The lancet. Psychiatry
May 1, 2026
Joseph J Taylor, Balázs Szigeti, Noah D Silverberg et al.
Placebo effects are among the greatest paradoxes in medical research. Although more data on placebos are available from placebo-controlled trials than on any treatment in medicine, there has been comparatively little deep interrogation of issues related to their measurement, appraisal, and interpretation. Most of the work that has been done, including that in psychiatry, is narrowly focused on...
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Vaibhav Tripathi, Ishaan Batta, Andre Zamani et al.
23 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, goal-directed cognition, self-projection, and theory of mind. In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of studies examining its functional connectivity, particularly its relationship with frontoparietal networks involved in top-down attention, executive...
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Jarrod A Lewis-Peacock, Tor D Wager, Todd S. Braver
2 citations
Identifying the brain mechanisms that underlie the salutary effects of mindfulness meditation and related practices is a critical goal of contemplative neuroscience. Here, we suggest that the use of multivariate predictive models represents a promising and powerful methodology that could be better leveraged to pursue this goal. This approach incorporates key principles of multivariate decoding,...
Biological Psychiatry
2025
Gabriel Riegner, Jon G Dean, Tor D Wager et al.
Rather than a passive reflection of nociception, pain is shaped by the interplay between one's experiences, current cognitive-affective states, and expectations. The placebo response, a paradoxical yet reliable phenomenon, is postulated to reduce pain by engaging mechanisms shared with active therapies. It has been assumed that mindfulness meditation, practiced by sustaining nonjudgmental...
April 14, 2024
Vaibhav Tripathi, Ishaan Batta, Andre Zamani et al.
preprint
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, self-projection, and understanding the mindset of others. Over recent years, there has been a surge in examining its functional connectivity, particularly its antagonistic relationship with frontoparietal networks (FPN) involved in top-down attention, executive...
American Journal of Psychiatry
July 28, 2022
Joseph Wielgosz, Tammi R. A. Kral, David M Perlman et al.
21 citations
OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness-based interventions are widely used to target pain, yet their neural mechanisms of action are insufficiently understood. The authors studied neural and subjective pain response in a randomized active-control trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) alongside long-term meditation practitioners. METHODS: Healthy participants (N=115) underwent functional...
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
September 30, 2021
Yoni K Ashar, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna, Joan Halifax et al.
Compassion meditation (CM) is a promising intervention for enhancing compassion, although its active ingredients and neurobiological mechanisms are not well-understood. To investigate these, we conducted a three-armed placebo-controlled randomized trial (N = 57) with longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We compared a 4-week CM program delivered by smartphone application...
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
August 1, 2016
Yoni K Ashar, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna, Tal Yarkoni et al.
Compassion is critical for societal wellbeing. Yet, it remains unclear how specific thoughts and feelings motivate compassionate behavior, and we lack a scientific understanding of how to effectively cultivate compassion. Here, we conducted 2 studies designed to a) develop a psychological model predicting compassionate behavior, and b) test this model as a mediator of a Compassion Meditation...