A brief pilot study tested Meditation Deathmatch, an open-source meditation video game, with 42 U.S. undergraduate students aged 18-20. After a single session, participants showed significant decreases in state anxiety and consistent improvements in game score across trials. They also rated the game's usability highly. The findings suggest that game-based meditation training may be an effective way to encourage meditation practice and reduce anxiety, warranting further comparison with traditional methods and potential use in treating anxiety disorders.
Some unanswered questions about consciousness might be explained by new physical mechanisms. Biophotons have been discovered in the brain, raising the possibility that neurons communicate using light in addition to electro-chemical signals. Such photonic communication would require waveguides. This review examines a proposal that myelinated axons could act as photonic waveguides, modeling light transmission through them with realistic imperfections and suggesting experiments to test the idea. Potential connections to quantum biology are also discussed.