators have been studied in the time-frequency domain. Machine Learning techniques are required to expand the understanding of oscillatory signatures. In this work, we propose a methodological pipeline to develop machine learning models for the classification between expert and nonexpert meditative state. We carried out this study utilizing the online repository consisting of EEG dataset of 24 meditators that categorized as 12 experts and 12 nonexperts meditators. The pipeline consists of four stages that include feature engineering, machine learning classifiers, feature selection, and visualization. We decomposed signals using five wavelet families consisting of Haar, Biorthogonal(1.3-6.8), Daubechies( orders 2-10), Coiflet(orders 1-5), and Symlet(2-8), followed by feature extraction using relative entropy and power. We classified the meditative state between expert and non-expert meditators employing twelve classifiers to build machine learning models. Wavelet coefficients d8 shows the maximum classification accuracy in all the wavelet families. Wavelet orders Bior3.5 and Coif3 produce the maximum classification performance with the detail coefficient d8 using relative power. We have successfully classified the meditative state between expert and non-expert with 100% accuracy using d5,d6,d7,d8,a8 coefficients. Multi-Layer Perceptron and Quadratic Discriminant Analysis attain the highest accuracy. We have figured out the most discriminating channels during classification and reported 20 channels involving frontal, central and parietal regions. We plot the high dimensional structure of data by utilizing two feature reduction techniques PCA and t-SNE.
Meditation is a complex mental process-practiced widely for stress management and promotion of health- exerts beneficial effects on physical and mental health, and cognitive performance. However, until now, few theoretical neural mechanisms of meditation had been proposed, still not completely elucidated. We have previously evaluated the brain activity during Preksha meditation using an innovative 18FDG-PET methodological approach. Based on our previous study observations, we proposed here the neurophysiological framework of long-term and regular practice of preksha meditation. This mechanism will provide the scientific evidence to understand the attention control mechanisms resulting from the advanced state of preksha meditation. This might have multiple clinical applications as well as effective in a healthy population for attention-related tasks. Also, it is expected that the present neural model will provide a scientific platform for future clinical studies of meditation.
Cortical oscillations serve as an index of both sensory and cognitive processes and represent one of the most promising candidates for training and targeting the top-down mechanisms underlying executive functions. Research findings suggest that theta (θ) oscillations (3-7 Hz) recorded over frontal-midline (FMθ) electrodes are broadly associated with a number of higher-order cognitive processes and may serve as the mechanistic backbone for cognitive control. Frontal-midline theta (FMθ) has also been shown to inversely correlate with activity in the default mode network, a network in the brain linked to spontaneous thought processes such as mind-wandering and rumination. Our previous research found the presence of increased FMθ oscillations in expert meditation practitioners during reported periods of focused-attention meditation practice, when compared to periods of mind-wandering. In an effort to narrow the explanatory gap by connecting these neurophysiological features to the phenomenological nature of experience, we designed a methodologically novel and adaptive neurofeedback protocol with the aim of modulating FMθ while having meditation novice participants implement breath-focus strategies derived from focused-attention mediation practices. Participants who received the adaptive FMθ-meditation neurofeedback protocol were able to significantly modulate FMθ over frontal electrodes across eight sessions relative to their performance in session one. Neurofeedback recipients also showed significantly faster reaction times on the n-back working memory task assessed before and after the FMθ-meditation neurofeedback protocol. No significant differences in frontal theta activity or behavior were observed in the active control participants who received age and gender matched sham neurofeedback.
Meditation training can improve mood and emotion regulation, yet the neural mechanisms of these affective changes have yet to be fully elucidated. We evaluated the impact of long- and short-term mindfulness meditation training on the amygdala response to emotional pictures in a healthy, non-clinical population of adults using blood-oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Long-term meditators (N = 30, 16 female) had 9081 h of lifetime practice on average, primarily in mindfulness meditation. Short-term training consisted of an 8-week Mindfulness- Based Stress Reduction course (N = 32, 22 female), which was compared to an active control condition (N = 35, 19 female) in a randomized controlled trial. Meditation training was associated with less amygdala reactivity to positive pictures relative to controls, but there were no group differences in response to negative pictures. Reductions in reactivity to negative stimuli may require more practice experience or concentrated practice, as hours of retreat practice in long-term meditators was associated with lower amygdala reactivity to negative pictures - yet we did not see this relationship for practice time with MBSR. Short-term training, compared to the control intervention, also led to increased functional connectivity between the amygdala and a region implicated in emotion regulation - ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) - during affective pictures. Thus, meditation training may improve affective responding through reduced amygdala reactivity, and heightened amygdala-VMPFC connectivity during affective stimuli may reflect a potential mechanism by which MBSR exerts salutary effects on emotion regulation ability.
