In adults with no prior exposure to ayahuasca who participated in neo-shamanic ceremonies, improvements in depression, anxiety, stress, negative affect, negative emotionality, acceptance of external influence, and self-alienation were observed at all time points up to 12 months. Mental health, self-efficacy, and spirituality improved for up to a year. Individuals diagnosed with depressive or anxiety disorders maintained significant symptom reductions, while those without a diagnosis experienced only short-term benefits. Decreases in alcohol and cannabis use were limited to one month after the ceremony. The findings suggest ayahuasca use is associated with lasting mental health improvements, especially for those with clinical diagnoses, with varying trajectories of change across different psychological constructs.
Long-term mindfulness meditators with over five years of experience show distinct brain activity patterns during eyes-open rest and open-monitoring meditation compared to meditation-naïve individuals. During resting with eyes-open, meditators had greater mean alpha power. During meditation, control participants showed a significantly greater increase in theta power over a broad fronto-centro-parietal region than meditators. Meditators had significantly greater whole-head mean connectivity in the theta band during both rest and meditation, but significantly lower mean connectivity in the low gamma band during rest and in both low and high gamma bands during meditation. The variance of low-gamma connectivity scores was also significantly decreased for meditators.