Impacts of Mindfulness Meditation on Episodic Memory: A Review of Recent Studies
Mindfulness December 28, 2025 Adele Metres, Erika Nyhus
A scoping review of 26 papers from 2010 to 2024 found that mindfulness practices moderately improve recall and recognition accuracy but can either increase or reduce false memories. Mindfulness may benefit memory in clinical populations like depression but not memory decline in aging. Some evidence indicates mindfulness meditation increases grey matter concentration and function in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus and enhances theta oscillatory communication among the frontal-parietal-medial temporal lobe memory network, suggesting mindfulness affects memory through brain networks underlying episodic memory. Further behavioral and brain imaging research is needed.