Background:
Several studies have reported that mindfulness meditation has a potential effect in controlling headaches, such as migraine and tension-type headache; however, its role remains controversial. This review assessed the evidence regarding the effects of mindfulness meditation for primary headache pain.
Methods:
Only English databases (PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials [the Cochrane Library], PsycINFO, Psychology and behavioral science collection, PsyArticles, Web of Science, and Scopus) were searched from their inception to November 2016 with the keywords ("meditation" or "mindfulness" or "vipassana" or "dzogchen" or "zen" or "integrative body-mind training" or "IBMT" or "mindfulness-based stress reduction" or "MBSR" or "mindfulness-based cognitive therapy" or "MBCT" and "Headache" or "Head pain" or "Cephalodynia" or "Cephalalgia" or "Hemicrania" or "Migraine"). Titles, abstracts, and full-text articles were screened against study inclusion criteria: controlled trials of structured meditation programs for adult patients with primary headache pain. The quality of studies included in the meta-analysis was assessed with the Yates Quality Rating Scale. The meta-analysis was conducted with Revman 5.3.
Results:
Ten randomized controlled trials and one controlled clinical trial with a combined study population of 315 patients were included in the study. When compared to control group data, mindfulness meditation induced significant improvement in pain intensity (standardized mean difference, -0.89; 95% confidence interval, -1.63 to -0.15; P = 0.02) and headache frequency (-0.67; -1.24 to -0.10; P = 0.02). In a subgroup analysis of different meditation forms, mindfulness-based stress reduction displayed a significant positive influence on pain intensity (P < 0.000). Moreover, 8-week intervention had a significant positive effect (P < 0.000).
Conclusions:
Mindfulness meditation may reduce pain intensity and is a promising treatment option for patients. Clinicians may consider mindfulness meditation as a viable complementary and alternative medical option for primary headache.
Background:
Despite an exponential growth in research on mindfulness-based interventions, the body of scientific evidence supporting these treatments has been criticized for being of poor methodological quality.
Objectives:
The current systematic review examined the extent to which mindfulness research demonstrated increased rigor over the past 16 years regarding six methodological features that have been highlighted as areas for improvement. These feature included using active control conditions, larger sample sizes, longer follow-up assessment, treatment fidelity assessment, and reporting of instructor training and intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses.
Data sources:
We searched PubMed, PsychInfo, Scopus, and Web of Science in addition to a publically available repository of mindfulness studies.
Study eligibility criteria:
Randomized clinical trials of mindfulness-based interventions for samples with a clinical disorder or elevated symptoms of a clinical disorder listed on the American Psychological Association's list of disorders with recognized evidence-based treatment.
Study appraisal and synthesis methods:
Independent raters screened 9,067 titles and abstracts, with 303 full text reviews. Of these, 171 were included, representing 142 non-overlapping samples.
Results:
Across the 142 studies published between 2000 and 2016, there was no evidence for increases in any study quality indicator, although changes were generally in the direction of improved quality. When restricting the sample to those conducted in Europe and North America (continents with the longest history of scientific research in this area), an increase in reporting of ITT analyses was found. When excluding an early, high-quality study, improvements were seen in sample size, treatment fidelity assessment, and reporting of ITT analyses.
Conclusions and implications of key findings:
Taken together, the findings suggest modest adoption of the recommendations for methodological improvement voiced repeatedly in the literature. Possible explanations for this and implications for interpreting this body of research and conducting future studies are discussed.
