Communications Biology
November 6, 2025
Alex Jinich-Diamant, Sierra Simpson, Juan Pablo Zuniga-Hertz et al.
4 citations
A 7-day retreat combining meditation, reconceptualization, and open-label placebo healing rituals produced broad short-term neural and molecular changes in 20 healthy participants. Meditation reduced functional integration in the default mode and salience networks and decreased whole-brain modularity. Post-intervention plasma increased neurite outgrowth, enhanced glycolytic metabolism, and induced upregulation of BDNF, inflammatory, anti-inflammatory, and endogenous opioid pathways, while modulating tryptophan metabolism and neurotransmission-associated exosome miRNA transcripts. These changes suggest enhanced neuroplasticity, metabolic reprogramming, and modulation of functional cell signaling pathways, highlighting the potential of mind-body techniques to affect neural circuits and pathways important to health and well-being.
Mindfulness
January 1, 2025
Juan P Zuniga-Hertz, Sierra Simpson, Ramamurthy Chitetti et al.
3 citations
During a week-long meditation retreat, twins showed changes in gene expression, metabolites, and cytokines in blood plasma that varied with the timing of assessment. Twin pairs began the retreat with similar molecular and brain-activity profiles, diverged at the midpoint, and converged again by the end. Even when in separate rooms, twin pairs exhibited significant correlations in brain-wave (spectral power) patterns, and heart rate dynamics aligned more closely in twin pairs than in unmatched pairs. These findings suggest that meditation may influence biological markers and that genetic background contributes to these responses.
Alex Jinich-Diamant
preprint
Mystical states induced by psychedelics, meditation, or fasting all converge on the same brain state: a transient near-critical regime. Serotonergic psychedelics relax top-down priors by sensitizing layer 5 pyramidal neurons; open-monitoring meditation elevates cortical entropy through altered thalamocortical connectivity; caloric restriction destabilizes the default mode network by attenuating metabolic support for high-level attractors. The depth of the mystical state, not the method of induction, predicts lasting therapeutic benefit, suggesting conscious experience itself is the mechanistic agent of change. This framework proposes that near-critical dynamics may allow field-theoretic and quantum-coherent contributions to consciousness to become detectable.
Cognitive Sciences
March 1, 2023
Leonardo Christov-Moore, Alex Jinich-Diamant, A. Safron et al.
The text argues that culture and science need a holistic characterization of mind and body, noting phenomena like open-label placebo effects on chronic pain and the role of gut microbiomes in mood. It claims that vestiges of Cartesian thinking treat systems from the brainstem downward as mere implementation layers for computational processes, rather than as complementary loci of information processing. This perspective frames belief-driven phenomena such as placebo, ritual, and psychosomatic disorders as mysterious obstacles rather than potential sources of insight.
Current Pain and Headache Reports
August 17, 2020
Alex Jinich-Diamant, Eric L Garland, Jennifer Baumgartner et al.
Mindfulness meditation reduces pain through brain processes that differ from placebo and vary with meditative training. Neuroimaging and randomized controlled studies show that mindfulness-based therapies reliably lower both experimentally induced and clinical pain by engaging multiple, unique, non-opioidergic mechanisms. These effects occur across a spectrum of chronic pain conditions and involve psychological, physiological, and neural modulation of how sensory events are evaluated and appraised. The findings highlight the potential of mindfulness-based approaches for producing long-lasting improvements in pain-related symptoms.