Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
March 1, 2026
David S Black, Phil Reed
ABSTRACT: The biological origins of meditation in humans remain underexplored, despite extensive scholarship on its cultural history and health effects. We present a theoretical account that traces the origins of meditation to the evolutionarily conserved repertoire of defensive freezing. We propose that this ancient survival response—characterized by motoric immobility, heightened vigilance...
JNCI cancer spectrum
October 1, 2023
David S Black, Matthew G. Kirkpatrick
Background: Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable cancers. A majority of the 34 million people who currently smoke report wanting to quit. Mindfulness training apps offer a guided telehealth intervention to foster individuals' behavioral meditation practice. We present the main outcomes of a parallel-group randomized controlled trial that tested app-based mindfulness training vs...
Contemporary Clinical Trials
September 2022
David S Black, Matthew G. Kirkpatrick
A majority of the 34 million people who currently smoke cigarettes report wanting to quit smoking yet most attempts to quit end in relapse. A mindfulness based intervention (MBI) is an intervention package used to reinforce an individual's practice of mindfulness meditation in daily life. MBIs delivered by phone app offer daily prompts to guide bouts of mindfulness meditation, that is,...
Journal of immigrant and minority health
October 1, 2021
Michael J Li, JoAnna Hardy, Lou Calanche et al.
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) may offer a means for Latinx families to ameliorate stress, enhance emotion regulation, and foster social support. We assessed pilot data from Latinx parents in Eastside Los Angeles (n = 27) matched with their children aged 10-16 (n = 32) to determine whether participation in a community-derived MBI was associated with greater improvements in dispositional...
Psychosomatic Medicine
July 1, 2021
Hortensia Amaro, David S Black
Objective: We tested the efficacy of Moment-by-Moment in Women's Recovery (MMWR), a mindfulness training program adapted for ethnoculturally diverse women with complex social and clinical histories in residential treatment for substance use disorder, on substance use and relapse outcomes. Methods: Participants were randomized to MMWR (n = 100; 60% Hispanic/Latina, 18% non-Hispanic Black) or the...
Behaviour Research and Therapy
July 7, 2019
David S Black, Hortensia Amaro
In this study we test the efficacy of Moment-by-Moment in Women's Recovery (MMWR), a mindfulness-based intervention adapted to support women with substance use disorder (SUD) while in residential treatment. We use a parallel-group randomized controlled trial with a time-matched psychoeducation control to test MMWR effects on residential treatment retention. We used clinical staff-determined...
Mindfulness
February 2019
Afton Kechter, Hortensia Amaro, David S Black
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are in the fourth decade of adaptation and testing, yet little is known about their level of treatment fidelity. Treatment fidelity is a methodological strategy used to monitor and enhance the reliability and validity of behavioral interventions. The Treatment Fidelity Workgroup of the National Institutes of Health Behavior Change Consortium (BCC) put...
Contemporary Clinical Trials
September 14, 2017
Hortensia Amaro, David S Black
Although therapeutic treatments exist for substance use disorder (SUD), about half of individuals who enter treatment leave early and relapse to substance use. Early dropout from residential treatment places individuals at risk of relapse, and women in SUD residential treatment represent a vulnerable population. Evidence gaps persist for the use of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) among...
Current oncology reports
September 1, 2017
Georgia Christodoulou, David S Black
Purpose of review: The purpose of our critical examination is to present results and provide a synthesis of this body of work. Recent findings: Sleep problems among cancer survivors are gaining research attention. To our knowledge, there have been six randomized control trials published from 2013 to 2015 that test the effects of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) on sleep as a primary or...
Cancer
August 15, 2017
David S Black, Cheng Peng, Alix G Sleight et al.
The objective of this randomized clinical experiment was to test the influence of a mindfulness meditation practice, when delivered during 1 session of active chemotherapy administration, on the acute salivary cortisol response as a marker of neuroendocrine system activity in cancer patients. A mindfulness, attention-control, or resting exposure was assigned to 57 English- or Spanish-speaking...
Personality and Individual Differences
April 1, 2016
Michael J Li, David S Black, Eric L Garland
Objective: Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) include the application of meditation and mind-body practices used to promote mindful awareness in daily life. Operationalizing the construct of mindfulness is important in order to determine mechanisms of therapeutic change elicited by mindfulness practice. In addition to existing state and trait measures of mindfulness, process measures are...
Contemporary Clinical Trials
July 1, 2014
David S Black, Gillian A O'Reilly, Richard Olmstead et al.
Sleep problems are prevalent among older adults, often persist untreated, and are predictive of health detriments. Given the limitations of conventional treatments, non-pharmacological treatments such as mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are gaining popularity for sleep ailments. However, nothing is yet known about the impact of MBIs on sleep in older adults with prodromal sleep...
Substance Use & Misuse
April 1, 2014
David S Black
The cultivation of mindfulness as an approach to human perception through the practice of meditation has become an increasingly popular treatment for medical and psychological symptoms and as a topic of scientific investigation. Substance user programs are also increasingly embracing this treatment strategy as either a stand-alone therapeutic modality or a complement to ongoing treatment. In...
Neuro : open journal
2014
Florian Kurth, Eileen Luders, Brian Wu et al.
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have previously been associated with structural gray matter changes in normal healthy adults. However, it remains unknown if standardized MBIs can induce similar changes in older adults and those with health complaints as well. The objective of this investigation was to examine the effect of a standardized MBI on the gray matter tissue of older adults with...
Psychosomatic Medicine
June 28, 2012
SeyedAhmad SeyedAlinaghi, Sara Jam, Maryam Foroughi et al.
Objective: To evaluate the immediate and long-term effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on biological and symptomatological markers of health among human immunodeficiency virus-positive (HIV+) patients in Tehran, Iran. Methods: Using a randomized controlled trial design, data from 173 HIV+ patients (CD4 count > 250) not yet receiving antiretroviral therapy, who...
Assessment
March 2012
David S Black, Steve Y Sussman, C Anderson Johnson et al.
The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) has the longest empirical track record as a valid measure of trait mindfulness. Most of what is understood about trait mindfulness comes from administering the MAAS to relatively homogenous samples of Caucasian adults. This study rigorously evaluates the psychometric properties of the MAAS among Chinese adolescents attending high school in Chengdu,...
Mindfulness
September 1, 2011
David S Black, Randye J Semple, Pallav Pokhrel et al.
We examined the interrelationships between higher-order cognitive functions-mindfulness, self-control, and working memory-that appear to be component processes that underlie executive function (EF) and their association with indicators of mental and behavioral health. Data were collected from first-year medical students attending a large private university in California (N=31) via a...
Mindfulness
September 1, 2010
David S Black
Scientific knowledge of human health continues to grow substantially through publication in empirical journals. These journals, which serve as the warehouses of scientific knowledge, continue to publish vast amounts of empirical information. This abundance of information, which promotes an understanding of and advances in human health, is also a precursor of information overload that can result...