During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and “key to building more resilient soldiers.” Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism. Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed. Addressing such concerns, the present article discusses the difficulties of defining mindfulness, delineates the proper scope of research into mindfulness practices, and explicates crucial methodological issues for interpreting results from investigations of mindfulness. For doing so, the authors draw on their diverse areas of expertise to review the present state of mindfulness research, comprehensively summarizing what we do and do not know, while providing a prescriptive agenda for contemplative science, with a particular focus on assessment, mindfulness training, possible adverse effects, and intersection with brain imaging. Our goals are to inform interested scientists, the news media, and the public, to minimize harm, curb poor research practices, and staunch the flow of misinformation about the benefits, costs, and future prospects of mindfulness meditation.
In this paper, we examined whether meditation practice influences the epigenetic clock, a strong and reproducible biomarker of biological aging, which is accelerated by cumulative lifetime stress and with age-related chronic diseases. Using the Illumina 450K array platform, we analyzed the DNA methylome from blood cells of long-term meditators and meditation-naïve controls to estimate their Intrinsic Epigenetic Age Acceleration (IEAA), using Horvath's calculator. IEAA was similar in both groups. However, controls showed a different IEAA trajectory with aging than meditators: older controls (age≥52) had significantly higher IEAAs compared with younger controls (age <52), while meditators were protected from this epigenetic aging effect. Notably, in the meditation group, we found a significant negative correlation between IEAA and the number of years of regular meditation practice. From our results, we hypothesize that the cumulative effects of a regular meditation practice may, in the long-term, help to slow the epigenetic clock and could represent a useful preventive strategy for age-related chronic diseases. Longitudinal randomized controlled trials in larger cohorts are warranted to confirm and further characterize these findings.
Buddhist-derived meditation practices are currently being employed as a popular form of health promotion. While meditation programs draw inspiration from Buddhist textual sources for the benefits of meditation, these sources also acknowledge a wide range of other effects beyond health-related outcomes. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience study investigates meditation-related experiences that are typically underreported, particularly experiences that are described as challenging, difficult, distressing, functionally impairing, and/or requiring additional support. A mixed-methods approach featured qualitative interviews with Western Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts in Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan traditions. Interview questions probed meditation experiences and influencing factors, including interpretations and management strategies. A follow-up survey provided quantitative assessments of causality, impairment and other demographic and practice-related variables. The content-driven thematic analysis of interviews yielded a taxonomy of 59 meditation-related experiences across 7 domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self, and social. Even in cases where the phenomenology was similar across participants, interpretations of and responses to the experiences differed considerably. The associated valence ranged from very positive to very negative, and the associated level of distress and functional impairment ranged from minimal and transient to severe and enduring. In order to determine what factors may influence the valence, impact, and response to any given experience, the study also identified 26 categories of influencing factors across 4 domains: practitioner-level factors, practice-level factors, relationships, and health behaviors. By identifying a broader range of experiences associated with meditation, along with the factors that contribute to the presence and management of experiences reported as challenging, difficult, distressing or functionally impairing, this study aims to increase our understanding of the effects of contemplative practices and to provide resources for mediators, clinicians, meditation researchers, and meditation teachers.
Recent evidence suggests that the effects of meditation practice on affective processing and resilience have the potential to induce neuroplastic changes within the amygdala. Notably, literature speculates that meditation training may reduce amygdala activity during negative affective processing. Nonetheless, studies have thus far not verified this speculation. In this longitudinal study, participants (N = 21, 9 men) were trained in awareness-based compassion meditation (ABCM) or matched relaxation training. The effects of meditation training on amygdala activity were examined during passive viewing of affective and neutral stimuli in a non-meditative state. We found that the ABCM group exhibited significantly reduced anxiety and right amygdala activity during negative emotion processing than the relaxation group. Furthermore, ABCM participants who performed more compassion practice had stronger right amygdala activity reduction during negative emotion processing. The lower right amygdala activity after ABCM training may be associated with a general reduction in reactivity and distress. As all participants performed the emotion processing task in a non-meditative state, it appears likely that the changes in right amygdala activity are carried over from the meditation practice into the non-meditative state. These findings suggest that the distress-reducing effects of meditation practice on affective processing may transfer to ordinary states, which have important implications on stress management.
