Aging & Mental Health
June 24, 2025
Paulina Gutierrez-Ramirez, Liliana A Ramirez Gomez, Miranda Zea et al.
A 4-week mentalizing imagery therapy (MIT) combining mindfulness and guided imagery reduced perceived stress and improved resilience, spiritual well-being, and other positive psychological traits in family dementia caregivers compared to a psychosocial support group. Changes in dispositional mindfulness from before to after the program explained the improvements for most outcomes. The pilot trial involved 46 participants and used longitudinal analyses. The authors suggest that larger studies should confirm these benefits and explore how mindfulness mediates effects over time.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2026
Leonardo Christov-Moore, Félix Schoeller, Mathilda Von Guttenberg et al.
A guided loving kindness meditation combined with chills-inducing music enhances mood, self-transcendence, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight more than meditation alone. In a randomized online study with 398 participants, loving kindness meditation increased connectedness to others compared to a mindfulness-based control, while adding chills-inducing music to either meditation boosted self-transcendence, mood, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight. The experience of aesthetic chills during meditation predicted these positive effects. Individual traits like absorption, interoceptive awareness, and vividness of internal imagery also independently contributed to specific outcomes such as ego-dissolution and connectedness. Chills augmentation appears a viable method for deepening contemplative practices.
Seminars in neurology
April 1, 2022
Kristen M. Kraemer, Felipe A Jain, Darshan H Mehta et al.
Meditative and mindfulness-focused interventions may improve neuropsychiatric symptoms common in neurological disorders such as headache, movement disorders, and chronic pain. The article defines meditation and mindfulness, outlines their neurobiological mechanisms, and reviews evidence supporting various interventions for these conditions. Overall, the interventions warrant further investigation among individuals with neurological conditions. When recommending them, health care professionals should consider structural factors like insurance reimbursement and patient factors such as ability to tolerate a group setting.
Psychosomatic Medicine
Eileen Luders, Felipe A Jain, Florian Kurth
Long-term meditation practice is associated with reduced age-related shrinkage of the amygdala, a brain region that typically loses volume as people grow older. In 50 long-term meditators compared with 50 matched controls, both groups showed smaller amygdala volumes with increasing age, but the decline was significantly steeper in non-meditators. The effect was strongest in the laterobasal subregion, which is involved in self-focused reflection. The findings suggest that meditation may slow brain aging in the amygdala.
Leonardo Christov-Moore, Félix Schoeller, Mathilda Von Guttenberg et al.
preprint
A guided loving kindness meditation combined with uplifting, chills-inducing music improved mood, self-transcendence, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight more than meditation alone or a mindfulness control. In a randomized online study with 398 participants, the chills-augmented condition enhanced connectedness to others, self-transcendence, and emotional breakthrough. The experience of aesthetic chills during meditation mediated these effects. Individual traits also played a role: absorption predicted ego-dissolution and connectedness; interoceptive awareness predicted ego-dissolution; and vivid internal imagery predicted connectedness to the world and others. The findings suggest that combining meditation with emotionally evocative music can foster salutogenic and prosocial outcomes.