Despite decades of research, effects of different types of meditation on electroencephalographic (EEG) activity are still being defined. We compared practitioners of three different meditation traditions (Vipassana, Himalayan Yoga and Isha Shoonya) with a control group during a meditative and instructed mind-wandering (IMW) block. All meditators showed higher parieto-occipital 60–110 Hz gamma amplitude than control subjects as a trait effect observed during meditation and when considering meditation and IMW periods together. Moreover, this gamma power was positively correlated with participants meditation experience. Independent component analysis was used to show that gamma activity did not originate in eye or muscle artifacts. In addition, we observed higher 7–11 Hz alpha activity in the Vipassana group compared to all the other groups during both meditation and instructed mind wandering and lower 10–11 Hz activity in the Himalayan yoga group during meditation only. We showed that meditation practice is correlated to changes in the EEG gamma frequency range that are common to a variety of meditation practices.
This qualitative study explored and compared the subjective experiences of 102 veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 arms: (a) body scan, (b) mindful breathing, (c) slow breathing, or (d) sitting quietly. Qualitative data were obtained via semistructured interviews following the intervention and analyzed using conventional content analysis. The percentage of participants within each intervention who endorsed a specific theme was calculated. Two-proportion z tests were then calculated to determine if the differences among themes endorsed in specific groups were statistically significant.
Six core themes emerged from analysis of participant responses across the 4 groups: (a) enhanced present moment awareness, (b) increased nonreactivity, (c) increased nonjudgmental acceptance, (d) decreased physiological arousal and stress reactivity, (e) increased active coping skills, and (f) greater relaxation. More participants in the mindfulness intervention groups reported improvement in PTSD symptoms when compared to participants in non-mindfulness groups. Different types of intervention targeted different symptoms and aspects of well-being. Furthermore, type of intervention may have also differentially targeted
potential mechanisms of action. This article highlights the importance of employing both quantitative and qualitative research methods when investigating the dynamic process of mindfulness and may inform how practices can be tailored to the needs of the veteran with PTSD.
One outstanding question in the contemplative science literature relates to the direct impact of meditation experience on the monitoring of internal states and its respective correspondence with neural activity. In particular, to what extent does meditation influence the awareness, duration and frequency of the tendency of the mind to wander. To assess the relation between mind wandering and meditation, we tested 2 groups of meditators, one with a moderate level of experience (non-expert) and those who are well advanced in their practice (expert). We designed a novel paradigm using self-reports of internal mental states based on an experiential sampling probe paradigm presented during ~1 h of seated concentration meditation to gain insight into the dynamic measures of electroencephalography (EEG) during absorption in meditation as compared to reported mind wandering episodes. Our results show that expert meditation practitioners report a greater depth and frequency of sustained meditation, whereas non-expert practitioners report a greater depth and frequency of mind wandering episodes. This is one of the first direct behavioral indices of meditation expertise and its associated impact on the reduced frequency of mind wandering, with corresponding EEG activations showing increased frontal midline theta and somatosensory alpha rhythms during meditation as compared to mind wandering in expert practitioners. Frontal midline theta and somatosensory alpha rhythms are often observed during executive functioning, cognitive control and the active monitoring of sensory information. Our study thus provides additional new evidence to support the hypothesis that the maintenance of both internal and external orientations of attention may be maintained by similar neural mechanisms and that these mechanisms may be modulated by meditation training.
The colors identifying “Breathing meditation” and “Body Scan” were unfortunately switched in the figure relative to the legend. The correct Figure 2 is below.
Background
Chronic pain patients increasingly seek treatment through mindfulness meditation. PurposeThis study aims to synthesize evidence on efficacy and safety of mindfulness meditation interventions for the treatment of chronic pain in adults. Method
We conducted a systematic review on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with meta-analyses using the Hartung-Knapp-Sidik-Jonkman method for random-effects models. Quality of evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach. Outcomes included pain, depression, quality of life, and analgesic use. ResultsThirty-eight RCTs met inclusion criteria; seven reported on safety. We found low-quality evidence that mindfulness meditation is associated with a small decrease in pain compared with all types of controls in 30 RCTs. Statistically significant effects were also found for depression symptoms and quality of life. Conclusions
While mindfulness meditation improves pain and depression symptoms and quality of life, additional well-designed, rigorous, and large-scale RCTs are needed to decisively provide estimates of the efficacy of mindfulness meditation for chronic pain.
Despite increasing interest in the effects of mental training practices such as meditation, there is much ambiguity regarding whether and to what extent the various types of mental practice have differential effects on psychological change. To address this gap, we compare the effects of four common meditation practices on measures of state change in affect, mind-wandering, meta-cognition, and interoception. In the context of a 9-month mental training program called the ReSource Project, 229 mid-life adults (mean age 41) provided daily reports before and after meditation practice. Participants received training in the following three successive modules: the first module (presence) included breathing meditation and body scan, the second (affect) included loving-kindness meditation, and the third (perspective) included observing-thought meditation. Using multilevel modeling, we found that body scan led to the greatest state increase in interoceptive awareness and the greatest decrease in thought content, loving-kindness meditation led to the greatest increase in feelings of warmth and positive thoughts about others, and observing-thought meditation led to the greatest increase in meta-cognitive awareness. All practices, including breathing meditation, increased positivity of affect, energy, and present focus and decreased thought distraction. Complementary network analysis of intervariate relationships revealed distinct phenomenological clusters of psychological change congruent with the content of each practice. These findings together suggest that although different meditation practices may have common beneficial effects, each practice can also be characterized by a distinct short-term psychological fingerprint, the latter having important implications for the use of meditative practices in different intervention contexts and with different populations.
This paper discusses meditation from the unique perspective of the nondual approach and explores the possible relevance of this approach to applications of love and compassion meditation in clinical settings. It contrasts the nondual approach with the better known gradual or goal-oriented, dualistic view of meditation. This paper also introduces one of the central ideas of the nondual approach-that love and compassion, like other positive qualities that are ordinarily considered as goals of meditation practice, can be found to be already present within oneself as innate dimensions of one's authentic being.
This paper describes the research process – from planning to presentation, with the emphasis on credibility throughout the whole process – when the methodology of qualitative content analysis is chosen in a qualitative study. The groundwork for the credibility initiates when the planning of the study begins. External and internal resources have to be identified, and the researcher must consider his or her experience of the phenomenon to be studied in order to minimize any bias of his/her own influence. The purpose of content analysis is to organize and elicit meaning from the data collected and to draw realistic conclusions from it. The researcher must choose whether the analysis should be of a broad surface structure (a manifest analysis) or of a deep structure (a latent analysis). Four distinct main stages are described in this paper: the decontextualisation, the recontextualisation, the categorization, and the compilation. This description of qualitative content analysis offers one approach that shows how the general principles of the method can be used.
Objective:
This cross-sectional study evaluated event-related potentials (ERPs) across three groups: naïve, novice, and experienced meditators as potential physiological markers of mindfulness meditation competence.
Methods:
Electroencephalographic (EEG) data was collected during a target tone detection task and a Breath Counting task. The Breath Counting task served as the mindfulness meditation condition for the novice and experienced meditator groups. Participants were instructed to respond to target tones with a button press in the first task (Tones), and then ignore the primed tones while breath counting. The primary outcomes were ERP responses to target tones, namely the N2 and P3, as markers of stimulus discrimination and attention, respectively.
Results:
As expected, P3 amplitudes elicited by target tones were attenuated within groups during the Breath Counting task in comparison to the Tones task (p < .001). There was a task by group interaction for P3 (p = .039). Both meditator groups displayed greater change in peak-to-trough P3 amplitudes, with higher amplitudes during the Tones condition and more pronounced reductions in P3 amplitudes during the Breath Counting meditation task in comparison to the naïve group.
Conclusions:
Meditators had stronger P3 amplitude responses to target tones when instructed to attend to the tones, and a greater attenuation of P3 amplitudes when instructed to ignore the same tones during the Breath Counting task. This study introduces the idea of identifying ERP markers as a means of measuring mindfulness meditation competence, and results suggest this may be a valid approach. This information has the potential to improve mindfulness meditation interventions by allowing objective assessment of mindfulness meditation quality.
Objective:
This study's objective was to evaluate the effect of two common components of meditation (mindfulness and slow breathing) on potential mechanistic pathways.
Methods:
A total of 102 combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were randomized to (a) the body scan mindfulness meditation (MM), (b) slow breathing (SB) with a biofeedback device, (c) mindful awareness of the breath with an intention to slow the breath (MM+SB), or (d) sitting quietly (SQ). Participants had 6 weekly one-on-one sessions with 20 minutes of daily home practice. The mechanistic pathways and measures were as follows: (a) autonomic nervous system (hyperarousal symptoms, heart rate [HR], and heart rate variability [HRV]); (b) frontal cortex activity (attentional network task [ANT] conflict effect and event-related negativity and intrusive thoughts); and (c) hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (awakening cortisol). PTSD measures were also evaluated.
Results:
Meditation participants had significant but modest within-group improvement in PTSD and related symptoms, although there were no effects between groups. Perceived impression of PTSD symptom improvement was greater in the meditation arms compared with controls. Resting respiration decreased in the meditation arms compared with SQ. For the mechanistic pathways, (a) subjective hyperarousal symptoms improved within-group (but not between groups) for MM, MM+SB, and SQ, while HR and HRV did not; (b) intrusive thoughts decreased in MM compared with MM+SB and SB, while the ANT measures did not change; and (c) MM had lower awakening cortisol within-group (but not between groups).
Conclusion:
Treatment effects were mostly specific to self-report rather than physiological measures. Continued research is needed to further evaluate mindfulness meditation's mechanism in people with PTSD.
In this paper, we relate meditation practice to participant trait absorption, affect, and transcendent experience. The motivation for this analysis stems from a new neurophenomenological model of consciousness which we recently published, named the consciousness state space. Here, we compare two distinct forms of meditation: mindfulness and transcendental meditation, as well as two different levels of expertise within the mindfulness group. Participants comprised 64 mindfulness practitioners, 18 transcendental meditation practitioners, and 59 healthy controls, who had no prior meditation experience. We further split our mindfulness participants into two groups, using a cutoff point of 2000 h of accumulated experience. We tested three predictions. The first prediction was that contemplative practices should result in increased first-order awareness as a trait, or trait absorption. Our findings revealed that meditators (in general) scored higher on trait absorption than comparable controls, with no difference between meditators from the two traditions. A second prediction was that contemplative practices should result in a reduced sense of regular (narrative) self; hence, transcendent experience should be enhanced for long-term practitioners of meditation. Our findings show that meditators (in general) score higher on the Mystical Scale than comparable controls, with no difference between meditators from the two traditions. We further predicted that contemplative practices should result in lower positive and negative valence, measured by Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) scores on both positive and negative affect scales, as a trait, but this hypothesis was only partly supported by the data.
Ability in cognitive domains is usually assessed by measuring task performance, such as decision accuracy. A similar analysis can be applied to metacognitive reports about a task to quantify the degree to which an individual is aware of his or her success or failure. Here, we review the psychological and neural underpinnings of metacognitive accuracy, drawing primarily on research in memory and decision-making. These data show that metacognitive accuracy is dissociable from task performance and varies across individuals. Convergent evidence indicates that the function of rostral and dorsal aspects of lateral prefrontal cortex is important for the accuracy of retrospective judgements of performance. In contrast, prospective judgements of performance may depend upon medial prefrontal cortex. We close by considering how metacognitive processes relate to concepts of cognitive control, and propose a neural synthesis in which dorsolateral and anterior prefrontal cortical subregions interact with interoceptive cortices (cingulate and insula) to promote accurate judgements of performance.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a promising intervention for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression; however, a more detailed examination of the different elements of MBSR and various facets of mindfulness to determine what works best for whom is warranted. One hundred and two veterans with PTSD were randomly assigned to one of four arms: (a) body scan (BS; n = 27), (b) mindful breathing (MB; n = 25), (c) slow breathing (SB; n = 25), or (d) sitting quietly (SQ; n = 25). The purpose of this study was to (a) examine two separate components of MBSR (i.e., body scan and mindful breathing) among veterans with PTSD when compared to a nonmindfulness intervention (SB) and a control group (SQ), (b) assess if changes in specific mindfulness facets were predictive of post-treatment PTSD and depression for individuals who participated in a mindfulness intervention (BS vs. MB), and (c) investigate if type of mindfulness intervention received would moderate the relationship between pre- to post-treatment changes in mindfulness facets and post-treatment outcomes in PTSD and depression. Participants in the mindfulness groups experienced significant decreases in PTSD and depression symptom severity and increases in mindfulness, whereas the nonmindfulness groups did not. Among veterans who participated in a mindfulness group, change in the five facets of mindfulness accounted for 23 % of unique variance in the prediction of post-treatment depression scores. Simple slope analyses revealed that type of mindfulness intervention moderated the relationship among changes in facets of mindfulness and post-treatment depression.
This study presents two case reports of altered states spontaneously occurring during meditation in two proficient practitioners. These states, known as fruition, are common within the Mahasi School of Theravada Buddhism, and are considered the culmination of contemplation-induced stages of consciousness. Here, electrophysiological measures of these experiences were measured, with the participant’s personal reports used to guide the neural analyzes. The preliminary results demonstrate an increase in global long-range gamma (25–45 Hz) synchronization during the fruition states, compared to the background meditation. The discrepancies and similarities with other neuroscientific studies of meditation-induced altered states are discussed. Albeit preliminary, the results presented here provide support for the possibility - previously raised by various authors - that long-range global gamma synchronization may offer an underlying mechanism for un-learning of habitual conditioning and mental patterns, possibly underpinning the neural correlate of the Buddhist concept of liberation. Finally, this pilot study highlights the utility of employing neuro-phenomenology, namely using first-person reports to guide neural analyzes, in the study of subtle human consciousness states.
Significance
Our sensory system constantly receives multiple inputs, which are usually perceived as a seamless stream. Thus, perception is commonly regarded as a continuous process. Alternatively, a few phenomena and recent studies suggest that perception might work in a discrete and periodic sampling mode. In a human magnetoencephalography study, we challenged the common view of continuous perception. We demonstrate that neuronal oscillations in the alpha band and low beta band determine discrete perceptual sampling windows in primary somatosensory cortex. The current results elucidate how ongoing neuronal oscillations shape discrete perceptual cycles, which constitute the basis for a discontinuous and periodic nature of somatosensory perception.
Study Objectives. To evaluate the effect of mind-body interventions (MBI) on sleep. Methods. We reviewed randomized controlled MBI trials on adults (through 2013) with at least one sleep outcome measure. We searched eleven electronic databases and excluded studies on interventions not considering mind-body medicine. Studies were categorized by type of MBI, whether sleep was primary or secondary outcome measure and outcome type. Results. 1323 abstracts were screened, and 112 papers were included. Overall, 67 (60%) of studies reported a beneficial effect on at least one sleep outcome measure. Of the most common interventions, 13/23 studies using meditation, 21/30 using movement MBI, and 14/25 using relaxation reported at least some improvements in sleep. There were clear risks of bias for many studies reviewed, especially when sleep was not the main focus. Conclusions. MBI should be considered as a treatment option for patients with sleep disturbance. The benefit of MBI needs to be better documented with objective outcomes as well as the mechanism of benefit elucidated. There is some evidence that MBI have a positive benefit on sleep quality. Since sleep has a direct impact on many other health outcomes, future MBI trials should consider including sleep outcome measurements.
This chapter discusses the inclusion of phenomenological analysis in the cognitive psychological research of meditation. Different meditation styles involve the specific changes of the mind, such as a long-lasting, vivid, and stable mental imagery in some types of Tibetan meditation. Comparative phenomenological analysis of the Deity Yoga, mandala, Vipashyana, and Rig-pa types of Tibetan meditation was included in designing a cognitive experiment. Results indicate the increase of visual working memory due to the practice of Deity Yoga, suggesting access to the heightened visual processing resources (Kozhevnikov, Louchakova, Josipovic, & Motes. Psychological Science 20(5):645–653, 2009). The phenomenological part of the design, reported here for the first time, included a new methodology termed phenomenological-cognitive mapping (PCM). PCM linked the comparative phenomenological analysis of meditation to the psychological parameters of cognitive testing. PCM proved to be crucial in designing a successful experiment that led to novel findings. In the absence of PCM, isolating the meditation style that causes the optimization of visual-spatial processing and finding at what stage of meditation this happens would not be possible. This chapter argues in favor of including a detailed phenomenological analysis of experience in the cognitive research of meditation, as opposed to using only general classifications such as meditation styles.
Over the past decade mind and body practices, such as yoga and meditation, have raised interest in different scientific fields; in particular, the physiological mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects observed in meditators have been investigated. Neuroimaging studies have studied the effects of meditation on brain structure and function and findings have helped clarify the biological underpinnings of the positive effects of meditation practice and the possible integration of this technique in standard therapy. The large amount of data collected thus far allows drawing some conclusions about the neural effects of meditation practice. In the present study we used activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis to make a coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging data on the effects of meditation on brain structure and function. Results indicate that meditation leads to activation in brain areas involved in processing self-relevant information, self-regulation, focused problem-solving, adaptive behavior, and interoception. Results also show that meditation practice induces functional and structural brain modifications in expert meditators, especially in areas involved in self-referential processes such as self-awareness and self-regulation. These results demonstrate that a biological substrate underlies the positive pervasive effect of meditation practice and suggest that meditation techniques could be adopted in clinical populations and to prevent disease.
Chronic pain and its associated distress and disability are common reasons for seeking medical help. Patients with chronic pain use primary healthcare services five times more than the rest of the population. Mindfulness has become an increasingly popular self-management technique.
To assess the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for patients with chronic pain.
Systematic review and meta-analysis including randomised controlled trials of mindfulness-based interventions for chronic pain. There was no restriction to study site or setting.
The databases MEDLINE(®), Embase, AMED, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Index to Theses were searched. Titles, abstracts, and full texts were screened iteratively against inclusion criteria of: randomised controlled trials of mindfulness-based intervention; patients with non-malignant chronic pain; and economic, clinical, or humanistic outcome reported. Included studies were assessed with the Yates Quality Rating Scale. Meta-analysis was conducted.
Eleven studies were included. Chronic pain conditions included: fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic musculoskeletal pain, failed back surgery syndrome, and mixed aetiology. Papers were of mixed methodological quality. Main outcomes reported were pain intensity, depression, physical functioning, quality of life, pain acceptance, and mindfulness. Economic outcomes were rarely reported. Meta-analysis effect sizes for clinical outcomes ranged from 0.12 (95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.05 to 0.30) (depression) to 1.32 (95% CI = -1.19 to 3.82) (sleep quality), and for humanistic outcomes 0.03 (95% CI = -0.66 to 0.72) (mindfulness) to 1.58 (95% CI = -0.57 to 3.74) (pain acceptance). Studies with active, compared with inactive, control groups showed smaller effects.
There is limited evidence for effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for patients with chronic pain. Better-quality studies are required.
© British Journal of General Practice 2015.
Meditation has been associated with relatively reduced activity in the default mode network, a brain network implicated in self-related thinking and mind wandering. However, previous imaging studies have typically compared meditation to rest, despite other studies having reported differences in brain activation patterns between meditators and controls at rest. Moreover, rest is associated with a range of brain activation patterns across individuals that has only recently begun to be better characterized. Therefore, in this study we compared meditation to another active cognitive task, both to replicate the findings that meditation is associated with relatively reduced default mode network activity and to extend these findings by testing whether default mode activity was reduced during meditation, beyond the typical reductions observed during effortful tasks. In addition, prior studies had used small groups, whereas in the present study we tested these hypotheses in a larger group. The results indicated that meditation is associated with reduced activations in the default mode network, relative to an active task, for meditators as compared to controls. Regions of the default mode network showing a Group × Task interaction included the posterior cingulate/precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings replicate and extend prior work indicating that the suppression of default mode processing may represent a central neural process in long-term meditat